My initial letter to Wired:

Dear Editors,

In his article “Lost in the Details”, Jonah Lehrer presents a strong but somewhat misinformed view of modern
science. Yes: scientists do have a tendency to reductionism; we need it to develop understanding. Yes:
science is often portrayed in the press as searching for a holy grail; I guess it makes a better story. And yes:
scientific research has also been influenced by the now outdated cultural paradigm that views nature as a
clock. But today most scientists are well aware of the issues raised by Lehrer. In fact, there is a large, well-
established, and still rising interdisciplinary community that studies complexity, focusing precisely in the
emerging properties of that go beyond the sum of the parts. A number of physicists, mathematicians and
biologists have been developing for well over 30 years concepts like self-organization, systems biology, chaos,
emergence, self-organized criticality, and complex networks to address the “big picture” that Lehrer
describes. In fact, countering the examples in the article, several physicists working on complex systems (like
myself) have been analyzing for some time the collective properties of neuronal and genetic networks using
tools from non-equilibrium statistical physics and nonlinear dynamics.

Unfortunately, this approach sometimes does not receive the media attention it deserves, and I was
disappointed that your article still propagates an incomplete view of contemporary science. Perhaps a new
article describing recent breakthroughs and paradigm-changes resulting from the complex-systems approach
is in order. Let me know …you pay per word?

Cristián Huepe, Chicago IL

What they published in the July issue:

EDITORIAL CORRESPONDENCE rants@wired.eom

Shack's failure to evolve: "We all know
what happens to organisms that
can't adapt. Just this morning 1 was
feeding my dinosaur, thinking, 'Gee,
maybe I'll grata Dodo-bird burger
later.'"
to find a better way to distribute
money to scientists." At least a
communications prof had nice
things to say: (STedFriedman
offered, "Astute critique from
WIRED of scientific arrogance,"

Re: Overtyped Science

ReiRadioShack
Judging from the letters we received in response to
"The Lost Tribes of RadioShack" (issue 18.05), the
tinkerers who grew up at "the Shack" still view the
chain with deep affection. The store "was my tech
school as a kid," wrote Todd Urick of Davis, California,
But Kevin Tumlinson of Houston got cute about
Radio-
You know who doesn't like to read
criticism of scientists? Scientists.
The PhD crowd objected to Jonah
Lehrer's essay "Lost in the Details,"
which argued that scientists often
overhype new technology (Start,
issuelB.05). Cristian Huepe of
Chicago blamed journalists: "Yes,
science is often portrayed in the
press as searching for a holy grail; I
guess it makes a better story," On
Wired,com, MURKEL blamed the way
research gets funded: "If you want
to reduce the amount of hype, you'll
need
My new letter to Wired:

Dear Editors,

I was happy to see an excerpt from my letter on Jonah Lehrer’s essay “Lost in the Details” appear in the
last issue of Wired. However, I was quite disappointed when I realized that the main point of contention
was completely misrepresented and that the letters quoted are not even made available at wired.com.
Your response claims that Lehrer’s article “argued that scientists often overhype new technology” and
that my letter “blamed journalists” for this. This completely misses the point and either shows a lack or
reading comprehension or tries to hide the shortcomings of the original piece. Indeed, I remind you that
its title was “Lost in the Details – How breaking everything down to particles blinds scientists to the big
picture.” Its main point was not to discuss the overhyping of new technology, but to claim that “the
mistake of science is to pretend everything is a clock when the world is more like a cloud.” This is what
prompted my letter, the fact that Lehrer did not seem to know about the large and active community of
scientists working on complex systems, whose main concern is precisely to look at the universe as
“clouds” and not “clocks”. Unfortunately, none of this was presented to your readers when quoting my
letter… so what is the point of your Editorial Correspondence section?
I still enjoy your magazine, but I now realize I can’t really trust its science news. I guess I’ll continue to
trust my “PhD crowd” colleagues, which are actually bound to argue rigorously, based on published
arguments, and not to hide these when convenient.
Cristián Huepe, Chicago IL