S4 Ep 9 - Holden Thorp on 'Teach History and Philosophy of Science'

“This is Holden Thorp. I'm the Editor in Chief of Science and thanks to Sam and Carmelina for all they're doing to get the word out about the history and philosophy of science”

Today's guest is Holden Thorp, professor of chemistry at George Washington University and Editor-in-Chief of the Science family of journals.

In April of this year, Holden published an editorial in Science with the tantalising title ‘Teach Philosophy of Science’. Holden called for more substantial teaching of history and philosophy of science across undergraduate and graduate science curricula. He argued that learning about the historical and philosophical foundations of science is crucial for improving public trust. Encouraging deeper consideration of ongoing revision in science, as well as historical and societal contexts, will better equip future researchers and professionals with a more nuanced perspective on how robust, reliable knowledge is established.

In the months since its publication the editorial provoked significant discussion across social media, so we decided to reach out to Holden to join us for a more in-depth conversation. We were keen to see exactly what role Holden saw for HPS scholars in such a shift and test his willingness to engage with the more challenging insights that research across History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science bring to the surface.

A full transcript of the episode can be accessed here: https://www.hpsunimelb.org/post/s4-ep-9-holden-thorp-on-teach-history-and-philosophy-of-science

Relevant links:

• 'Teach philosophy of science' | Editorial by Holden Thorp | Science
• Holden's Seminar | 'Unreasonable Doubt' | The George Washington University
• 'Cracking the Code of Science Denial' | On Holden's Seminar | GW Today
• 'It matters who does science' | Holden Thorp | Science | AAAS
• Holden Thorp | Editor-in-Chief | Science | AAAS
• Why Trust Science? | Naomi Oreskes | Princeton University Press

Thanks for listening to The HPS Podcast with current producers, Samara Greenwood and Carmelina Contarino. You can find more about us on our blog, website, bluesky, twitter, instagram and facebook feeds. Music by ComaStudio.

This podcast would not be possible without the support of School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne.

HPS Podcast | hpsunimelb.org

Transcript

S4 Ep 9 - Holden Thorp on 'Teach History and Philosophy of Science'

Transcript

Holden Thorp: “This is Holden Thorp. I'm the Editor in Chief of Science and thanks to Sam and Carmelina for all they're doing to get the word out about the history and philosophy of science and its role in education and research.”

Samara Greenwood: As you might have gathered, today on The HPS Podcast Carmelina and I are excited to have as our guest Holden Thorp, professor of chemistry at George Washington University and Editor-in-Chief of Science, one of the world’s leading scientific journals.

In April of this year, Holden published an editorial in Science with the tantalising title ‘Teach Philosophy of Science’. In the short piece, Holden called for more substantial teaching of history and philosophy of science across undergraduate and graduate science curricula. 

He argued that learning about the historical and philosophical foundations of science, alongside its technical aspects, is crucial for improving public trust. Encouraging deeper consideration of ongoing revision in science, as well as historical and societal contexts, will better equip future researchers and professionals with a more nuanced perspective on how robust, reliable knowledge is established.

In the months since its publication, we noticed the editorial was circulating widely and provoking significant discussion across the social media worlds in which we roam. So, Carmelina and I decided to reach out to Holden to join us on the pod for a more in-depth conversation on the topic. In the interview, we were keen to go further then simple talking points to see exactly what role Holden saw for HPS scholars in such a shift in scientific education and test his willingness to engage with the more challenging insights that research across History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science bring to the surface.

As you will see, Holden seemed to embrace the experience, and even charmed us with the impromptu endorsement that began this episode, and that might just crop up again at the end.

________________________

Carmelina Contarino: Holden, thank you for joining us on the podcast today. It's a pleasure to have you here. 

Holden Thorp: Great to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Your podcast is serving a very important purpose and so I’m happy to be part of it.

Carmelina Contarino: In your position as Editor in Chief of Science, you wrote a widely distributed editorial that advocated for teaching philosophy of science more extensively across undergraduate and graduate science programs, a position we at The HPS Podcast wholeheartedly agree with!

Could you tell us what inspired you to write this editorial? 

Holden Thorp: It was mostly because I see a lot of laboratory scientists who are very involved, as they should be, in their research at the bench and reading technical scientific papers, become sometimes quite mystified by things that are going on in the way that the public reacts to science and the way that has changed over the years. 

One thing that I often point to is, first of all, Francis Collins is the best NIH director that we ever had in the United States, but I'm an accidental journalist and I write an opinion column, so sometimes I point out things that he's done that maybe he would want to take back or that just don't read very well. 

