Peer Review: Anything You Can Do or, On the Origin of Data
created by Pony Cam
(Peer) Review by Martha Latham
Science is about 3 things: the collection, presentation and analysis of data.
Pony Cam have collected eleven pieces of data:
Ava Campbell
Bernard Peasley
Brona O'Brien
Claire Bird
Dominic Weintraub
Hugo Williams
Maria Ferguson
Mark Loveday
Sarah Kipnis
Sylvie Leber
William Strom
Pony Cam present their data like this:
Pony Cam analyse their data through semi-structured, live surveys of 300 questions selected at random and answered at random by a random group of attendees over 5 nights.
There are a series of blatant scientific errors in Pony Cam's dissertation.
Firstly, the split of data. “Young” and “Old” are not easily definable terms and Pony Cam does not attempt to define them. They simply expect the audience to "know" the difference between Young and Old and to "trust" that this classification is legitimate. This type of tacit demarcation is completely unscientific and leaves far too much room for personal bias through data obfuscation. The nail in the coffin for biased unscientificness here is the fact that the group known as Pony Cam and the data known as Young are one and the same.
Second, receiving consistent, verifiable and repeatable results is the backbone of good science. In an experiment where almost every variable is random, how are Pony Cam ever meant to achieve consistent, verifiable or repeatable results? Any data they manage to scrounge from the wooden floors of Chalice Hall is tainted by the very fact that nobody will ever be able to prove its validity. Even if someone managed to repeat the experiment exactly as Pony Cam has, the results would still be completely different. Why? Because as I was speaking to the data after the show, they revealed to me that they often answer the same question differently every time, for the sake of entertainment.
This is emblematic of the very problem with modern science. Modern science has become subject to the whim of the "feelings" of anti-factual artists.
Art is a stain on the truth.
Art lies. Art takes the truth, runs it through a mulcher and showers in its shredded husks. Art does not search for the truth so much as it twists the truth to search for Art. Art raises more questions than it cares to answer, and questions are not conducive to good science.
Good science is rigid and rigorous and repetitive and bland and boring.
Famous philosopher Karl Popper developed a methodology for determining good science. Popper called his methodology falsificationism. Popper says that good science begins with a statement that, unlike a question, can be proven false. The truth can then be found by looking at the negative space in between all of the falsehoods.
Take the example statement "all swans are white". Every swan I see that is white does not prove the statement true, because, the next day, I might see something ridiculous like a black swan. However, the fact that the statement has not yet been falsified, means that the statement can show me an outline of the truth: that most swans are white. Or, that all the swans on earth are white.
Falsification can never show me the exact truth. A statement can never be tru-ified because there is always a chance, however rare, that one special day I will stumble upon a black swan. I will update the community that the new statement is "all swans are black and white" and we will continue to build our body of knowledge out of a brick wall of false statements.
Good science is adversarial science.
I wonder why I have this pain in my belly? I wonder when it will go away? I wonder why it goes away? I wonder what pain is? I wonder why it hurts when a rock falls on my head? I wonder if a rock has fallen in my belly? I wonder why I bruise? I wonder why I bleed? I wonder why the bruises and the blood go away after a bit? I wonder what is death?
I wonder why plants don't have blood? I wonder why animals stop and go cold after a bit? I wonder why plants don't get slow and cold? I wonder why when I eat plants and cold animals the pain in my belly stops? I wonder if plants always have pains in their belly because they don't have mouths? I wonder why cold animals smell bad after a while? I wonder why cold animals taste bad after a while? I wonder why the pain in my belly is back? I wonder why animals seem to stop growing after a bit but plants keep growing forever, and if it's the same reason that they stop and go cold? I wonder why I've stopped growing? I wonder what is death?
