Musgrave’s identification of dangerous ideas is correct, but his metaphor risks entrenching the fundamental problem: the (inevitable) weaponization of “scientific objectivity.”
They Blinded Them With Science
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science
“Other scientists agree, at least when quoted selectively.”
Ouch. This hurts. Satire by Alan Dove (via): In a groundbreaking new study, scientists at Some University have discovered that a single molecule may drive people to perform that complex behavior...
A Brief Note on the Latest Jared Diamond Controversy
Jordan Ellenberg finds Razib Khan's rant against Jared Diamond's detractors off target. Look, I don't for a minute think that a good deal of the objection to Diamond is anything other than...
Starlicious
Via Ari Kohen, a visualization of the nearest 100,000 stars in Sol's neighborhood. Sometimes blogs should just share cool stuff, no? Can't leave all that stuff to other social-media platforms.
More science Posts
Crossing borders in the sciences
In an essay in this month's Scientific American, Alice Gast, president of Lehigh University, makes a case for the benefits of international collaboration in the sciences:It has become cliche that great discoveries come from interdisciplinary thinking... [F]ew realize how much science is energized when team members have different cultural approaches to problem solving. International diversity is just as important as diversity of discipline. She notes that years ago when she began a collaboration with researchers in Mexico and Germany, the "approaches seemed irreconcilable:"...my Mexican...
Book Blegging
Loyal Duck readers, I was hoping you might be able to help me out. Do you have any recommendations for books about the inventive ways that people (scientists, designers, business folk, etc) have evaluated hard to test subjects? I am looking for something that is less about methodology, per se, and more about testing ideas in a practical way where either the environment or subject matter makes testing difficult (thinking here of astrophysics, for example). I am not looking for something that looks at the subject from a philosophical standpoint, but is more of a collection of examples that...
The Danger of Data without Theory
I came across this Chris Anderson piece from a 2008 issue of Wired via Ana Andjelic. Anderson argues that in the era of Big Data we no longer need to rely on theory and the scientific method to achieve advances in knowledge:Google's founding philosophy is that we don't know why this page is better than that one: If the statistics of incoming links say it is, that's good enough. No semantic or causal analysis is required. That's why Google can translate languages without actually "knowing" them (given equal corpus data, Google can translate Klingon into Farsi as easily as it can translate...
“Girls Don’t Do Math Past Algebra”
Today, a group of articles in the Washington Post, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the New York Times, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and other newspapers, comment on the AAUW (American Association of University Women) report which will be webcast this Thursday. These articles reminded me of a teacher that I'd had when I was young, who, despite my stellar performances in math courses, told me that girls don't do, or need to do, math past algebra. Apparently, I am not alone, as the report lets us know that 40% of women who are now in the surveyed "STEM" (science and engineering) fields were...
Is IR Really a Science? Let’s Find Out
Henry Farrell at Crooked Timber alerted me to the fact that 3 Quarks Daily has instituted a quarterly award for the best blog post in the areas of science, politics, arts and literature, and philosophy. Starting next month, the prizes will be awarded every year on the two solstices and the two equinoxes. So, we will announce the winner of the science prize on June 21, the arts and literature prize on September 22, the politics prize on December 21, and the philosophy prize on March 20, 2010.About a month before the prize is to be announced we will solicit nominations of blog entries from our...
I’ll say…
"'Big Bang' Experiment Passes Key TestsLet's see.... No non-metaphorical black holes in Europe yet.Yay!Let's celebrate with some some xkcd....