Category Archives: The scientific method

Some reflections on (corona) truth wars

Posted on June 9, 2021 by ...and Then There's Physics

I wrote this in response to a paper by Jaron Harambam called The Corona Truth Wars, published in a journal called Science and Technology Studies. I submitted it to this journal but it was (desk?) rejected because they felt that … Continue reading →

Posted in advocacy, Climate change, Philosophy for Bloggers, Policy, Scientists, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , , | 57 Comments

Science in the Time of COVID-19

Posted on March 23, 2021 by ...and Then There's Physics

There was an interesting BBC Radio 4 item, hosted by Sonia Sodha, on Science in the Time of COVID-19. If you can’t access it, there is a related Guardian article. I’ve listened to it a few times, and I’m still … Continue reading →

Posted in Philosophy for Bloggers, Science, Scientists, Sound Science (tm), The philosophy of science, The scientific method, We Are Science | Tagged , , , , , , | 62 Comments

The social construction of science

Posted on March 8, 2021 by ...and Then There's Physics

Richard Dawkins posted a tweet that cause a bit of a furore in some sectors of Twitter. He did try to clarify, but it still didn’t go down well. The problem with his tweet is that science clearly is socially … Continue reading →

Posted in Philosophy for Bloggers, physicists, Research, Scientists, Sound Science (tm), The philosophy of science, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , | 53 Comments

Alan’s Bottle

Posted on January 23, 2021 by Willard

Me and Ken just had a talk over the Science Kerfuffle of the moment, featuring a physics and maths teacher known to pwn fashionable nonsense fans. He recently suggested that POMO weakened our herd immunity to combat objective untruths. He … Continue reading →

Posted in Philosophy for Bloggers, Sound Science (tm), The philosophy of science, The scientific method, We Are Science | Tagged , , , , | 92 Comments

A little domain knowledge can go a long way

Posted on November 14, 2020 by ...and Then There's Physics

A rather bizarre paper has been published in Scientific Reports (yes, that Scientific Reports) claiming that [an] earth system model shows self-sustained melting of permafrost even if all man-made GHG emissions stop in 2020. One immediate problem is that the … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, Global warming, The philosophy of science, The scientific method, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 24 Comments

Namecalling in science

Posted on November 8, 2020 by ...and Then There's Physics

A couple of days ago, I retweeted an article with the title [t]he trouble with ‘Covid denialism’. I thought the article was reasonable, but some objected to the use of ‘denialism’. There are a number of very credible scientists who … Continue reading →

Posted in ClimateBall, Personal, Philosophy for Bloggers, The scientific method, We Are Science | Tagged , , , | 171 Comments

The long-term CovidSim predictions from Report 9

Posted on October 8, 2020 by ...and Then There's Physics

A group of us have just had a paper published in The British Medical Journal on the effect of school closures on mortality from the coronavirus disease. The coverage has been rather unfortunate, as it is being interpreted as supporting … Continue reading →

Posted in Research, Scientists, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , , | 205 Comments

Understanding methane

Posted on September 26, 2020 by ...and Then There's Physics

There was a recent Conversation article about methane called Climate explained: methane is short-lived in the atmosphere but leaves long-term damage that caused a bit of a stir on Twitter. One way people assess the significance of different greenhouse gases, … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, Global warming, Policy, Research, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , , , , | 41 Comments

The Auditing Problem

Posted on September 18, 2020 by Willard

Auditing leads to an open problem. Let’s try to specify it as lightly as possible. Technical notes follow the main text, they’re tagged using curly brackets, like {this note}. §1. Alvaro’s Story Alvaro wrote a piece called What’s Wrong with … Continue reading →

Posted in Philosophy for Bloggers, Research, Science, Scientisits, Sound Science (tm), The philosophy of science, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , , , , | 28 Comments

Cosmopolitan knowledge

Posted on September 12, 2020 by ...and Then There's Physics

I’ve been reading a recent paper by Sujatha Raman and Warren Pearce called Learning the lessons of Climategate: A cosmopolitan moment in the public life of climate science. I’m always a little uncomfortable writing about climategate, partly because it’s been … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, ClimateBall, Environmental change, Research, Scientists, The philosophy of science, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , | 109 Comments