CategoryScience
It’s Not “Myths” That Cause Distrust in Science But Sad Truths
An astrophysicist, hoping to shore up public trust, means well but gets the problems all wrong
Religious Scientists Balance Work and Faith — on a Knife Edge
A recent article in Nature both sums up — and typifies — the problems they face, weaving around the presumption of atheism
The Conviction That ET Is Out There Survives Every Setback
Because it is only natural to resist the idea that we are alone, the hope of finding extraterrestrials twists science thinking in strange ways
Science Writer: Maybe We Need Fewer Scientists, Science Journals
Cameron English sees a rise in partisan advocacy as part of the problem of increasing retractions in science journals
What Drives the Belief That We Live in a Computer Sim Universe?
The lack of evidence for the sim is admitted — but then we are challenged to prove that it ISN’T true…
Panpsychism Going Mainstream in Popular Media?
Significantly, Hawkins does not try to privilege conventional “consciousness is an illusion” over panpsychism (“everything is conscious”). He treats the two views equally
Can AI Help Stem the Tide of Fake Science Papers?
One problem is that science journals don’t do a very good job of establishing author identities. Chatbots are bound to make things worse
Dual-Use Technology and Research Ethics: Interview with Yves Moreau
A conversation on the responsibility and ethical limits of tech companies
Are Near-Death Experiences Just Another Branch of Research Now?
We should hope so because there are a number of interesting allied research areas that would be better studied without preexisting prejudice against NDEs
Invisibility Isn’t Science Fiction; It’s Interesting Engineering
Things are visible only when light strikes them but light can sometimes be manipulated so as not to strike them, with remarkable results.Invisibility is one of those interesting concepts that started out as imagination: What if I were invisible? Or— in the hands of a storyteller — what if my character were invisible? Tolkien famously made it a power granted by the Ring in The Lord of the Rings. The concept is used in science fiction too, for example, in the form of the cloaking device: However, as science fiction writer Douglas Adams (1952–2001) noted satirically in Life, the Universe, and Everything, in everyday life, “The Somebody Else’s Problem field is much simpler and more effective, and what’s more can be run for over a hundred years on a single torch battery. This is because it relies on people’s natural disposition not Read More ›
Fine-Tuning of Universe Makes a Top Neuroscientist “Very Hopeful”
Allen Institute’s Christof Koch talks about the assumptions underlying his consciousness theory — which led many other neuroscientists to try to Cancel him
Is Our World, Post-1950, Really a Geological Epoch?
Some earth scientists lobby for calling the past 75 years the Anthropocene epoch, giving it equal importance with the 16-million-year Upper Jurassic
Grappling Honestly With Science’s Blind Spot
An astrophysicist, a theoretical physicist, and a philosopher all walk into a bar and say, “At the heart of science lies something we do not see that makes science possible” Um… yes!
If AI Speeds Up Science, Does It Risk Squashing Some Parts?
A Yale anthropologist and a Princeton psychologist warn of the dangers of overreliance on AI in science
Is There a Solution to Low Quality Research in Science?
Molecular biologist Henry Miller and statistician Stanley Young explain why statistical techniques like meta-analysis won’t solve the basic problem
Retracted Paper Is a Compelling Case for Reform
The credibility of science is being undermined by misuse of the tools created by scientists. Here's an example from an economics paper I was asked to comment on
How Data Can Appear in Science Papers — Out of Thin Air!
At Retraction Watch, Gary Smith explains how one author team apparently copy pasted missing data about green innovation in various countriesRecently, Retraction Watch, a site that helps keeps science honest, noted some statistical peculiarities about a paper last September in the Journal of Clean Energy, “Green innovations and patents in OECD countries.” The site was tipped off by a PhD student in economics that “For several countries, observations for some of the variables the study tracked were completely absent.” But that wasn’t the big surprise. The big surprise was when the student wrote to one of the authors: In email correspondence seen by Retraction Watch and a follow-up Zoom call, [Almas] Heshmati told the student he had used Excel’s autofill function to mend the data. He had marked anywhere from two to four observations before or after the missing values Read More ›
Bigfoot and Trust in Science: A Cautionary Tale
Of three men searching for Bigfoot in 1969 — a hunting guide, an enthusiast, and a physical anthropologist, which seemed surest that the monster was real?