{"id":153,"date":"2010-05-04T10:14:34","date_gmt":"2010-05-04T08:14:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rensecorten.dds.nl\/?p=153"},"modified":"2010-05-04T10:28:13","modified_gmt":"2010-05-04T08:28:13","slug":"the-amazing-science-of-the-hidden-side-of-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rensecorten.org\/index.php\/2010\/05\/the-amazing-science-of-the-hidden-side-of-everything\/","title":{"rendered":"The amazing science of the hidden side of everything"},"content":{"rendered":"

Albert-L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Barab\u00e1si’s new book “Bursts<\/a>” is out,\u00a0 and according to its subtitle it’s about\u00a0 “The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do”. I really do admire Barab\u00e1si’s scientific work, and I really appreciate his efforts to make it available to a wider audience, but why do popular science books so often have to have these extremely sweeping subtitles? Barab\u00e1si is certainly not the only one: we’ve seen books that claim to reveal to us the Hidden Side of Everything<\/a>, how mass Collaboration Changes Everything<\/a>, how Disruptive Innovation will Change the Way the World Learns<\/a>, or how [social networks] Shape Our Lives<\/a>. From journalists we would perhaps expect such hyperboles, but what happened to academic nuance and modesty? Unless Barab\u00e1si really means it, I think this habit would lead to skepticism among to general public about scientific claims, and a devaluation of words like “everything” or “explain.” I mean, if Bursts’<\/em> subtitle is true, we could as well stop doing research in social science…<\/p>\n

(Disclaimer: I haven’t actually read Barab\u00e1si’s book yet, so I cannot exclude the possibility that it actually does<\/em> explain the patterns of everything we do.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Albert-L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Barab\u00e1si’s new book “Bursts” is out,\u00a0 and according to its subtitle it’s about\u00a0 “The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do”. I really do admire Barab\u00e1si’s scientific work, and I really appreciate…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rensecorten.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rensecorten.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rensecorten.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rensecorten.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rensecorten.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.rensecorten.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":160,"href":"http:\/\/www.rensecorten.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions\/160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rensecorten.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rensecorten.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rensecorten.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}