I wonder what is the sun? I wonder where the sun comes from? I wonder where the sun goes? I wonder why the sun does not fall on my head and make me bruise and bleed? I wonder why apples fall down off trees? I wonder why it hurts less when an apple falls on my head than when a rock falls on my head? I wonder if the sun falling on my head would hurt more than a rock? I wonder why apples bruise when they hit my head? I wonder why apples bruise like I bruise but don't bleed like I bleed? I wonder why apples don't get slower and go cold like animals, but also don't get taller like plants? I wonder what is death?
I wonder if death is not something that happens but something that is happening? I wonder with every rising and falling of the sun, if a little more death is happening to the animals and me? I wonder if death isn't happening to the plants? I wonder how many more times I will see the sun rise? I wonder how many more times the plants will see the sun rise? I wonder how much more death needs to happen before I go cold? I wonder how much I'll have learned before I go cold?
Charles Darwin has collected 18 pieces of data:
1 Wren
7 Finches
5 Grosbeaks
5 Blackbirds
Charles Darwin presents the data like this:
Charles Darwin analyses this data by shooting. He shoots the data and then he takes it back home to England to show his friend, John Gould.
John Gould is very impressed. John Gould analyses the data by looking. John Gould looks at the data and he notices what is the same. He notices that they are not blackbirds, grosbeaks, wren and finches. He tells Charles Darwin that they are all finches.
This is wrong. These birds are not all finches. In fact, none of them are finches, or even closely related to finches. They will all much, much later be classified as an entirely different species called a Tanager. This is because the field of ornithology is constantly developing new classifications for birds as time goes on.
Charles Darwin has collected 18 pieces of data:
The Common cactus finch
The Genovesa cactus finch
The Española cactus finch
The Small ground finch
The Medium ground finch
The Large ground finch
The Genovesa ground finch
The Sharp-beaked ground finch
The Large tree finch
The Medium tree finch
The Small tree finch
The Vampire finch
The Woodpecker finch
The Mangrove finch
The Green warbler-finch
The Grey warbler-finch
The Cocos finch
The Vegetarian finch
Charles Darwin presents the data like this:
Charles Darwin analyses this data by thinking. He thinks about the finches (Tanagers). He thinks about how they have slightly differently shaped beaks. Some for digging in the ground to find delicious seeds, and others for finding tasty insects hidden in flowers and the holes of trees.
Charles Darwin goes for walks with John Gould and asks him what he thinks. John Gould thinks it's pretty interesting. Charles Darwin writes out his journals from his travels to be sold. He edits them to take out all the embarrassing passages. He doesn't write about the finches (Tanagers) very much. But he sits and thinks about them lots.
So Darwin rewrites.
He rewrites his journals to be sold again. This time, he writes about the finches (Tanagers) much more, about how it's almost like they've all been moulded and shaped to suit their specific eating needs. Many people say that this is because God made them like that. For now, this is a good enough reason. In the future, not as many people will believe in God so this will no longer be a good enough reason.
So Darwin rewrites.
Charles Darwin rewrites his journals into a book called On the Origin of Species. He writes about the finches (Tanagers) a lot. He explains how all the finches (Tanagers) likely came from the same South American ancestor and potentially through a process of natural selection they have evolved to suit different needs. Charles Darwin explains how maybe this is how every animal in the whole world came to look how it looks, with all of them starting from only a few animals to begin with. The God reason still seems pretty compelling and there's lots of evidence against Charles Darwin's theory.
So Darwin rewrites.
He rewrites his book in line with Popper's thinking, even though Popper won't be born for a long time, and instead of writing about all his shooting and thinking he makes a falsifiable statement. He says: "all animals have a shared ancestor". But all the animals look really different and there's no way to prove this statement false. So instead he says: "all animals have evolved to suit their needs". But evolution happens over a really long time, and it is hard to find evidence to support it with the tools available to Darwin. People start to say that Charles Darwin's ideas are stupid and that he smells.
So Darwin stops writing.
Perhaps good, falsifiable science is not good at all. Perhaps good science is just bad science that makes us think a bit harder about the world around us, even if it doesn't offer us anything definitive. Perhaps good science is just art in disguise?
