What are the classics of the "Science of Science" or "Meta Science"? If you were teaching a class on the subject, what would go in the syllabus?

Here's a (very disorganized and incomplete) handful of suggestions, which I may add to. Suggestions welcome, especially if you've dug into relevant literatures.
1. The already classic "Estimating the reproducibility of
psychological science" from the Open Science Collaboration of @BrianNosek et al. https://t.co/yjGczLZ6Je

(Look at that abstract, wow!)
Many people had pointed out problems with standard statistical methods, going back decades (what are the best refs?). But this paper was a sledgehammer, making it impossible to ignore the question: what, if anything, were we actually learning from all those statistical studies?
2. Dean Keith Simonton's book "Creativity in Science: Chance, Logic, Genius, and Zeitgeist". If an essentially scientometric book could be described as a fun romp through science & creativity, this would be it https://t.co/RQ935H1fKs
3. From the philosophy of science literature, I especially like Lakatos's "Proofs and Refutations", Feyerabend's "Against Method", and Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions". I should probably dig deeper into other schools (recs?) (Yes, I've read Popper's main works.)
4. Speaking of Feyerabend, Steve Weinberg had some surprisingly sympathetic & characteristically insightful comments on Feyerabend, which I expect would bear re-reading. I've lost the reference.
5. Switching genre, there's the work of @pierre_azoulay and collaborators, studying the HHMI versus NIH approaches to discovery in the life sciences: https://t.co/9eta708dVf
6. From 2018, a nice review paper on "The Science of Science", coming from a network science / scientometrics point of view. There are tonnes of interesting observations in the paper, many of which I bundled up in this thread: https://t.co/potbylhgxt

https://t.co/xduj2A8c8q
7. One of our best long-term observers of science and science policy was Daniel Greenberg (who passed away last year). Many possibilities to choose from, but here's one I got a lot out of: "Science, Money, and Politics": https://t.co/8QANkuL6ZA
8. Harry Collins has done some wonderful work on the central role of tacit knowledge in science. Here's one of his classics, on the role of tacit knowledge in figuring out how good sapphire is as a lasing material: https://t.co/Oaz2VWySmM
That sounds very specialized. It's not. It goes to questions at the very heart of science, both institutionally and methodologically. Rather, Collins' paper is a beautiful detailed study of tacit knowledge.
(Tangentially: one way my thinking has changed is in gradually understand how tied together our institutions and our methodologies are. There's a kind of Conway's Law in action: our institutions tend to mirror our methodology, and vice versa.)
9. The institutions around us are, of course, all made up, out of ideas - things like universities, PhDs, journals, etc, even the notion of "Science", are first and foremost conceptual innovations. I'd love to understand the history of those ideas better.
One striking text in this vein is Francis Bacon's 1627 "The New Atlantis", which introduces "Salamon's House", which strongly influenced the design of the Royal Society (1660), and modern universities. https://t.co/bznUG1eTH5
10. Another good one in this vein is Vannevar Bush's "Science: the Endless Frontier", which helped establish the concepts underpinning the modern basic research ecosystem https://t.co/bpc1nPg8A7
11. Indeed, I've heard it argued that Bush is the person most responsible for developing the concept of "basic research", and this was done in part as a way of winning a political fight to motivate funding for pure research. The argument is made here: https://t.co/QPMCAEYSLE
12. David Lang suggests Paula Stephan's book here: https://t.co/zQiuTlWOdR

The book has been in my queue for some time, and is almost certainly a good overview of a huge chunk of economic thinking about science.
Interlude: thanks for the many wonderful replies!!

Twitter threading makes it a little hard to skim the thread. Expandable tree version here, thanks to @paulgb's great treeverse Chrome extension: https://t.co/vF4JF0Gf4J
I'll indulge myself a bit, and ask @dabacon, @AndrewDohertyQu, @quantum_aram, @uncatherio, @albrgr, @DGoroff, @BrianNosek, @juliagalef, @juanbenet, @AdamMarblestone, @patrickc, @pierre_azoulay if you have any particular favorite additions for the list?

More from Science

Daily Bookmarks to GAVNet 01/08/2021

Where antibiotic resistance comes from

https://t.co/CULwpxEVBJ

#antibiotics #resistance #genomes #EvolutionaryHistory

Along with vaccine rollouts, the U.S. needs a National Hi-Fi Mask Initiative

https://t.co/oqInlLSJl2

#PandemicResponse #vaccines #masks #COVID19
1/ Automobiles and Intake Fraction. Since cars are back in the news I thought I would retweet this model result I offered in early April 2020. I focused only on 1 micron particles & accounted for windows completely closed & cracked slightly open.


2/ Related air exchange rates were based on experimental results in literature for mid-sized sedans. Particle deposition to indoor surfaces were accounted for, as the surface to volume ratio in a 3 m3 cab is large. An important outcome was the intake fraction (IF)

3/ Here, IF is the number of particles (or virions in collective particles) inhaled by a receptor DIVIDED BY the number or particles (or virions in collective particles) emitted by an infector.

4/ Integrated over the two hour drive (in this example) the IF for all windows closed & a receptor at rest is 0.08 (8% of what comes out of the infectors respiratory system ends up in the respiratory system of the receptor). 8%! That is a very high intake factor.

5/ With additional ventilation from cracking a window open drops the IF to 0.012 (1.2%) still relatively high. Can get lower by opening more windows.

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The first ever world map was sketched thousands of years ago by Indian saint
“Ramanujacharya” who simply translated the following verse from Mahabharat and gave the world its real face

In Mahabharat,it is described how 'Maharishi Ved Vyasa' gave away his divine vision to Sanjay


Dhritarashtra's charioteer so that he could describe him the events of the upcoming war.

But, even before questions of war could begin, Dhritarashtra asked him to describe how the world looks like from space.

This is how he described the face of the world:

सुदर्शनं प्रवक्ष्यामि द्वीपं तु कुरुनन्दन। परिमण्डलो महाराज द्वीपोऽसौ चक्रसंस्थितः॥
यथा हि पुरुषः पश्येदादर्शे मुखमात्मनः। एवं सुदर्शनद्वीपो दृश्यते चन्द्रमण्डले॥ द्विरंशे पिप्पलस्तत्र द्विरंशे च शशो महान्।

—वेद व्यास, भीष्म पर्व, महाभारत


Meaning:-

हे कुरुनन्दन ! सुदर्शन नामक यह द्वीप चक्र की भाँति गोलाकार स्थित है, जैसे पुरुष दर्पण में अपना मुख देखता है, उसी प्रकार यह द्वीप चन्द्रमण्डल में दिखायी देता है। इसके दो अंशो मे पीपल और दो अंशो मे विशाल शश (खरगोश) दिखायी देता है।


Meaning: "Just like a man sees his face in the mirror, so does the Earth appears in the Universe. In the first part you see leaves of the Peepal Tree, and in the next part you see a Rabbit."

Based on this shloka, Saint Ramanujacharya sketched out the map, but the world laughed