One thing he said in an interview at the end of the pandemic was somebody said, ‘What could you have done differently?’ And he said, ‘Well, I wish we knew more about where something like vaccine hesitancy came from.’

Of course, people in your disciplines have been writing about this for years and years and years. Something like vaccine hesitancy has been evolving for at least decades, if not longer. 

If the NIH director hasn't read that material, just think about the people at the bench. They thought the COVID vaccine would be this great thing where science would be applauded for it. They need to understand that so they can think about how their behaviours in the future could be ones that build trust, with the knowledge of what it takes to do that, which come from a lot of the humanistic inquiry into science. 

Samara Greenwood (2): So, given the many possibilities for improving public trust, what prompted you to focus on teaching HPS in this relationship? 

Holden Thorp: I think one thing that we can see in a lot of social science data about trust in science is that, for example, trust increases when the public believes that scientists will change their views based on new data.

Now that's something that we take for granted. That, in fact, is what we do. If we didn't, we wouldn't need so many journals, we wouldn't publish so many papers, we wouldn't have this huge scientific enterprise. Also, our jobs wouldn't be very interesting because we'd establish things and then they'd be set. So, for us, it's part and parcel of what science is. 

We haven't done a good job of explaining that to the public. I think part of that is an arrogance, to think that the public either doesn't want to understand that or can’t understand it. So, we just give people super crisp statements about where we are right now. Then, when we have to revise them, that causes people to lose trust.

Demonstrating that we can change our views when we get new data is such an important thing. So, teaching that to scientists who are getting undergraduate degrees, for example, is crucial because they can understand how things come across and they can also understand something that's incredibly important, which is related to all this, which is that when we change - based on new data or when we make mistakes, either intentional or otherwise, that causes us to have to change - correcting that is really, really important. That correction actually builds trust. That doesn't erode trust, because it acknowledges that we have sincere motives and that we have a process that is self-correcting in the long run. 

Carmelina Contarino: As you just mentioned, the public and the scientists have a view of how we conduct science. In the editorial, you reference other groups as well, such as the media and those who set university curricula. However, you don't explicitly mention philosophers or historians of science. 

What role do you see for HPS scholars in the changes you're proposing? 

Holden Thorp: Yes, that's a great question. I guess I thought that would be something for a follow on editorial once I've kind of gotten people on board with this. But, you know, I didn't really know that much about all of this before I started writing these editorials. 

But I've learned a lot from several really prominent and important people who correct me when I make a mistake. Naomi Oreskes would be at the top of that list. She straightens me out on a lot of things, and she's been a great teacher. Kathleen Hall Jameson is a social scientist who studies science communication. She's not really a philosopher or historian, but she's very well versed in all of these things. She's also somebody I've learned a lot from. 

Most scientists don't get the chance to engage with folks like that or think that it is important. I think part of that is because historians of science, if they're doing their job, they sometimes call us out on the fact that we think science is the solution to absolutely every problem. We shouldn't be afraid to engage with people who sometimes do that. 

Also, they often write about things that we do that don't work out so well, or technologies that we make that we don't think about the implications of. But these are all conversations that we should be willing to deal with.

That scholarship really does two things. It potentially holds us accountable for things that we should be thinking about. But it also teaches us a lot about how people have processed science in the past and how they will in the future and whether the way we think about how scientific information changes, when it comes to the philosophy of science, how is that actually going on in our heads while we're doing all this stuff?

We should be curious about that. I think it helps us understand how our technologies are going to play out in the world, and how knowledge is processed, and these are all important and wholesome things, 

I think there's suspicion from scientists about some of these criticisms that I think are unfounded. We need to get them to realize that history and philosophy of science has much to contribute to science itself. 

Carmelina Contarino: Do you think that HPS allows a reflexive space for scientists? It gives them the tools to reflect on their own work in a way that they wouldn't otherwise be able to do in the process of doing the work.

Holden Thorp: I think it can, but I think we need to do a lot more in the academy to intentionally build that, because it's entirely possible that unless you got involved in faculty governance or some university wide committee, and you are a laboratory scientist, you might never meet your colleagues in history and philosophy who are studying this. Because of the silos of academia, for one thing, but also the suspicions that I was talking about, that we need to work to bridge. 

One of Naomi's books that I like the best is the book, Why Trust Science? Of course, I like what she says about the iterative nature of science, and that's why you can trust us. But the other thing I like about that book is that there are critiques in there from philosophers of science who think she's too easy on scientists. 

