RSS Feed
Facebook
Twitter
Google+Since at least McLean v. Arkansas in 1981, Creationists — Christian fundamentalists who oppose evolution — have turned, intriguingly, to philosophy of science to try to justify the inclusion of Creationism alongside evolution in science classrooms.
science
Should mandatory open access be extended to all federally funded research?
A consortium of research institutions is lobbying to extend the NIH open-access policy to other federally funded research.
Causation, faith, and intelligent design
There is a philosophical thesis (attributed jointly to Pierre Duhem and Willard Quine) that, when simplified, explains how a given set of facts can produce more than one apparently true conclusion: essentially, different background assumptions lead to different conclusions. A related concept is known as underdetermination: that a given set of evidence can be explained by more than one–potentially conflicting–theory.
Some commonalities of pro- and anti-vaccination rhetoric
Within the context of the contemporary vaccination debate, neither side has a monopoly on a particular kind of argument.
My first look at historical shifts in anti-vaccination rhetoric
There is a long history of opposition to vaccination, opposition that dates back to its earliest uses in Europe and North America to fight smallpox. Opponents have made claims ranging from accusations that vaccination interferes with “God’s will” to claims that it actually contributed to the spread of smallpox instead of preventing it.
Science and Protestantism: why is evolution a target?
Why is it that modern Protestant evangelicals and fundamentalists seem to struggle with accepting science today? Why does this struggle emerge especially around biology, particularly evolution? And why have many evangelicals turned to approaches like “Intelligent Design,” which instead of replacing science with religion, instead seeks to co-opt science within terms acceptable to Protestant evangelicalism?
Does the funding of anti-climate change groups by Koch Industries invalidate their position?
A Greenpeace investigation has identified a little-known, privately owned US oil company as the paymaster of global warming sceptics in the US and Europe.
Is scientific peer review censorship?
Does scientific peer review constitute censorship? There is a sense in which peer reviewers — especially in the sciences — do act in a kind of censorial capacity.
Research preview: the historical case for vaccination
I’m researching how the scientific and medical community presented and developed itself such that the public moved from rioting to cooperation with vaccination.
Truth vs. relativism in science
In Science and Social Inequality by Sandra Harding, I found a discussion of claims to “absolute truth” in science (and the fear of relativism) particularly interesting.
Extending mandatory open access beyond the NIH
The NIH requires free, public access to research they fund. Now the Office of Science and Technology Policy is considering extending the policy to other federal agencies that fund academic research.
Scientists choose citations for "discriminatory" reasons
Researchers in Spain recently published an examination of scientific citation practices, and discovered the obvious: scientists don’t use citations purely for altruistic reasons.
Applying Robert Merton’s "The Normative Structure of Science" to the law
Robert Merton, in “The Normative Structure of Science” (from The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations), posits four sets of “institutional imperatives” that together “comprise the ethos of modern science”: universalism, communism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism. How well do these four sets of imperatives describe the “ethos of modern law”?
Law school vs. graduate school
Last May I finished my 3L year, and am now the proud possessor of a JD. On Thursday I began my first year program as a graduate student in the history of science. The experiences, perhaps unsurprisingly, have been strikingly different: law school is, ultimately, preparatory to practicing law as an attorney, and much of its emphasis is on tracking students in that direction. Graduate school in the humanities and social sciences, meanwhile, is about training future academics.
Researchers typically forbidden from sharing own work
Ed Kohler points us to a long, but fascinating blog post, by Stuart Shieber, a CS professor at Harvard, discussing the somewhat ridiculous copyright situation that many academics deal with in trying to promote their own works. I’ve heard similar … Continued
Disruption and change in publishing
Michael Nielsen wrote a stellar piece dealing with disruptive changes that doom old business models: newspapers and science publishers, to mention his examples. He does a particularly good job at explaining how this could happen even without anyone doing anything wrong or stupid.
