Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Science

Do we need a "History" section in scientific articles ?

Quite a few scientific articles contain a history section. I don't know if I'm the only one, but I tend to skip them when reading an article. I prefer to have the historic reference embedded in the text: it makes the reading more enjoyable. What do you think ? Pcarbonn 20:08, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

History and ordering issues

Documenting the history of a scientific concept is certainly quite valuable, and eventually, the encyclopedia should and no doubt will grow to do that for pretty much everything. Some people will be coming to the article looking to find out who forumlated a particular theory or who discovered a particular somethingorother. Most people will probably be trying to understand the concept or phenomenon itself. Some of them may be technical folk, but many will be members of the general public. Which is why it's good to put the part of the article accessible to the general public first - otherwise, they'll immediately be either confused or bored, and most likely stop reading.

By the way, the introduction to Temperature does not do a good job of engaging the part of the public that doesn't really know much about it. It needs to start with an explanation that heat is related to the vibration of atoms, and move on from there. (The article certainly has lots of useful facts, though, yay.)

I fully agree that the Temperature article needs improvement. I have now clarified what we mean by "article in focus". Pcarbonn 14:41, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The dangers of presenting the history of a scientific concept come in when you start to talk about theories that we know are no longer true. It's important not to confuse the lay reader between the current theory and those known to be false or incomplete. Presenting the current theory as the logical conclusion to a train of improvements on pre-existing theories is often confusing to the novice and historically inaccurate. (I assume you've all read Thomas Kuhn's *Structure of Scientific Revolutions*.) Even diving into the genesis of the most-recent theory can be a little misleading because often there have been many refinements since the original discovery. For example, it took hundreds of years to work out all the implications of Newton's laws, and the notation and vocabulary has changed a lot over that time.

I fully agree that the history of science is not made of a continuous sequence of logical improvements, and we have to avoid giving that impression. I recommend instead to relate the theory/experiment/... to previous and subsequent ones so that the reader understand its significance and limitations. Pcarbonn 14:41, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)

On the other hand, presenting the history of a simple scientific instrument, like a barometer, might be good to do up front. Primitive versions of instruments are often simpler and can be used to more clearly show how they work.

Reference articles on scientific topics might best leave history to separate articles altogether. Biographies also require a completely different treatment.

So it seems to me that if we are going to define standardized formats for articles, several different layouts are needed, for different types of article. And I guess this project only focuses on archetypes applicable across all the sciences, not specific things like how to do an article on a particular species or element or fundamental particle.

As for coming up with a standardized format for theories, I like the order in [Quantum mechanics]. Public-friendly explanation first, followed by applications (the next-most interesting section to the lay public, most likely). The public-friendly explanation should include things like relationships to other theories, limitations, and whether or not the theory is known to be incomplete (like Newton's laws, QM or relativity). Brief mention might be made of the primary contributors to the theory and *contemporary* competing schools of thought, if any. After that, I would put the full-blown technical information, followed by a proper history which discusses any previous, defunct theories, and fuller coverage of how the modern theory came to be. For longer pieces, I recommend separating the history section into a separate article. This would also help categorize articles more cleanly, considering they'll be the "science" category hierarchy, the "history" hierarchy, the "French science of the 1800s" category, etc.

Please update the proposed structure directly in the article as you see fit.Pcarbonn 14:41, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)

--Beland 05:21, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Accuracy

In corresponding with the fellow who scanned Image:Boyle'sSelfFlowingFlask.png which replaced the Monty Hall image in the front-page article Paradox, he complained of inaccuracies in articles and a lack of quality control. (He is a professor and has used correcting errors in particular articles as class projects, so he's a part of the QC system.) He cited twelve errors in the short article on centrifugal force, though I would guess they were fixed by his class or someone else since his count. I would posit that we could use a strong emphasis on accuracy in scientific articles. -- ke4roh 03:09, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)

IUPAC spelling policy

I would like to propose that using the IUPAC standard names become policy on science related articles. There seems to be a consensus in preference to them, as I have been changing archaic spellings for some time with no objections.

The IUPAC currently recommends:

• Aluminium instead of aluminum
• Caesium instead of cesium
• Sulfur instead of sulphur

Reference

PDF HTML

Darrien 05:12, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)

No objections here. In Australia, the 'proper' spelling is sulphur, but even textbooks don't use that much any more - sulfur is much more common. - Mark 07:40, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Science might be a better place to propose this, and if it is accepted, a note should be made under the spelling spection of the Wikipedia:Manual of Style. Angela. 21:43, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC) [was originally at Wikipedia talk:Policies and guidelines]

"Caesium" and "aluminium" look horribly wrong to my American eyes, but who can argue with standardization. My only request would be that any major alternative spellings be listed on the respective article pages, to eliminate any confusion that these weird new things aren't actually the good old-fashioned elements we know and love. -- Beland 03:06, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Question on "Proposed structure of articles"

Regarding, "the first part of article should be targeted to the general public, while the second part should be targeted to the scientifically inclined," and, "start with 2 or 3 paragraphs for the general public, using daily life examples", shouldn't the whole article be useful to the general public? Hyacinth 22:11, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I would think that some theoretical explanations could not be understood by the general public because of the mathematical concepts they are based on (differentials, for example). Yet, other people will be very interested to see those mathematical formulations. Pcarbonn 05:56, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Pcarbonn. IMO the standard should be "something for everybody", not "everything for everybody". The later would be a low standard, with the possible negative side-effect of driving away readers that might otherwise become usefull editors--Nabla 12:06, 2004 Aug 11 (UTC)

I agree too, I'd like to see articles progrssively technical as they go on so that people can stop reading at their own comfort levels, yet everyone get something out of the page. theresa knott 20:44, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Applying format to Brain

The proposed format doesn't really fit brain, and, I'm afraid, other biology articles very well. In general I agree with most of the proposals PCarbon put on the brain to-do list, but "Brains on Earth" is just awkward and inexact as a subheading. Can anyone think up a similar term that would be better? Some of the other subheadings would be a bit weak: "in everyday life" and "in industry" won't have a whole lot - maybe one should be changed to "in medicine." I'm posting this here rather than on the Brain:talk page since it will probably be applicable to other biology-related topics. Sayeth 20:40, Sep 3, 2004 (UTC)