I think that exchange is really useful for scientists to understand. We can make all these beautiful technologies and knowledge, but there are a lot of things in the human condition that are a result of social problems and human behaviors and things that have happened historically that science can't really solve.

We need to be humble about that. The fact that we can't solve every single thing. 

So those exchanges are, in my opinion, quite useful. 

Samara Greenwood: I remember reading someone saying, ‘it's one thing to produce the vaccine, it’s another thing to have it accepted by populations’. One tends to be more science-y and one tends to be more social sciences and humanities. You need to have both to get things working in the world, and I think that's really true. 

Holden Thorp: Yes, the vaccine was a superb solution to part of the problem. But, it wasn't a solution to the fact that people with fewer resources were impacted by COVID more than others, or that faith leaders telling people to do a certain thing had more influence on them than what scientists were saying, and that races and genders were impacted differently based both their biology and the circumstances that they were in.

There's a lot of things there that, just because we made these spectacular vaccines, there's history and philosophy of science behind why not everybody got one. But there's also a lot of history and philosophy of science behind how COVID impacted people generally. A lot of those things were things that science couldn't solve on its own.

Samara Greenwood: Beautiful, and I think this is a nice follow-on question. 

It was also interesting to see you describe the history of science as providing a powerful narrative around science's ability to self-correct. Which is true. But, as you've intimated, historians of science also do emphasise a range of more complex historical developments, including many instances of science’s failure to self-correct over time. 

Do you think those more challenging narratives should also form a part of scientific education? 

Holden Thorp: Oh, I do, yes. Because, for example, when there are social or economic forces at play, sometimes that can delay self-correction for a long time, and when there are cultural things that people want to believe for whatever reason, that can delay self-correction.

We had a paper we published a couple of years ago that was a collaboration between indigenous Lakota scientists and Western scientists that corrected the fact that the Western narrative had been that horses in the northern part of the United States were not present until they migrated north after the Spaniards brought them 200 years earlier, or that they were delivered by the British. 

The reason that wasn't corrected had nothing to do with genetics or archaeology. I think we could have found that anytime we wanted to. It was because it served the purposes of the colonial narrative to say that there weren't horses up there.

Once the Lakota and Western scientists collaborated, they were able to find the evidence that said that the horses had been up there all along. So, that's the kind of thing that the failure of Western science to find that was probably more informed by history than by the science.

Samara Greenwood: Part of my research looks at the times where correction was not so much self-correction but came from people outside of science critiquing science or those within science engaging with things that are typically considered outside science, whether that's a social movement or an intellectual movement, and that helped them see new things within science. I would like to see that part of the story. What do you think? 

Holden Thorp: Yes, I think that if there was a set of examples that we could share with people as they're coming up in science that showed that kind of thing, that would also be eye opening. Because it’s not just about poking around in the laboratory. Science happens in this massive context of all kinds, as you are saying. Of intellectual movements and critiques from the outside and things like that. 

Carmelina Contarino: You raised the challenge of how to include this broader, deeper perspective on science that HPS provides within science degrees that are already jam packed, as you put it, with didactic classes. We're interested to hear your thoughts on how that might be addressed. 

Holden Thorp: Yes, well, these are some of the most vigorous debates in all of academia, when you get people together and they have to fight to get their material into the curriculum. 

I believe science has suffered enormously from this because most students, if you teach them how to teach themselves about science, don't need to learn every last formula and every last named organic reaction and every last way that mass transport of thermodynamics, or these things, can play out. 

We ought to teach them how to learn. That, if they become researchers, they're going to learn that when they need to use it anyway.

That is easier said than done, but that should produce more space in the curriculum to learn the History and Philosophy of Science, but also just more history and social science, so that they can understand the context in which all of the science plays out. 

I have been in favour of reducing the number of what we call in science ‘plug and chug classes’ where you learn formulas and plug numbers in to make for a broader education. But boy, winning that at the faculty meeting is a tough, tough battle. Because everybody is fighting to keep that thing that they have devoted their lives to in the curriculum, that every student has to learn. 

I guess it probably won't get solved until there is some kind of crisis. Y'all are the historians. So, you probably know most things don't happen until they have to. We may need a bigger crisis in science enrolments and things like that before it changes because there's a lot of entrenched forces fighting on that. So, I'll probably keep writing that in editorials for a while and whether anybody's actually going to do it or not, I don't know. 

I guess another thing that could change it as if somebody does do it and it turns out to be more successful and then other programs are jealous and want to do the same thing.

Jealousy and necessity are usually the drivers of change in academia. One or both of those things. 

Carmelina Contarino: Do you think that there's a role for HPS education to science students in high school before they hit university? 

