BC SCIENCE
Saved by @SteveeRogerr

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

Kevin McKernan
Kevin McKernan
@Kevin_McKernan
When respected Scientists resign over the false narrative... Take notice... and thank them.

Google Translated Letter from

Prof. Dr. Thomas Aigner,
Department of Geosciences,
University of Tuebingen, Sigwartstrasse 10,
D-72076 Tuebingen Germany

Dear colleagues,
It was with the greatest astonishment, deepest concern, and indeed bewilderment, that I took note of the "7th ad hoc statement" from the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina on December 8th, 2020.
In my opinion, this paper is not worthy of an honest, critical-

weighing science oriented towards the service and well-being of man. I do not have any medical expertise. However, as a scientist committed to nothing but the pure truth, I take the liberty of speaking up. I feel very alarmed by several points:

1. On November 27, 2020, a group of 22 internationally recognized experts presented the following report on the PCR test, the linchpin of the "pandemic", for the Eurosurveillance magazine:

"External peer review of the RTPCR test to detect SARS-CoV-2 reveals 10 major scientific flaws at the molecular and methodological level: consequences for false positive results". Quote: "This highly questions the scientific validity of the test".
SCIENCE
Michael Lin, PhD-MD
Michael Lin, PhD-MD
@michaelzlin
Fellow academics, when are we going to start fixing our urgent structural problems that strain family bonds and present ongoing barriers to diversifying our educational and scientific leadership? You wonder, what the heck is this guy talking about?
1/n

We’re all very familiar what I am talking about, actually: the impossibility for most academics in the life sciences to do their jobs in a reaonable amount of time, due to more and more demands on writing grants, and to a lesser degree, papers.
2/n

As of yesterday I hadn’t intended to write about this subject, but was wondering as I finished a Saturday of straight work, what happened to all my time? Why has WFH not reduced my pile of tasks to do? Instead why is my to-do list growing bigger and bigger?
3/n

I decided to figure out how much time our jobs actually require. I estimated per year (m=month, w=week, d=day, h=hour):
Teaching: 20h/w x 20w = 400h
Meetings of all sorts: 10h/w x 48w= 480h
Replying to email: 2h/d x 365d = 730h
Attending and giving talks: 2h/w x 50w = 100h
4/n

Papers: If each person needs 2 papers during a 5y stint, and you run a 7.5-person lab, then you need 7.5 papers per 2.5y = 3 papers/y. Throw in a review and it’s 4 papers. If you need 15d at 8h/d per paper, that’s 480h writing papers.
5/n
SCIENCE
Advertisement
Jambavan
Jambavan
@SirJambavan
https://t.co/odzm9VTdwZ

Thread for today. /0

It is fashionable for people to create sympathy to the unseen / unknown organisms. The poor things that can't stand up and fight for their own existence.

It makes for a brilliant narrative. It melts your hearts. And you get to play saviour of the oppressed by outraging. /1

But, for most part, such things are also false.

Amazon are the lungs of the world. Never mind that most of the world's oxygen production happens in open oceans. But these are harmless ones. Of course, we all love to maintain forests.

However, some things are sheer scare mongering.

For instance - take this: coral reefs will be permanently gone if mean / median temperatures raise by 1°C ..

But, really - how? Then you get a lecture on how CO2 will affect calcification.

Dig a bit deeper from another angle+

+ and you find that the earth was much much warmer during the age of Dinosaurs. So much so, that we had cold blooded lizards growing to sizes of buildings. Surely, there must have been tons of CO2 then!

And the ocean temps were quite high too.
SCIENCE
Benedikt Kuhnhaeuser
Benedikt Kuhnhaeuser
@BenKuhnhaeuser
The calamoid palms 🌴 have over 500 species spread across the world, but their higher-level relationships were a bit of a mystery. Until now.

Out today in #MolecularPhylogeneticsAndEvolution:

A robust phylogenomic framework for the calamoid palms https://t.co/JiCbSUlheH

1/10


First some background info, so that you know what we are talking about:

Calamoid palms look a bit like snakes 🐍 (don't they!?!), because their fruits are covered in overlapping scales. And with their often fierce spines, they are equally fearsome. 😱

2/10


They are classified into 17 genera, 10 subtribes and 3 tribes. They have an amazing variety of growth forms, from stemless to climbing to tree habit. 🌱🌴

3/10


But as I said, their relationships have been a bit of a mystery. Here's the varying relationships previous studies found over the last 20 years.

4/10


We tackled this mystery with a phylogenomic approach: we sampled almost a thousand genes (a hundred times more than previous studies!) of 75 species representing all calamoid tribes, subtribes and genera.

The resulting data matrix is pretty massive...

5/10
SCIENCE
Wonder of Science
Wonder of Science
@wonderofscience
These 'Beach Animals' were created by Theo Jansen as a fusion of art and engineering. The kinetic structures walk on their own and get all their energy from the


Watch the full video on Youtube:
SCIENCE

You May Also Like

Simon DeDeo
Simon DeDeo
@SimonDeDeo
This is a pretty valiant attempt to defend the "Feminist Glaciology" article, which says conventional wisdom is wrong, and this is a solid piece of scholarship. I'll beg to differ, because I think Jeffery, here, is confusing scholarship with "saying things that seem right".


The article is, at heart, deeply weird, even essentialist. Here, for example, is the claim that proposing climate engineering is a "man" thing. Also a "man" thing: attempting to get distance from a topic, approaching it in a disinterested fashion.


