Talk:Scientific citation

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[edit] Citation = Scientific merit? Uh unh

I don't have time right now to fix this now, but a note for anyone who comes along and uses this: This article suggests that quantity of citation is a sufficient metric of scientific merit. It's not. A lot of other factors come into play when someone in the sciences reads a paper, including the quality of the publication being cited, the credibility of the authors, and, yes even in the hard sciences prior knowledge, assumptions and commitments to various theoretical positions color the understandings that different scientists bring to the act of reading a scientific text. Good grief. Interesting reading on this topic include:

• Shaping Written Knowledge: The Genre and Activity of the Experimental Article in Science by Charles Bazerman [[1]]

• Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts by Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar

Andicat 17:35, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] This article on citations needs more of what it's about

That's right, it's ironic but true that this article about citations contains....hardly any!! Want to add some citations someone? I would especially focus on the many bold claims. NuclearWinner 23:33, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

I find the distinction between the "hard" and "soft" sciences to be misleading and therefore uninformative. The distinction that, I believe, should be made instead is between individual books, articles, etc. that are highly scientific and those that are less scientific or even unscientific. The criterion for "scientific" should be determined on the basis of method of inquiry, certainly not on the basis of subject matter. It is the use of the scientific method of inquiry alone which determines whether or not a specific reported investigation is truly scientific in the modern sense of "science." Thus, some articles in sociology will rise to the top as being more scientific than some in chemistry, for example, if they present greater rigor in precisely testing hypotheses which consist, in essence, of variables that are precisely and empirically or operationally defined. As another example, the realm of contemporary theoretical physics, once considered the epitome of "hard" science, has become so highly conceptual and even imaginative, that one hungers for the occasional points of contact with the familiar empirical world, long respected as the starting point and ultimate test of any scientific inquiry.

Nothing is more infuriating to those seeking of sound knowledge regarding mental disorders, for example, than the presumption that a published articles by a psychiatrist will, ipso facto, be more scientific than one on the same subject by a psychologist. That would be the result of a prejudice based on the credulity and hunger for authority of lay readers or even the comparative socioeconomic status of the two writers. If one reads widely in the relevant literature, it will quickly become clear that, in some cases, the experimental method is far more rigorously adhered to, in many but not all cases, by researchers with Ph.D. degrees than those with M.D. degrees. The fact that one must attain a certain mastery of fields long known to be sciences, such as chemistry and zoology, in order to become a physician is no guarantee that every physician is a scientist, particularly when mastery of logic and statistics may be the more essential qualification at the moment.

There is also a historical chronology as to when the various fields of human inquiry have proven themselves to be sciences. Chemistry and human anatomy, for example, received that status many centuries after astronomy and physics. In the ancient world, astronomy was understood to be a science requiring sustained and repeated observation and methodological rigor many centuries before chemistry, even though astronomy had to be rediscovered, first by Arabs and then by Europeans, in the reawakening of Western humanity following the Dark Ages. At that point, astronomy had to compete with astrology, and it won out largely through its use of scientific method, which astrology lacked. The struggle to pull various fields of human thought into the realm of science continues, as local school boards contemplate the origin of life and of our own species.

In conclusion, the traditional notion of the "hard" and "soft" sciences should be superseded by a distinction based on the degree to which any individual effort to build knowledge has utilized the scientific method by which knowledge is attained, rather than by the subject matter studied. Timothy Ray —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wicker2 (talk • contribs) 01:46, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Very interesting, and I mostly agree, so next time, can you add your eloquence and effort to the article itself rather than this talk page? Just an idea for you.  :-) NuclearWinner (talk) 22:28, 14 January 2008 (UTC)