Holden Thorp: Oh, I sure do. If you get out a high school biology or chemistry textbook, there'll be this little thing at the beginning about the scientific method and it's like three pages long. Right? 

They memorize that there is a hypothesis and that you test it, and stuff like that, but it's so rudimentary. Then they're off on memorizing the periodic table and calculating atomic masses or learning what molecular biology is so they can learn biology and so it's no wonder that they don't think about that. They don't get tested on it. They don't have analytical testing around the concepts. I think if they did, they would be off to a better place in terms of their college curriculum and beyond. 

Also, the ones who don't go to science beyond high school would at least know that there's a scientific process and a history of how science came together. That's really important to understanding it all because a lot of the students who didn't enjoy their high school biology or chemistry classes and went off to do something else, they're mostly just left with an unpleasant experience. 

Every chemistry professor in the world gets very tired of, ‘Oh, what do you do? - Hi, I'm a chemistry professor. - Oh God, I hated chemistry.’ That must happen to me daily, if I'm meeting people somewhere.

Carmelina Contarino: If it makes you feel any better, I loved chemistry. 

Holden Thorp: That's great to hear, and there are more people like that than the world gives the world credit for. But it would be nice for everybody who only took high school science to fulfill their requirements to learn a little more about how science actually works.

Samara Greenwood: I have two daughters, both going through high school at the moment, and they have a wonderful science curriculum where they incorporate a lot of history of science, in particular, into learning about where scientific concepts came from. They're finding that it's engaging a lot of those students who might not otherwise have been into the technical side. To hear those narratives and those stories around science helps make it more inclusive. I think that's a lovely part of it as well. 

Holden Thorp: Yes, and I think learning that sometimes in the early days of these things, they were very dangerous and harm came from them and then we found out more. We figured out how to harness them for good. I mean, that's such an important lesson and it hardly ever comes across once they get to the formulaic part of their science courses. If they're told anything, it's like all the great things that you can do with this stuff.

Carmelina Contarino: With those that do follow through science into university, they've essentially had a decade of being told this is the scientific method without being required to question it or required to question why or how they do what they do. So, it's almost understandable that when they do come across HPS scholars later in their career, that they have this wall built up that, ‘this is the way the world is’. That is their worldview because that's all they've known. 

Holden Thorp: Right, and if all they learned was that high school version of a scientific method, they don't realize most of the discoveries that they are around are things that were discovered by accident. 

If you only learn that, it makes it sound like the only way anybody discovers anything is by thinking of a hypothesis and testing it. 

The truth is there's not a lot of science that gets done that way. People are looking for one thing and find something else. Or, they are more Edisonian in the way that they do things and just decide, ‘let's see what happens when we mix these two things together,’ or ‘what would happen to this cell if we put it in this electric field?’ There are plenty of just inquisitive people who are just looking for stuff. 

Samara Greenwood: Carmelina’s research is exploratory science, and I believe this is what it's all about. That sense of adventure and creativity and ‘let’s see what happens’ can be a big part of it.

We'd love to know more about your own experience with HPS. Did you have any experience studying history or philosophy of science during your own studies in chemistry, or has your engagement been more self-directed? 

Holden Thorp: None whatsoever. I learned the standard stuff about the scientific method. 

Fortunately for me, I enjoyed high school chemistry and my science and math classes and wanted to do that. 

I wasn't drawn into it for any deep philosophical reason. I had a great high school chemistry teacher. I put the right answers down on his desk. He nurtured me. And, you know, there's a million problems with this.

I was a white male with resources at an excellent public high school where there was a great chemistry teacher, so the system was set up to help me. There are lots of people who don't have those advantages, who can’t access it. But the other piece that you're talking about is that, there's not a lot of why there.

Lots of people who end up doing science do it because they're good at it and that the system selected for them. That is certainly the case for me. I didn't even start thinking about bigger issues beyond just chemistry until I eventually started serving on committees and things with people from other departments who taught me how their disciplines work. 

Then, when I became an administrator, I guess one of the reasons why most of my jobs, I had a lot of the faculty on my side was that I was just very inquisitive about whatever it was that they were doing.

That's partly because, you can probably tell, I'm an introvert. I learned to make my way in the academy by, whenever I met somebody, just saying, ‘Well, tell me what you're working on.’ Which is, as you know, a gold question to ask a college professor, because they're going to think you're a great listener and you're going to learn something at the same time.

So, I spent most of my time in universities, once I got beyond the chemistry department, either because I met people or because I was in charge of them, asking them what they were working on. In the course of that, I learned a lot of this stuff. 