Also a "man" thing—physical courage. (I guess, not quite: physical courage "co-constitutes" masculinist glaciology along with nationalism and colonialism.)


There's criticism of a New York Times article that talks about glaciology adventures, which makes a similar point.


At the heart of this chunk is the claim that glaciology excludes women because of a narrative of scientific objectivity and physical adventure. This is a strong claim! It's not enough to say, hey, sure, sounds good. Is it true?
ALL
Sanjeev Upadhyay\U0001f1ee\U0001f1f3
Sanjeev Upadhyay🇮🇳...
@SanjeevUpadhy13
What Happened To Bhakt Prahlad after Hiranyakashipu Vadh
#Thread
Prahlada became the mighty king of the Asuras after Shri Narsimha killed Hiranyakashipu. Prahlada was even more powerful than his father, Hiranyakashipu ever was. He enjoyed the love and respect of his subjects.


By virtue of his good behaviour, Prahlada conquered the three worlds easily and Indra ran away from the Heavens. Indra then deceived Prahlada into giving him the power of his behaviour and Prahlada lost control of the three worlds.


Asuras grew angry at the Devas for taking advantage of their King's virtuous behaviour and invaded the heavens. The Devas, afraid of the Asuras, enlisted the help of human Kings such as Yayati, Raji and Kakutstha and defeated them.

Prahlada attacked the gods and defeated Indra in battle, forcing the King of the Gods to run for his life. Indra sought help of Lord Vishnu. Infused with his power, Indra defeated Prahlada. The latter understood that Vishnu was helping Indra in battle and he withdrew his forces.


Prahlada first gave his kingdom to Andhaka, but the latter was defeated by Shiva. So Prahlada gave it to his son Virochana and undertook a Tirtha Yatra.
ALL
Advertisement
Bharadwaj
Bharadwaj
@BharadwajSpeaks
Today is Jayanti of Ahilyabai Holkar

She was a widow who became Malwa's greatest queen. Defended our country & personally led armies into battle.Never plundered anyone. Developed Malwa into a prosperous kingdom. Rebuilt temples destroyed by Mughals. Built Dharmashalas at Tirthas


Unfortunately, her memory has been blemished by inaccurate representations in modern popular media.

The serial "Punyashlok Ahilyabai" depicts her as ultra secularist feminazi icon who questions Hindu rituals & Pandits while patronising Sufis.

This is far from historical truth!


Ahilyabai was born on May 31 1725 to Patil Mankoji Shinde.

She was from Dhangar clan(classified as OBC today). While Dhangars were traditionally into herding, they took up arms & held several military /civil roles in various eras of history(especially during Maratha resurgence)


In 1737, when she was 12, Ahilyabai Holkar was married to Khanderao , son of Subedar Malhar Rao Holkar.

By the time she was married, fortunes of Holkar family had already waxed.

Malhar Rao was a Subedar of territory comprising 30 Parganas yielding a revenue of at least 7 Lakh


In 1741, when Ahilyabai was newly married, her father -in-law Malhar Rao Built Indore palace & ordered the kanungo to populate the settlement with a promise of protection to traders.

This began rise of Indore from its background as modest trading town Indrapuri to a great city
ALL
foone
foone
@Foone
It is 2018 and this error message is a mistake from 1974.
This limitation, which is still found in the very latest Windows 10, dates back to BEFORE STAR WARS. This bug is as old as Watergate.


When this was developed, nothing had UPC codes yet because they'd just been invented.
Back when this mistake was made, There was only one Phone Company, because they hadn't been broken up yet. Ted Bundy was still on the loose. Babe Ruth's home run record was about to fall.

When this bug was developed, Wheel of Fortune hadn't yet aired. No one had seen Rocky Horror. Steven Spielberg was still a little-known directory of TV films and one box-office disappointment. SNL hadn't aired yet. The Edmund Fitzgerald was still hauling iron ore.

WHEN THIS STUPID MISFEATURE WAS INVENTED, THE GODFATHER PART II HAD JUST OPENED IN THEATERS.

So, why does this happen? So Unix (which was only 5 years old at this point) had the good idea of "everything is a file" which mean you could do things like write to sockets, pipes, the console, etc with the same commands and instructions.
TECH
Coffee Sloth \u2615
Coffee Sloth ☕
@CaseyExplosion
*Heads-up that this thread will feature some extreme examples of homophobia and transphobia.*

Hey folks, have you ever wondered why trans people face constant accusations of fetishism, sexual predation and child abuse/grooming? Well, today let's talk about stochastic terrorism.

So, first we have to talk about what stochastic terrorism actually is. Remember when there was a conspiracy that there was a pedophile ring operating out of a pizza parlour basement, and a crazed gunman showed up? It's that sort of incitement that stochastic terrorism describes.

It's the demonisation or incitement against a group of people or individuals with the intent that other, unaffiliated parties will act upon it; it's the releasing doctored footage and a shooter show up at Planned Parenthood as a direct result of what he's been led to believe.

So with that in mind, let's talk about Russia's extreme anti-LGBT laws that banned the "promotion" of LGBT lifestyles to children. A move that specifically marked LGBT people as a threat to children, and resulted in neo-nazis meting out vigilante "justice" against gay men.


Groups such as this would lure unsuspecting gay men via dating sites, and brutalise and humiliate them on camera. They did so under the guise of combating child abusers, one group calling themselves "Occupy
SOCIETY