Gravity's Ghost and Big Dog: Scientific Discovery and Social Analysis in the Twenty-First Century

by Harry Collins

Gravity’s Ghost and Big Dog brings to life science’s efforts to detect cosmic gravitational waves. These ripples in space-time are predicted by general relativity, and their discovery will not only demonstrate the truth of Einstein’s theories but also transform astronomy. Although no gravitational wave has ever been directly detected, the previous five years have been an especially exciting period in the field. Here sociologist Harry Collins offers readers an unprecedented view of gravitational wave research and explains what it means for an analyst to do work of this kind.

           

Collins was embedded with the gravitational wave physicists as they confronted two possible discoveries—“Big Dog,” fully analyzed in this volume for the first time, and the “Equinox Event,” which was first chronicled by Collins in Gravity’s Ghost . Collins records the agonizing arguments that arose as the scientists worked out what they had seen and how to present it to the world, along the way demonstrating how even the most statistical of sciences rest on social and philosophical choices. Gravity’s Ghost and Big Dog draws on nearly fifty years of fieldwork observing scientists at the American Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory and elsewhere around the world to offer an inspired commentary on the place of science in society today.

Genres: Science

389 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2013

Reviews

[Betsy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book for a very specialized audience. It requires at least a layman's understanding of gravitational physics, a somewhat greater understanding of statistical methods and in interest in sociology. The book is written by a sociologist about the process a large group of physicists went through in order to determine if signals received from LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) constituted strong enough evidence to claim the discovery of gravitational waves. Although the book is nominally about physics, it is actually more about statistics, people's interpretation of the statistics and the way large groups of people come to a consensus.

I found the discussion of the common fallacies in statistical analysis interesting, particularly the file drawer problem. That is, the problem that studies that show no result are not published whereas those that show interesting results are. This leads to a perception that interesting results (e.g. cold fusion) appear to be more significant than they are. Because of this, the scientists using LIGO were much more conservative about claiming positive results than they might otherwise have been.

There were other topics that I found fascinating, including the author's discussion of the nature of how science is perceived by the scientist, by the public and by the sociologist studying the scientist. I would love to take a course from the author. Unfortunately he teaches at Cardiff University in Britain and probably just advanced grad students at that.

I would have given this book a star rating but I found it overlong and somewhat repetitive in places. Highly recommended if you fit the target audience.

[Kevin Orrman-Rossiter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review on its way.