I said when I first started this job [as Editor-in-Chief of Science] that I wanted the part that I was either writing about or that we were covering in the journal in other ways to be sophisticated in terms of its humanities and social science. So, I started interacting with even more folks from those disciplines, including the people I named, but also others who have written to me, just like you all did. A lot of them are happy to straighten me out when I get something wrong, and I'm always happy to get that.

That has allowed me to kind of develop whatever it is that I've learned about this stuff so far. But it's an ongoing journey that I enjoy very much. 

Carmelina Contarino: That interdisciplinarity is one of the things that I absolutely love about HPS. That it is such a broad church and we cover so many different areas of humanities and the social sciences and the [natural] sciences. 

Looking at that idea of interdisciplinarity, what's the role of journals in helping scientists connect or stay connected to HPS? Can we expect to see more HPS related articles included in Science in the future?

Holden Thorp: Well, I think a lot of people have told me that there are more now than there were before. They seem willing to give me credit for that. I'm not sure I deserve that, but I'm certainly very interested in all of it. 

I think it will continue to increase for us, for sure, because we're a general science journal. So, we want stuff, particularly in the front part of the print magazine or the top part of the online version that most people read, to be things that draw scientists into things that are outside their area, but in which they might be very interested.

In our book section, we cover a lot of books about History and Philosophy of Science and we'll continue to do so. I've written two theatre reviews for our book section and one review of Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway's next book, The Big Myth, which was superb. I'd love a lot of scientists to read that. 

I think the challenge is that a lot of the very, very disciplinary-specific journals, where scientists spend most of their time, there is almost none of this in there. The journals of the American Chemical Society, where I published all of my academic papers, they don't have front matter at all and are unlikely to ever have that.

The part of science that has done this the best, I think, is in medicine. The reason for that is that medical journals write for two audiences. They write for medical scientists who read the research papers, but they also write for physicians who get a lot of the content from the front matter, what we call the editorials and the opinion pieces about other areas of science. So, I think, in the medical world, there's always been more of an emphasis on this in their journals. For science and nature, there is too. But for the really disciplinary journals of the American Chemical Society or the American Physical Society, you are not going to see a lot of this stuff. That's something that I guess we're kind of fighting to overcome. 

Carmelina Contarino: I know that in a lot of the medical courses, the medical curricula include medical humanities as part of their coursework. I'll give a shout out to the new medical humanities research lab at the University of Melbourne in the HPS program. 

Samara Greenwood: Also, one thing I have heard about - at conferences, so, a very specific chemistry conference for example, having a speaker come in to talk about HPS as it relates to the discipline can be a really nice addition. That's another avenue where there can be crossover. 

Holden Thorp: That's a great idea. Of course, the American Chemical Society, for example, does have a history of chemistry section. Whether everybody's going over there in the midst of all their technical talks, I think that is probably hit or miss.

Samara Greenwood: Maybe having a headline speaker, that everyone attends? 

Final question. We know of many examples of excellent HPS teaching across science and humanities program, like we do here at the University of Melbourne, but we always love to hear about more. So, we were interested to know what examples you have come across of HPS being well integrated into science education. 

Holden Thorp: I wish I had a good one. Boy, you'd sure like to see the philosophers and historians teaching the chemistry and biology students in undergrad. That's the goal.

I wish I knew of a really good example of that to give you, but I don't. 

Samara Greenwood: We find our history and philosophy subjects are very popular with the science students. They can do them as breadth subjects or as electives. We wish it was more core, of course. 

I have taught a lot of science students, and I know Carmelina has as well, and they get super enthusiastic. Because we have science and humanities students, as well as say landscape architecture students and commerce students, all in the same room - to have that discussion start between the students and to share expertise, whether it's technical or critical thinking or philosophical analysis, it's just such an exciting environment to have.

Holden Thorp: Yes, I'm teaching such a course at GW myself. It's listed in the chemistry department. It's a first-year seminar, so we are capped at 20 people. We do four chapters from Merchants of Doubt, and then we do things that are ripped from the headlines that all played out precisely the same way.

The students are all at the very beginning of college and their eyes are really opened about how to read news stories about science and how it plays out with politics and all that kind of thing. 

Their enthusiasm is my most tangible connection to what you're asking about. And it's something I enjoy doing every Monday night from five to seven thirty p. m. 

Samara Greenwood: Oh, that sounds wonderful. Thank you, Holden. 

Carmelina Contarino: Thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast, Holden. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you and I hope we'll get to do this again. 

Holden Thorp: Wonderful talking to you all, and thanks for all that you are doing.