I’m a believer in wishful thinking, in the power of our hopes to become self-fulfilling. I even believe that war is going to end! But at some point, if wishful thinking diverges too sharply from what we can reasonably expect from reality, it morphs into denial or delusion. David Deutsch’s hope that science will keep [...]

Does science sometimes move too fast for own good? Or anyone’s good? Do scientists, in their eagerness for fame, fortune, promotions and tenure, rush results into print? Tout them too aggressively? Do they make mistakes? Exaggerate? Cut corners? Even commit outright fraud? Do journals publish articles that should have been buried? Do journalists like me [...]

Yudhijit Bhattacharjee has an excellent article in the most recent New York Times Magazine (published April 26, 2013) on disgraced Dutch social psychologist Diederik Stapel. Why is Stapel disgraced? At the last count at Retraction Watch, 54 53 of his scientific publications have been retracted, owing to the fact that the results reported in those [...]

While modern science seems committed to the idea that seeking verifiable facts that are accessible to anyone is a good strategy for building a reliable picture of the world as it really is, historically, these two ideas have not always gone together. Peter Machamer describes a historical moment when these two senses of objectivity were [...]

In the last post, we talked about objectivity as a scientific ideal aimed at building a reliable picture of what the world is actually like. We also noted that this goal travels closely with the notion of objectivity as what anyone applying the appropriate methodology could see. But, as we saw, it takes a great [...]

In trying to figure out what ethics ought to guide scientists in their activities, we’re really asking a question about what values scientists are committed to. Arguably, something that a scientist values may not be valued as much (if at all) by the average person in that scientist’s society. Objectivity is a value – perhaps [...]

At Context and Variation, Kate Clancy has posted some advice for researchers in evolutionary psychology who want to build reliable knowledge about the phenomena they’re trying to study. This advice, of course, is prompted in part by methodology that is not so good for scientific knowledge-building. Kate writes: The biggest problem, to my mind, is [...]

In my blogging career (and even before), I’ve spent a fair bit of time bemoaning the low level of scientific education/literacy/competence among the American public. Indeed, I have expressed the unpopular opinion that all college students ought to do the equivalent of a minor in some particular science as one of their graduation requirements. I [...]

Last week, we considered whether good science has more to do with what you do or with what you believe, exploring this issue using the case of Marcus Ross, a Ph.D. geoscientist and young earth creationist. Dr. Ross sent me a response to this post via email. With his permission, I’m sharing that email here: [...]

If the question posed in the title of the post seems to you to have an obvious answer, sit tight while I offer a situation in which it might be less obvious. We recently discussed philosopher Karl Popper’s efforts to find the line of demarcation between science and pseudo-science. In that discussion, one of the [...]

Recently, we’ve been discussing strategies for distinguishing sound science from attractively packaged snake-oil. It’s worth noting that a fair number of scientists (and of non-scientists who are reasonably science-literate) are of the view that this is not a hard call to make — that astrology, alternative therapies, ESP, and the other usual suspects fall on [...]

Part of the appeal of science is that it’s a methodical quest for a reliable picture of how our world works. Creativity and insight is crucial at various junctures in this quest, but careful work and clear reasoning does much of the heavy lifting. Among other things, this means that the grade-schooler’s ambition to be [...]

Recently I read a comment by a leading chemist in which he said that in chemistry, intuition is much more important than in physics. This is a curious comment since intuition is one of those things which is hard to define but which most people who play the game appreciate when they see it. It [...]

If we were omniscient and had infinitely fast and perfect computers, perhaps we could use quantum mechanics to explain chemistry, biology, economics and psychology. In reality, no amount of quantum mechanical theorizing can explain how molecular aggregates coalesce to give rise to self-replicating assemblies, let alone how these assemblies acquire the capacity for consciousness, introspection [...]

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, biologist E. O. Wilson asks if math is necessary for doing great science. At first glance the question seems rather pointless and the answer trivial; we can easily name dozens of Nobel Prize winners whose work was not mathematical at all. Most top chemists and biomedical researchers have little [...]

The mathematician Hermann Weyl who made many diverse contributions to his discipline once made the startling assertion that whenever he had to choose between truth and beauty in his works, he usually chose beauty. Weyl was working at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton whose seal embodies both beauty and truth. Mathematicians and theoretical [...]

The philosopher and writer Jim Holt who has written the sparkling new book “Why Does The World Exist?” recently wrote an op-ed column in the New York Times, gently reprimanding physicists to stop being ‘churlish’ and appreciate the centuries-old interplay between physics and philosophy. Holt’s point was that science and philosophy have always co-existed, even [...]

Last year’s Nobel Prize for physics was awarded to Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess for their discovery of an accelerating universe, a finding leading to the startling postulate that 75% of our universe contains a hitherto unknown entity called dark energy. This is an important discovery which is predated by brilliant minds and an exciting [...]

The discovery of the Higgs boson (or the “Higgs-like particle” if you prefer) is without a doubt one of the signal scientific achievements of our time. It illustrates what sheer thought – aided by data of course – can reveal about the workings of the universe and it continues a trend that lists Descartes, Hume, [...]