To my esteemed colleague the Anti-Hero of Quiz Bowl and King of Color-correlated Socks & Shoes: <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> > I understand your frustration, but it must be remembered that all > science questions aren't pitched at scientists necessarily, but at > all players regardless of their fields of interest. In an ideal world > the scientist (who ostensibly has the most knowledge) should get the > tossup earliest, but I don't think science questions (or any > questions, regardless of the genre, really) should be approached with > the attitude that _only_ those persons in the field should get them. continued with: > I continue not to understand this position, and so far have never had > it explained such that I am completely enlightened. Why is "science > biography" bad? I have been told that this is because scientists > almost never are taught biography in their classes; even conceding > the point that all science questions are and ought to be written > solely for scientists (which I do not), I wonder how many musicians > are taught musical biography. Are music biographies then bad as well? <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Of course, science questions shouldn't be answerable only by scientists, and should not be approached with the attitude that only scientists should be able to answer them. But Seth's language belies an underlying assumption that there is some other way which includes science biography as a way of avoiding the problems of science inacessibilty. This assumption speaks to the difficulty that non-scientists have in learning theories and facts about science. Science is an inherently difficult subject with concepts requiring essentially the learning of new vocabularies to go with different fields. For example, the word "translation" has completely different connotations in biology vis-a-vis mathematics (or even literature for that matter). It would be a very difficult for masters of the mythology like Seth to understand the processes and proteins involved in DNA replication, whereas reading a book on the life and works of Erasmus would be much more accessible, and, I would venture, a much more efficient use of time. Thus, hard sciences are, and probably always shall be, the land of specialists - sorry, there's no way around it. Science biography is a way to eliminate problems of new vocabularies by using terminology accessible to all, regardless of background. It makes it so that facts and clue keywords are easier to learn and understand. It's much easier to remember that so and so climbed the top of a mountain as a hobby, graduated from so-and-so school in so-and-so year, and was mentored by so-and-so other famous person, because those facts are much easier to learn and understand. It is much harder to remember facts like what DNA helicase, what all the subunits of DNA polymerase do, etc. for the layman, primarily because there is no knowledge context in which to learn in. Science biography cheats the player with more science knowledge. Science biography is not science - it is history. Scientists don't learn about science biography, purely because its not important to understanding science, or at least not as important to understanding science as other things. To take Seth's question, "Are music biographies then bad as well?" Leaving aside the general issue of biographical questions, the answer is that for the many of the liberal arts, the person writing or composing, his situation, and his milieu has an essential impact on what he or she is writing or composing. In other words, the history is key to the person. This is not the case in the majority of science biography; whether or not Watson is an American or did a postdoctoral fellowship at wherever has nothing to do with how with Crick he discovered the structure of DNA, or anything about DNA itself. Feelings of marginalization aside *snicker*, there is a choice between a inaccessible subject and an accessible imbalance of subjects. Leaving aside the issues of specialization, why argue against science biography? 1. Biography questions, in general, are trivial, if only because many of the historical facts piled into questions are not salient to the the work, author, or idea. For science, it's doubly worse, because most of the time, those historical facts have *nothing* to do with the the work or idea. This is bad question writing to begin with. 2. Writers of science biography questions demonstrate a lack of understanding of the fundamentals of what is important about the scientist. If you really want to write a question on Hertzspruug, why not write a question on the Hertzsprung - Russell diagram? [Don't tell me its because we've heard H-R as an answer too many times.] This is also bad question writing, because you don't really understand or know the subject about which you're writing about. Dare I say it, writers of science biography are too lazy to go out and learn it before writing it. I think the solution to accessibilty is *not* that we should write more questions with vocabularies accessible to all like science biography, but to write science questions written in such a way to make it possible for non-scientists to pick up clue keywords better. Writers should write questions with an eye of minimizing the scientific equivalent of legalise, especially towards the end of tossups [this doesn't mean history giveaways!]. Players proficient any of the sciences should educate others about what key clues and keywords players should look for. An example from Science Masters 2002: (some clues are not *exactly correct*, but humor me for a bit) 7. Like adenosine, a secondary function of this molecule is to serve as a very fast-acting excitatory transmitter. Among its plethora of substrates are troponin in muscle, Ras and Rab proteins in vesicle transport, protein folding chaperones, and sodium/potassium transport channels. F0 / F1 proteins produce this molecule in the *electron transport chain*(, while magnesium chelation occurs during its *production in glycolysis*. FTP, name this *primary energy-storing molecule in biology*, consisting of *three phosphates attached to an adenosine* moiety. Ans: ATP or adenosine triphosphate Biologists would recognize the neurotransmitter function and wide variety of substrates in the first two sentences, but even folks who've taken a basic biology class would know that ATP is produced in the electron transport chain and especially glycolysis. Laymen would probably know that ATP is the primary energy molecule in biology. Students outside of biology should learn to recognize F0/F1 proteins as a clue keyword that should allow them to buzz in the middle of the question. On the other hand writers should also note that word usage like moiety, magnesium chelation [which might be placed earlier] are examples of terminology that can only serve as confusers, and should be changed. Jason Paik Quiz Bowl Ronin paik at uab dot edu
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