10,000 hours and storytelling

We seem to love stories.  They pull at our emotions, inspire and awe us, and even create and perpetuate belief structures.  A good story can be a very powerful tool and it need not be true.  With entertainment we realize that we're enjoying fantasy and are cautious as to how deeply be believe the narrative, but a good story teller can spin a compelling tale that is not factual and cause people to fall for it.   

Science, as it is communicated these days, has a natural disadvantage. Few people are trained to understand current scientific results or how science work.  When scientists write or speak to a general audience there is often a mismatch that often renders the subject dry and boring and even unaccessible.  This is a shame as many of the underlying concepts are simple and even beautiful.  Science is not a set of fixed "truths" that are written down somewhere and need to be memorized, but rather is a great hunt for natural truth that is often much stranger than anything we could dream up on our own.  It is much more dynamic and richer than storytelling - the problem is that is difficult to communicate.

I've been fortunate enough to have time working with a movie company that is expert at the art of story telling and have been observing their techniques. They realize what they are doing is only for entertainment and they aren't trying to fool anyone, but one wonders how some of these tools might be applied to engage the imaginations of people and make them more curious and inquisitive.  

A few scientists are skilled public communicators - Carl Sagan was one of the first public voices and Neil deGrasse Tyson is following that path.  If you are interested in this type of communication consider reading Don't Be Such a Scientist by Randy Olson.  I don't agree with everything he says, but it is an eye opener to those of us who are used to communicating what we do to our peers.  Another resource to study are a few excellent popular shows that communicate real science.¹  Sadly there isn't enough of this and until recently there was little incentive for working scientists to communicate directly to the public.

Colleen and I have been trying to apply some of the techniques in our energy primer - it is not clear if we will be successful, but the goal is to maintain enough accuracy and clarity of ideas while being a bit entertaining - hopefully just enough to spark a bit of imagination.  A tall order indeed

But back to the post's title...

Recently I saw another reference to the need to practice a field for 10,000 hours in order to become an expert.  The concept was popularized by an author who happens to be a skilled and entertaining story teller, but I find much of what he writes to be terribly frustrating.  He has a tendency to cherry-pick rather obscure and weak studies to support a fundamentally flawed thesis and his books are widely read resulting in the propagation of flimsy ideas.  

The core study used to support the 10,000 hours is necessary for expertise idea turns out to be flawed and discredited.  In the past week an excellent blog on the Science of Sport published a two part article (part 1 and part 2) that tackles the genes vs training argument in sport and the author has a nice introductory take down of the 10,000 hour myth.  The article is a nice illustration of some thinking that goes past accepting story telling and getting into some of the deeper issues.²

Another myth that keeps coming up is the relationship between height and earning power.  Anecdotally this seems true - after all, many business leaders tend to be tall. But it turns out some of the studies have some deep flaws and don't look at deeper issues and many have been misreported by the press.

A friend became very interested in these studies and spent some time reading them more critically.  Jheri is working her way through an undergraduate degree, but has a beautiful natural curiosity and skepticism.  She noted some serious sampling problems with some of the studies as well as mistakenly linking correlation with causation. Sometimes the later mistake was made - and amplified - by the press who misread the work.  Correlation does not imply causation and making that link is at the root of much of pseudoscience.

Jheri recommended a book that has a nice beginner's guide on critical thinking.  John Schwartz is a New York Times science and legal reporter who penned a book aimed at teenagers who are struggling with being somehow "different" and trying to fit in with the crowd.  His technique is to illustrate his points with his own story as a shorter than average male.  One of the chapters focuses on critical thinking and I would recommend it as a first step in the subject.  If you know a teenager who is a bit different (or thinks they are), buy them the book but read it yourself first.  Short: Walking Tall When You're Not Tall At All ..  A client of mine was bemoaning the fact that many of her staff were weak when it came to critical thinking and I gave the book to her.  She was delighted.

This type of informed skepticism and willingness to go in deeper is an essential skill for information workers.  Adding staff who have solid expertise in the natural sciences to business teams is a great way to sort through the mine fields.  At the very least anyone working with information should have a basic understanding of logic, statistics and probability.  

This is a very important area and I suspect I'll revisit it frequently - there are so many areas where critical thinking and skepticism is necessary.  

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¹ Oddly enough some of the best science programs are on the radio.  There is great focus on mental imagery and that may be important to draw in the audience.  My favorite is Quirks and Quarks - heard weekly on CBC Radio and over the Internet and as a podcast.  Other excellent programs include Science Friday and Science Talk.  RadioLab is an example of great story telling, often on scientific subjects.  These shows can't be very deep, but they can communicate the excitement and beauty of the subject and frequently show current scientific thought.

² Elite level performance in sport often ties body type to the sport. While this is frequently not true at amateur and K-12 sports, the advantage of certain body types becomes apparent when both skill and physical gifts are necessary.  

Most of us are far from elite athletes and I believe it is important to enjoy whatever sport you participate in and doubly important for children, but there is a level where gymnasts need to have low moments of inertia - they need to be short, and basketball players need to be tall.  It is possible to have a star basketball player in high school who is short, but the chances of finding someone under six feet - or six foot six - as an NBA center are vanishingly small. 

There are differences in other sports.  Distance runners tend not to be tall and the same is true for cyclists.  Swimmers tend to have long torsos, short legs and very long arms.  and so on ...   It would be fascinating to create an average silhouette for the medal winners in each Olympic sport and arrange them on a long chart by height - gymnasts on one end and basketball players on the other.

 

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The first image was from a presentation of COBE mission results where the observed microwave background glow of the Universe was found to nearly perfectly fit the idea that the Universe was initially very hot everywhere.  The error bars are too small to draw and this is one of the most startling beautiful examples of experimental results agreeing with theory.  The comic strip xkcd has a nice tshirt, which is fun to wear if you visit Caltech.  The experiment was so important that the principals were sprinkled with Swedish holy water in 2006

Of course the issue is how to communicate the beauty of nature and the experiment to the public - the only people who "get" this graph immediately are the physics and astrophysics set.

The second image shows two beach volleyball players separated in height by over a foot (6'7 and 5'6).  It turns out winning female beach volleyball teams average close to six feet tall.  Only having two players means there is a need for height and speed - six feet is a good compromise.  In this case the taller player (Colleen) has a lot of height, but is slow to accelerate due to her long moments of inertia.  The shorter player lacks height and reach at the net - which is bad for blocking, but is wicked fast - a nationally ranked sprinter.  There are multiple paths to putting together a team.

 

 

 

 

Comments

[jheri]

This is so true and I have to thank you for the all of your help and mentoring. It shocks me how many people hear something and agree without thinking. There is a lot of folklore in my business which is probably wrong and I have seen some terrible decisions based on it. And then there are disciplines that touch all of us. Health and nutrition. People do some very silly things that have about as much validity as astrology. Very few seem to think about the basics and if they are still correct - or if they ever were.