Layers and layers of knowledge systems

Jared Diamond
Photo: TOM JOHNSON
BLACK STAR/NEWSCOM

Science magazine has an article focusing on a suit brought against Jarad Diamond, a well known scientist who has also gained a following for his non-fiction writing. The suit apparently charges that he wrote untrue and damaging things about people he portrayed in a New Yorker article as involved in a blood feud in New Guinea. I was caught by this statement:

Three worlds collide in this case. First is the world of science, specifically anthropology, which uses fieldwork and scientific methodology to study human cultures. Next is the craft of journalism, with its own set of ethics and practices aimed at reaching the general public. Finally, there is Papua New Guinea, a young nation still struggling to integrate many hundreds of tribes and clans into a modern state.

Actually, I see two more worlds colliding: the world of courts, judges, lawyers and expert witnesses, and the world of science journalism (as opposed to popular journalism) as Science reporters seek to explain the situation to an audience composed mainly of professional scientists, very few of whom are ethnologists.

The point is, each of these worlds has its own processes for validating information, its own standards for the transmission of assertions, and its own culture of knowledge.

I assume that folk in New Guinea, like the folk in my ancestor's Ireland, may feel that a good story is worth telling even if it differs substantially from recalled facts if the deviations are enough fun. For an ethnologist, verbal behavior is worth recording, and it is interesting what and how an informant tells a story; of course the interpretation of the story is a different thing -- interpretation rather than observation -- explaining observation in terms of theory. A serious news article should seek to provide accurate accounts of events in a timely fashion. The legal system is involved in ascertaining blame and levying penalties in accordance with blame. Science presumably is seeking to accurately portray the events of the "meta story" (the story about Diamond's New Guinea story) interpreting its importance for the scientific community.

Makes me want to recur to Stephen Colbert's concept of "truthiness".