What is scientific consensus for policy? Heartlands and hinterlands of physics

政策制定者应该依赖于根据主流科学观点--通常被称为“科学共识”--来制定决策。该项目旨在了解这一共识是如何形成的。如果我们想要了解政策制定者衡量科技界共识和非共识的程度时发生了什么，我们需要了解这些过程。然而，科学往往是有争议的。一门健康的科学需要分歧和讨论，也需要共识，以便最大限度地检验结论。在面临关键决策时，公众和政策制定者经常会遇到科学上的分歧。因此，需要理解科学中一致和不一致的本质。科学是基于共同同意的知识，然而个人有时可以也确实不同意主流。利用科学的修辞能力作为公共话语的一个元素，人们可以在可能没有的情况下创造一种争论的氛围(例如，在科学主流中没有分歧的情况下，写科学论文表明存在分歧)。例如，众所周知，烟草游说团体做到了这一点，可能是石油行业在气候变化科学问题上制造了一种表面上的分歧。为了增加我们对这些问题的理解，我们将看看物理学中的共识形成。该项目将从许多物理学家最初向他们的同事展示他们的工作的地方开始：占主导地位的电子预印本服务器，被称为“arxiv”。物理学家可以将他们的论文草稿上传到arxiv，在那里他们可以被更广泛的社区阅读。目前，每月约有6000篇论文上传到arxiv。普通公众不能将论文上传到arxiv，因为它在技术上很复杂，而且现在提交的论文必须由现有的专业物理学家赞助。然而，情况并不总是这样的。曾经，任何了解技术细节的人都可以上传。由于提交了太多非正统的意见书，新的限制措施已经到位。用社会学的语言来说，现在已经建立了一条边界，界定了什么有可能有助于就一个主题达成共识，什么没有。如果我们想要理解科学共识的本质，arxiv是一个很好的起点。物理学家承认，他们很少阅读上传到arxiv的论文，专注于那些与他们的研究主题有直接关系的论文。但arxiv有另一种方法来处理论文，而不是简单地将它们排除在外：它将它们归入一个被称为“普通物理学”的类别。我们不知道物理学家如何选择什么是有趣的，什么是不有趣的，他们对普通物理学范畴的含义知道多少，因此，物理学家们是如何在脑海中创造出好的和坏的科学概念的。我们也不知道被排除在外的物理学家，或重新定向的物理学家，对发生在他们身上的事情有什么看法，这是我们将研究的其他事情。我们将进一步研究合格科学家的领域，他们在所谓的“边缘期刊”上发表文章，并进一步深入到有时被称为“怪人”的世界。所有这些都符合和理解共识的产生和外部。然后，考察所有这些界限的结果将被重新概念化，以理解这对具有政策含义的科学共识的形成意味着什么。最终目的是阐明与政策相关的讨论，即如何确定合法科学的边界和存在于其中的共识。然后，这项研究应该帮助政策制定者和对科学事务感兴趣的公众区分一门科学何时有争议或没有争议。我们对这些东西在arxiv中展开的方式的深入、仔细的研究将给我们一个健全的科学理解，并可应用于其他领域。

Policy-makers should rely on generating decisions in the light of mainstream scientific opinion - what is often called 'the scientific consensus'. This project is aimed at understanding how this consensus is formed. If we want to understand what is going on when policy-makers gauge the extent of consensus and non-consensus in the scientific and technological community, we need to understand these processes. Yet science is often controversial. A healthy science needs disagreement and discussion as much as it needs consensus in order to test conclusions to the maximum. The public and policy-makers often encounter scientific disagreement when faced with crucial decisions. Therefore the nature of agreement and disagreement in science needs to be understood.Science is knowledge based on communal agreement, yet individuals can and do sometimes disagree with the mainstream. Using science's rhetorical power as an element of public discourse, one can create an atmosphere of controversy where there is possibly none (e.g. writing scientific papers that suggest the existence of disagreement where there is none in the scientific mainstream). For example, the tobacco lobby is known for having done this and it could be that the oil industry has helped to create an appearance of disagreement in the matter of the science of climate change.To increase our understanding of these issues we will look at consensus formation in physics. The project will begin by looking at the place where many physicists initially reveal their work to their fellows: the dominant electronic preprint server known as 'arXiv'. Physicists can upload their draft papers to arXiv where they may be read by the wider community. Currently around 6,000 papers a month are uploaded to arXiv. An ordinary member of the public cannot upload a paper to arXiv because it is technically complex, but also because, nowadays, the submission must be sponsored by an existing professional physicist. However it has not always been like this. At one time anyone who understood the technicalities could upload. The new restrictions have been put in place because too many unorthodox submissions were being made. In sociological language, a border has been established which now defines what has potential to contribute to the consensus on a topic and what does not. If we want to understand the nature of scientific consensus, arXiv is a good place to start.Physicists admit they read very few of the papers uploaded to arXiv, concentrating on those that have a direct bearing on their research topics. But arXiv has another way of dealing with papers without simply excluding them: it puts them into a category called 'general physics'. We do not know how physicists choose what is interesting and what is not, what they know about the meaning of the general physics category and, therefore, how the notions of 'good' and 'bad' science are created in physicists' minds. We also do not know what the excluded physicists, or redirected physicists, make of what happens to them, something else we will examine. We will look further into the territory of qualified scientists who publish in so called 'fringe journals' and further out still into the world of what are sometimes called 'cranks'. All this fits into and understanding of the creation of consensus and those outside it.The results of looking at all these boundaries will then be re-conceptualised to understand what this means for the formation of consensus in science that has policy implications. The ultimate aim is to illuminate policy-related discussions of how to identify the boundaries of legitimate science and the consensus that exists within them. The research should then help policymakers and publics interested in scientific affairs to distinguish when a science is or is not controversial. Our deep, careful study of the way these things unfold in arXiv will give us a sound scientific understanding that can be applied to other areas.