Thanks for taking the time to check out the paper and for sending us your thoughts.
I really like the examples of building new instruments and figuring out how that works versus creating something that’s a refinement of an existing instrument. I think these seem very illustrative of early stage science.
My guess is that the process you were using to work out how your forked brass works, feels similar to how it might feel to be conducting early stage science. One thing that stood out to me was that someone else trying to replicate the instrument found, if I understood this correctly, they could only do so with much longer tubes. That person then theorised that perhaps the mouth and diaphragm of the person playing the instrument have an effect. This is reminiscent of the problems with Galileo’s telescope and the difference in people’s eyesight.
Another thought this example gave me is how video can play a big part in today’s early stage science, in the same way, that demonstrations did in the past. It’s much easier to demonstrate to a wide audience that you really can make the sounds you claim with the instrument you’re describing if they can watch a video of it. If all people had was a description of what you had built, but they couldn’t create the same sound on a replica instrument, they might have been more sceptical. Being able to replicate the experiment will matter more in areas where the claims made are further outside of people’s current expectations. “I can play these notes with this instrument” is probably less unexpected than “Jupiter has satellites we hadn’t seen before and I can see them with this new contraption”. This is outside of the scope of our research, it’s just a thought prompted by the example.
I’ve asked my colleagues to provide an answer to your questions about how controversial the claim that early stage science works differently is and whether it seems likely that there would still be early stage science today. I believe Mindy will add a comment about that soon. We’ll also amend the typo, thanks for pointing that out!
Hi Jeff,
Thanks for taking the time to check out the paper and for sending us your thoughts.
I really like the examples of building new instruments and figuring out how that works versus creating something that’s a refinement of an existing instrument. I think these seem very illustrative of early stage science.
My guess is that the process you were using to work out how your forked brass works, feels similar to how it might feel to be conducting early stage science. One thing that stood out to me was that someone else trying to replicate the instrument found, if I understood this correctly, they could only do so with much longer tubes. That person then theorised that perhaps the mouth and diaphragm of the person playing the instrument have an effect. This is reminiscent of the problems with Galileo’s telescope and the difference in people’s eyesight.
Another thought this example gave me is how video can play a big part in today’s early stage science, in the same way, that demonstrations did in the past. It’s much easier to demonstrate to a wide audience that you really can make the sounds you claim with the instrument you’re describing if they can watch a video of it. If all people had was a description of what you had built, but they couldn’t create the same sound on a replica instrument, they might have been more sceptical. Being able to replicate the experiment will matter more in areas where the claims made are further outside of people’s current expectations. “I can play these notes with this instrument” is probably less unexpected than “Jupiter has satellites we hadn’t seen before and I can see them with this new contraption”. This is outside of the scope of our research, it’s just a thought prompted by the example.
I’ve asked my colleagues to provide an answer to your questions about how controversial the claim that early stage science works differently is and whether it seems likely that there would still be early stage science today. I believe Mindy will add a comment about that soon. We’ll also amend the typo, thanks for pointing that out!