Category Archives: Sociology of science

Violating the norms and ethos of science

Posted on January 31, 2016 by | 419 comments

by Judith Curry

Don’t let transparency damage science.  – Stephan Lewandowsky & Dorothy Bishop

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419 Comments

Posted in Ethics, Sociology of science

On distinguishing disbelief and nonbelief

Posted on January 9, 2016 by | 401 comments

by Judith Curry

It is important to distinguish between disbelief and nonbelief– between believing a sentence is false and merely not believing it true. 

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401 Comments

Posted in Scientific method, Skeptics, Sociology of science

Scientists & identity-protective cognition

Posted on December 12, 2015 by | 132 comments

by Judith Curry

Dan Kahan has an interesting blog post on scientists and motivated reasoning.

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132 Comments

Posted in Sociology of science

Climate culture

Posted on November 20, 2015 by | 274 comments

by Andy West

A frequent topic at Climate Etc. is the ‘consensus.’ An argument is presented here that the climate consensus is as much about culture as it is about climate science.

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274 Comments

Posted in Consensus, Sociology of science

A peculiar kind of science

Posted on October 20, 2015 by | 485 comments

by Judith Curry

This brief summary of the history of scientific understanding of the impacts of climate change is a peculiar history, as histories of science go. – Spencer Weart

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485 Comments

Posted in Sociology of science

How scientists fool themselves – and how they can stop

Posted on October 14, 2015 by | 259 comments

“Science is an ongoing race between our inventing ways to fool ourselves, and our inventing ways to avoid fooling ourselves.” – Saul Perlmutter

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259 Comments

Posted in Scientific method, Sociology of science

Conflicts of interest in climate science. Part II

Posted on October 12, 2015 by | 242 comments

by Judith Curry

But when I queried them on various sources of funding – private, industry, government – they deemed all of the sources as suspect. – Dave Verardo

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242 Comments

Posted in Ethics, Sociology of science

Confluence (not conflict) of interest

Posted on September 30, 2015 by | 69 comments

by Judith Curry

The term conflict of interest is pejorative. It is confrontational and presumptive of inappropriate behavior. –  Anne Cappola and Garret FitzGerald

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69 Comments

Posted in Ethics, Sociology of science

My Fox News op-ed on RICO

Posted on September 28, 2015 by | 462 comments

by Judith Curry

A new low in science: criminalizing climate skeptics.

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462 Comments

Posted in Ethics, Politics, Sociology of science

Heterodox Academy

Posted on September 15, 2015 by | 399 comments

by Judith Curry

I don’t agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of view. I think you should be able to — anybody who comes to speak to you and you disagree with, you should have an argument with ‘em. – President Obama

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399 Comments

Posted in Sociology of science

‘Climate culture’ versus ‘knowing disbelief’

Posted on August 14, 2015 by | 103 comments

by Andy West

Climate culture versus knowing disbelief.

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103 Comments

Posted in Sociology of science

Assessments, meta-analyses, discussion and peer review

Posted on July 29, 2015 by | 440 comments

by Judith Curry

There is an unfortunate knowledge monopoly in climate science and policy – the IPCC and UNFCCC.  As a result there is insufficient intellectual and political diversity in assessments about climate change.  To break this monopoly, we need identify new frameworks for encouraging, publishing and publicizing independent and interdisciplinary ideas and assessments.

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440 Comments

Posted in Communication, Sociology of science

The Siddhartha heuristic

Posted on July 13, 2015 by | 286 comments

by Judith Curry

Siddhārtha Gautama was a prince who was only told good news, and protected from seeing suffering and death. But he finally realised that he was not seeing the world as it really was, and so he left his palace to first take on the life as a wandering ascetic, and eventually to become the Buddha. – David Spiegelhalter

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286 Comments

Posted in Communication, Sociology of science

Which climate change papers ‘matter’?

Posted on July 10, 2015 by | 209 comments

by Judith Curry

A recent series of posts by Climate Brief has some interesting answers and raises some important questions.

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209 Comments

Posted in Sociology of science

A key admission regarding climate memes

Posted on July 3, 2015 by | 421 comments

by Andy West

Lewandowsky and Oreskes raise the prospect that via the agency of memes, the climate Consensus with its high certainty of danger, could be a socially generated artifact and not a scientific fact.

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421 Comments

Posted in Communication, Consensus, Sociology of science

Science: in the doghouse(?)

Posted on May 27, 2015 by | 459 comments

by Judith Curry

One of the most sensitive issues in science today: the idea that something has gone fundamentally wrong with one of our greatest human creations. – Richard Horton

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459 Comments

Posted in Ethics, Sociology of science

Scientific integrity versus ideologically-fueled research

Posted on May 25, 2015 by | 246 comments

by Judith Curry

The main intellectual fault in all these cases is failing to be responsive to genuine empirical concerns, because doing so would make one’s political point weaker or undermine a cherished ideological perspective. – Heather Douglas

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246 Comments

Posted in Ethics, Sociology of science

Tackling human biases in science

Posted on May 14, 2015 by | 326 comments

by Judith Curry

Psychologist Brian Nosek of the University of Virginia says that the most common and problematic bias in science is “motivated reasoning”: We interpret observations to fit a particular idea.

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326 Comments

Posted in Sociology of science

Is federal funding biasing climate research?

Posted on May 6, 2015 by | 207 comments

by Judith Curry

Does biased funding skew research in a preferred direction, one that supports an agency mission, policy or paradigm?

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207 Comments

Posted in Sociology of science

Making (non)sense of climate denial

Posted on April 28, 2015 by | 425 comments

by Judith Curry

See update

I’m wondering how we can inoculate ourselves and broader public from the latest nonsense from John Cook: an online MOOC Making Sense of Climate Denial.

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425 Comments

Posted in Sociology of science

Contradiction on emotional bias in the climate domain

Posted on April 24, 2015 by | 294 comments

by Andy West

Emotions and messaging about climate change.

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294 Comments

Posted in Communication, Consensus, Sociology of science

Christopher Essex on suppressing scientific inquiry

Posted on March 26, 2015 by | 624 comments

by Judith Curry

As the issue of bias in climate science heats up, Christopher Essex has written the best defense of freedom of scientific enquiry that I’ve seen emerge from the Grijalva inquisition.

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624 Comments

Posted in Skeptics, Sociology of science

On the social contract between science and society

Posted on March 18, 2015 by | 309 comments

by Judith Curry

Our geosciences community too often gives the impression that we care primarily about more funding for our research. Such overt self-interest poses risks to our community and to society. – Bill Hooke

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309 Comments

Posted in Sociology of science

Bankruptcy of the ‘merchants of doubt’ meme

Posted on March 15, 2015 by | 416 comments

by Judith Curry

Naomi Oreskes’ new movie Merchants of Doubt has recently been released. Does this movie provide the seeds for ending the ‘merchants of doubt’ meme?

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416 Comments

Posted in Communication, Sociology of science

‘Big players’ and the climate science boom

Posted on March 8, 2015 by | 386 comments

by Judith Curry

Big Players of any sort distort the normal systemic activity and render the emergent outcomes unstable and unreliable and create an ideal breeding ground for incentives that motivate ideologically biased people to circumvent normal constraints in the name of pursuing a “greater good”.

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386 Comments

Posted in Sociology of science