“Ziman guesses that while the primary literature in physics is perhaps 90% wrong, textbooks in physics

are perhaps 90% right - by no means 100% right. ” --- Henry H. Bauer

看到这个数字你也许惊讶。但是读完这篇文章之后，你会认同这样的认识。

笔者曾经撰文关于科学的定义[1，2]。在文中笔者明确地指出科学在很大的意义上是一种方法和规范，而并不代表真理。探索自然和宇宙的方法并不限于科学，历史上还有易经，中医，玄学，预言，宗教。用各种方法都可以得到自己领域的知识和结论。

用科学方法进行对自然的探索，有些结果可以揭示自然规律，也很有可能出错。但是科学的精髓在于不断地通过规范的方法对结果进行质疑，分析，判断，推理，和更正 (这与宗教有根本的不同。比如基督教的结论是永恒的，不可质疑的)。这里所谓的“结果”指那些最前沿的，原初的，首次的探索结果。也就是在学术刊物发表的原始结果。比如一位物理学家发现某种物质具有超导性。这是第一发现，不可能完全被学术界立即完全接受。这个结果也完全可能有误。因而，这个原始结果需要通过世界学术界其他小组的重复，当然是在严格的科学规范实验基础之上，最后得以证实的。这往往需要时间。有些实验结果或许不需要很长时间，也许1-2年就可以证实。有些需要很长时间。爱因思坦的相对论在发表的时候甚至连诺贝尔委员会都看不懂。这个理论经过了漫长的时间才被世界物理学界逐步接受。类似的例子很多，包括达尔文进化论和宇宙大爆炸理论。因此，原始科学结果的发现和发表往往会出现许多错误，这是非常自然的。但是，科学之美在于她的“质疑论。”通过对原始结果的不断质疑，真理会慢慢地沉淀出来，最后进入教科书。所以ZIMAN先生说：

"物理研究学刊论文可能90%有误，而教科书90%是正确的。"

对于这个理念其实早己在世界学术界认可。Henry H. Bauer 先生在 <<科学伦理>>一文中写得十分精彩和详细。在此与大家分享。文章网页来自：

http://www.files.chem.vt.edu/chem-ed/ethics/hbauer/hbauer-filter.html

按照他的分析，学术结果可以分成三类：

1。 Primary literature：  Articles in research journals (学术研究杂志文章)

2。 Secondary literature ：Review articles and monographs (综述性文章和专著)

3。 Textbook science ：Textbooks (教科书)

在第一类学术论文中最容易有误出错。第三类教科书大多是正确的。而综述类文章居于两者之间。从这样的分类中我们得知，科学就如同一个漏斗一样，从学刊杂志到综述文章，不断地过滤，最后积累在教科书中。科学就是从未知，通过探索和质疑，逐渐走向真理的。在对自然界探索的过程中充满了好奇，想象，创造，惊讶，激动，失望，质疑，批判，争执，错误-真理：这正是为什么我们被科学吸引的精彩之处。

参考文献

1。 时东陆， "科学的定义," <科学> 2007，59（3）：4

2。 时东陆， "再论科学的定义," <科学> 2007，59（5）：23

Ethics in Science

Henry H. Bauer

The Knowledge Filter

What would happen to science if most scientists rounded off and fudged? What would happen if they thought less about what the experiment actually shows and more about who wants which results, and what would be better for getting the next job or prize?

To understand why science may be reliable or unreliable, you have to recognize that science is done by human beings, and that how they interact with one another is absolutely crucial. Here's how I think scientific knowledge accumulates; I call it "the knowledge filter": Figure 1

Science gets done through a communal process that's like the action of a large filter funnel with several stages, through which the murky mess of humans making many, often contradictory claims of truths about the world eventually yields a little trickle of fairly clear understanding.

The human urge to know and to convince others is a pandemonium of fantasies and folklore, hallucinations and religious cults, myth and pseudo-science, not just empirical and logical investigation. Just think of all the New-Age magazines and pop-religious paperbacks that flood the bookstores: dianetics and Scientology, extrasensory perception and reincarnation and channeling, astrology and Tarot, revelations from Nicholas Tesla and other neglected supposed geniuses. Nowadays, anyone who seriously wants to contribute to scientific knowledge had best not start there but rather get some undergraduate and graduate training in science: that narrows the mouth of the filter funnel, by educating about already established knowledge, about what's plausible and what isn't: Figure 2

Learning to do research means learning to ask yourself all the time, "What will others think about this?", because those others will examine you and decide whether you'll graduate or not, whether you'll be recommended for jobs and grants - or not, whether your papers will get published - or not, whether you get promotions and better jobs and prizes - or not.

Through that awareness that you have to satisfy the opinions of others, and through the actual practice of having colleagues and competitors look over grant proposals and manuscripts, much nonsense, pseudo-science, and stupidity is still-born, or at least filtered out before it's gotten very far.

So the ferment of scientific research, of frontier science, is a bit more disciplined than the general intellectual level of society as judged by what's on bookstore shelves. But research is still a rather messy business. Scientists differ in competence and in integrity; they're rebellious in varying degrees, toward established knowledge and toward established practices; they vary in creativity, interests, judgment, patience, and so forth.

But what they produce becomes a little less subjective, a little less imperfect by the time it gets published, because in order to get into print, it isn't enough to be personally convinced of some scientific fact - not even if you've become convinced by observing, setting up hypotheses, and testing them: you have to show evidence strong enough to persuade others that you're right, or at least that you're not obviously wrong. You have to produce evidence strong enough to convince people who start with different beliefs and prejudices than you do. So the primary literature of articles in research journals is more disciplined, more objective and less personal than what goes on in individual labs.

Still, the primary literature is anything but entirely consensual - there are competing theories and even competing, apparently contradictory results. As John Ziman has pointed out, the primary literature isn't scientific knowledge, it's merely information that certain claims have been made (10). If those seem interesting enough to others, they'll be used and thereby tested and perhaps modified or extended - or found to be untrue. Whatever survives as useful knowledge gets cited in other articles and eventually in review articles and monographs, the secondary literature which is considerably more consensual and reliable than the primary literature.

But still that's far from gospel. If after still more use and modification, including use by people in other specialties, if still no damaging flaws have turned up, then the knowledge is likely to get into textbooks. This textbook science is very reliable. It's been cleansed of most of the personal bias, error, and dishonesty that may have been there originally.

Yet even this textbook science isn't objectively true knowledge. Ziman guesses that while the primary literature in physics is perhaps 90% wrong, textbooks in physics are perhaps 90% right - by no means 100% right. The next century's textbooks of science will be significantly different from today's, even more than by the 10% that's wrong in today's, because there will not only be correction of errors but inclusion of things that we can't even dream of at present.

This knowledge filter illustrates that it's peer review, and the awareness of peer review, and the passage of time that makes scientific knowledge non-subjective and reliable. But there's nothing automatic about peer review or self-discipline. If peer review is cronyism - if scientists believe it proper to praise their friends and relatives rather than meritorious work irrespective of who does it - then false views and unreliable results will be disseminated.

Contrast this filtering with the popular notion of an "information explosion" that implies a crisis of coping with new knowledge; when rather it's a matter of weeding out from a mass of rubbish, a small amount of valid, useful, meaningful stuff. This model would suggest a different way of doing things than is now the generally accepted one. We seem to think that more research is always better, and that publishing original research is more worthy than writing review articles or books. But perhaps, given the mass of rubbish that needs filtering, perhaps less research would be better than more?! Maybe writing review articles and textbooks should be rewarded more than producing research articles?!

Figure 1

Figure 2