Report card: Martha Latham
Subject: 10 Science
Grade: 73
Martha is a dedicated and diligent student when she chooses to be, as evidenced by her result in the Human Impacts speech. Sadly, she more often chooses to invest her time in social activities and in distracting her classmates. Martha needed to be suspended for a brief period this term due to an incident in my classroom whereby she removed a tap from one of the tables. She did this by pushing the tap back and forth, stressing the metal a little bit more each week until one day the tap snapped off. She described this as a personal experiment to find out how many times you had to bend a tap before it snapped off.
Martha regularly gets experiments wrong. While she seems to understand the theory quite well, she seems uninterested in showcasing this during lab work. Instead of replicating the experiments as intended, she often becomes distracted and will start doing her own experiments using the tools we had given her. This is detrimental to Martha’s own learning as well as that of the other students on her lab table.
While Martha obviously has a talent for the performing arts, she has chosen to study both Chemistry and Physics for her HSC and needs to take these subjects seriously if she hopes to study at university. Science is not as freeform as her acting classes, and Martha cannot continue to behave in her science classes the same way she does in her performing arts classes.
We have collected one piece of data:
Human output
We present the data like this:
We analyse this data by shooting/looking/touching/talking/smelling/asking 300 random questions to a random group of people over 5 nights and then doing it again in a remount the following year.
Was Anything You Can Do by Pony Cam good art? That's the question we're trying to answer. That's the point of a review. Instead, let's make it a statement.
Anything You Can Do by Pony Cam was good art.
This is a statement that is hard to prove false. Do we know what good art is? This is another question we'll need to make into a statement.
Good art is art done in a way that John Shand from the Sydney Morning Herald likes. If John Shand, who's sat down for one of Australia's largest newspapers for over 30 years to boil down context, style, emotion and thought into a star rating, says that something is good art, it is.
Another statement that is hard to prove false. John Shand is yet to review Anything You Can Do. Instead, we'll answer the question we started with. What is good science?
Good science is science that looks like all other science. Good science is science done in a way that is really boring to engage with. Good science lacks emotion, context, style and thought. Good science is science done in a way that John Shand from the Sydney Morning Herald would like.
It would seem that good science and good art are not really all that different from one another.
Science and Art both claim to be methods for exploring the truth. Science and Art have both been around since the beginnings of human society. Science has developed technologies and engineering marvels that have resulted in the betterment of all human society. Art has developed structures of thinking and understanding the world and the people in it. Both love the other very much, though they won't admit it and they're not really into PDA. Both think they can describe the other, and what makes them good and bad. Both are regularly wrong.
I think good art is actually science done poorly. I think good science is actually art done poorly.
Pony Cam have made some really, really bad science.
I got a bit lost when writing this review. At first, it was a satire about how art can't be expected to follow the rules of science and why that's a good thing. Then, it was a comment about the similarities between science and art. Then I just got lost and so started doing whatever I wanted.
There's a writer I love whose name is Paul. Paul Feyerabend. Paul writes about his distaste for the rules and regulations of science. Paul dislikes Karl Popper. I think Paul would dislike John Shand.
Paul says radical stuff all the time, like that most of quantum mechanics is actually dialectics and that all methodologies are bust and we should instead encourage people to do whatever they want. He thinks anything can be science or art. Paul thinks that people from all over the world didn't really seem to give a shit about creating a distinction between science and art and they all seemed to get on fine.
Anyway here's a photo of a conversation between my editor and I:
Production images by Wild Hardt, Sir Isaac Newton’s Apple-Tree by John Timbs (1869), Darwin’s “Finches” by John Gould, science lab by Cootamundra High School (2018), conversation screenshot by Martha Latham
Martha Latham hates art and thinks it should be defunded. She also thinks Myki inspectors should have guns. We really didn’t want her but we needed to hit our gender equity quotas. Find out which of those things are true @sad_goldfish.
This peer review was generously donated by Martha.
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