Peer-review: end it, don’t mend it
At Genomes Unzipped, Joe Pickrell has an important post up, Why publish science in peer-reviewed journals?: The recent announcement of a new journal sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society, and the Wellcome Trust generated a bit of discussion about the issues in the scientific publishing process it is designed to address—arbitrary editorial decisions, slow and unhelpful […]
Beyond peer-reviewed journals?
Joseph K. Pickrell has a provocative post over at Genomes Unzipped, Why publish science in peer-reviewed journals?:
The recent announcement of a new journal sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society, and the Wellcome Tru…
The practice does not invalidate the principle
This is a big time for space, though not in a good way. The James Webb Telescope is in jeopardy, and the space shuttle program finally expired. I don’t talk about space too much on this weblog because I wouldn’t add any value. I leave the …
More curiosity about atheists?
Josh Rosenau has a post up discussing the impact of “New Atheism” on public perceptions of atheists. He mentions offhand that “New Atheism” as a movement really only crystallized in the mid-2000s, which made me wonder: what does…
Fixing science, in part
The GiveWell Blog has some suggestions for “Suggestions for the Social Sciences”. Here is the big one:
Our single biggest concern when examining research is publication bias, broadly construed. We wonder both (a) how many studies are done,…
Edge question 2011
It is the annual Edge “question.” This year, “What Scientific Concept Would Improve Everybody’s Cognitive Toolkit”? It looks like Edge finally updated their design a touch! (happy Chad?) Nothing too fancy, which is probabl…
ADMIXTURE, African Ancestry Project, and confirmation bias
I’ve been running the African Ancestry Project for a while now on the side on Facebook. But it’s getting unwieldy, so I finally set up the website. The main reason I started it up is that there have been complaints for a while now of proble…
Who “hearts” science among liberals
First, if it is clear that you haven’t read the post itself and leave a comment I won’t just not publish it, but I’ll ban you. Second, if you complain about this in the comments, I’ll ban you too. Now that you feel appropriately…
A mental map of the world
One of the major issues in our world today is that we’re a people of specialties. This means that we don’t have basic interpretative frameworks in which to place novel facts. Because of the abstruse and formal nature of the discipline, this…
Print vs. web in science
I have some Google Alerts set up relating to human evolution and such, and a few days ago I noticed a spike in articles about the evolution of clothing and lice. Like this: We were all naked until 170,000 years ago. Since I blogged this in September, The naked years, I was confused. Here’s the […]
To study humankind, AAA responds
This morning I received an email from the communication director of the American Anthropology Association. The contents are on the web:
AAA Responds to Public Controversy Over Science in Anthropology
Some recent media coverage, including an article in the New York Times, has portrayed anthropology as divided between those who practice it as a science and those […]
How close are scientific disciplines?
Chemistry likes to think of itself as the “central science.” Is that true? Intuitively it makes sense. But how can we measure that more rigorously? In comes the Stanford Dissertation Browser:
The Stanford Dissertation Browser is an experimental interface for document collections that enables richer interaction than search. Stanford’s PhD dissertation abstracts from 1993-2008 are presented […]
The cultural construction of truth
If you know of John Ioannidis‘ work, Jonah Lehrer’s new piece in The New Yorker won’t be a surprise to you. It’s alarmingly titled The Truth Wears Off – is there something wrong with the scientific method? Here are some sections which you can’t get without a subscription, and I think they get to the […]
Latitudes and continents
Thanksgiving in the tropics:
Finally, here are some pictures I took today. It was way too hot and humid when we first got to Taiwan, but now we’re getting some lovely winter weather – Taiwan is about the same latitude as Hawaii It sure doesn’t feel like Thanksgiving or Xmas around here!
One aspect of […]
The future is now, but more so
If you have some time to kill, the Paleo-Future weblog is really awesome. It shows what people thought the future was going to be like (often around the year 2000) from the 1870s through every decade of the 20th century. As usual with this sort of thing it tells you more about the salient aspects […]
Star Hustler passes away
A little “off topic” for this blog’s core content, but Jack Horkheimer, the “Star Hustler/Star Gazer” passed away today. Here’s vintage 1985:
Marc Hauser: the end is nigh?
David Dobbs has a link roundup and commentary on what’s been going down with l’affaire Hauser. It doesn’t look good for Hauser et al., though it seems that the downfall was precipitated ultimately from within if press reports are to be believed. Part of the issue here seems to be that there’s a level of […]
A shifting mode
Here’s the source. The fact that there’s been so much change since 1990 is what is striking to me.
Razib Khan: Darwinism provides a deductive tool, but many of the inferences leave much to be desired in explaining the world as it is
Darwinism provides a deductive tool, but many of the inferences leave much to be desired in explaining the world as it is
“Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” So asserted Theodosius Dobzhansky, to which one might respond that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of physics. But what has quantum mechanics to do with behavioral ecology? The enthusiasm of many social scientists for the Darwinian paradigm resembles this ontological leap. An evolutionary psychologist may contend that a preference for blondes is the outcome powerful adaptations, how powerful can it be if only a small minority of humans are blonde? Darwinism provides a deductive tool, but many of the inferences leave much to be desired in explaining the world as it is.