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

https://t.co/hXlo8qgkD0
Look like that they got a classical case of PCR Cross-Contamination.
They had 2 fabricated samples (SRX9714436 and SRX9714921) on the same PCR run. Alongside with Lung07. They did not perform metagenomic sequencing on the “feces” and they did not get


A positive oral or anal swab from anywhere in their sampling. Feces came from anus and if these were positive the anal swabs must also be positive. Clearly it got there after the NA have been extracted and were from the very low-level degraded RNA which were mutagenized from

The Taq.
https://t.co/yKXCgiT29w to see SRX9714921 and SRX9714436.
Human+Mouse in the positive SRA, human in both of them. Seeing human+mouse in identical proportions across 3 different sequencers (PRJNA573298, A22, SEX9714436) are pretty straight indication that the originals

Were already contaminated with Human and mouse from the very beginning, and that this contamination is due to dishonesty in the sample handling process which prescribe a spiking of samples in ACE2-HEK293T/A549, VERO E6 and Human lung xenograft mouse.

The “lineages” they claimed to have found aren’t mutational lineages at all—all the mutations they see on these sequences were unique to that specific sequence, and are the result of RNA degradation and from the Taq polymerase errors accumulated from the nested PCR process
JUST ONE PERSON—UK 🇬🇧 scientists think one immunocompromised person who cleared virus slowly & only partially wiped out an infection, leaving behind genetically-hardier viruses that rebound & learn how to survive better. That’s likely how #B117 started. 🧵 https://t.co/bMMjM8Hiuz


2) The leading hypothesis is that the new variant evolved within just one person, chronically infected with the virus for so long it was able to evolve into a new, more infectious form.

same thing happened in Boston in another immunocompromised person that was sick for 155 days.

3) What happened in Boston with one 45 year old man who was highly infectious for 155 days straight before he died... is exactly what scientists think happened in Kent, England that gave rise to #B117.


4) Doctors were shocked to find virus has evolved many different forms inside of this one immunocompromised man. 20 new mutations in one virus, akin to the #B117. This is possibly how #B1351 in South Africa 🇿🇦 and #P1 in Brazil 🇧🇷 also evolved.


5) “On its own, the appearance of a new variant in genomic databases doesn’t tell us much. “That’s just one genome amongst thousands every week. It wouldn’t necessarily stick out,” says Oliver Pybus, a professor of evolution and infectious disease at Oxford.
What is going on at SWANSEA UNIVERSITY in Wales?
1.
https://t.co/d5NKtNlxxa
Sounds as if its connected to Bill Gates "LUCIFERASE" Vaccine?

2.
https://t.co/k0w1mjaPg0

"HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON SCHOOL OF LAW"
- AT SWANSEA UNIVERSITY!!!


3.
https://t.co/jifuWq6cGq
Remember all those FIRES, over the Summer!!!

4.
https://t.co/H3lstFyYx8
WUHAN PARTNERSHIP

"Links between Swansea & Wuhan date back to 1855 when Swansea missionary Griffith John founded the Wuhan Union Hospital.
This relationship was strengthened when representatives of the two cities signed an agreement".


5.
https://t.co/5b1JqiEQzi
Swansea University Strengthens Links with China

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