Juries and scientific expertise
In the American system (and, perhaps to a lesser extent, in all countries following the Anglo-American legal approach), science and scientific evidence emerges and is interpreted through the actions of the parties involved. Expert witnesses testify for a particular side, and are employed by a particular side.
Implications of the AP licensing scheme
So, the AP has in the past made a big deal about holding on to the rights to every tiny little bit of what they right (essentially denying that fair use even exists). Who better than those snarky peeps at Woot to call them on the implications of such a scheme?
The new world of self-publishing: it's not just for vanity anymore!
It’s finally possible – although still hardly likely – to skip the traditional publishers altogether, publishing yourself (via Amazon, for example), and get discovered by fans directly.
Was medieval Islamic culture inhospitable to science?
Myth #4 in Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion is Syed Nomanul Haq’s article entitled “That Medieval Islamic Culture was Inhospitable to Science.”
Modern Islam and science: an article by Seyyed Hossein Nasr
In “Islam and Science,” an article written for the Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science, Nasr attempts to give a broad overview of the relationship of Islam to modern science and technology. He makes some key points regarding to criticism of Western science from an Islamic point a view.
Copyright and the public domain
Randy Picker has a fascinating post on the Faculty Blog of the University of Chicago’s law school of the copyright status of scans (by Google, for example) of public domain works. Does the effort of digitizing the work qualify as enough original effort to create a new copyright?
Popper, Kuhn, and Creationism
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.
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.
RSS Feed
click on x to hide
