Category Archives: The scientific method

The Auditing Problem

Posted on September 18, 2020 by

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 , , , , , , , | 23 Comments

Cosmopolitan knowledge

Posted on September 12, 2020 by

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 , , , , | 108 Comments

Directly observing the earliest stages of star and planet formation

Posted on August 27, 2020 by

Since I haven’t had much to write about recently (or, haven’t felt much like writing recently) I thought I would highlight one of my recent papers. It was lead by James Cadman, a PhD student who is been working with … Continue reading →

Posted in Astronomy, Research, Science, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , , | 42 Comments

Superior

Posted on July 29, 2020 by

Something I’ve done on this blog quite a lot is push back against the narrative that science is social. This doesn’t mean that I think individual scientists can’t be biased, or that we won’t sometimes go down the wrong path … Continue reading →

Posted in ethics, Scientists, The philosophy of science, The scientific method | Tagged , , , | 211 Comments

The Neoclassical Economics of Climate Change

Posted on June 28, 2020 by

I thought I would advertise a post by Steve Keen, that may be of interest to some of my regular readers. It’s about Neoclassical Economics of Climate Change and is extremely criticial of the assumptions used to drive Integrated Assessment … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, economics, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , | 39 Comments

A modelling manifesto?

Posted on June 27, 2020 by

There’s a recent Nature comment lead by Andrea Saltelli called Five ways to ensure that models serve society: a manifesto. Gavin Schmnidt has already posted a Twitter thread about it. I largerly agree with Gavin’s points and thought I would … Continue reading →

Posted in ClimateBall, Philosophy for Bloggers, Research, Scientists, Sound Science (tm), The philosophy of science, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , | 73 Comments

Extreme event attribution and the nature-culture duality

Posted on June 19, 2020 by

I’ve been reading a paper by Shannon Osaka and Rob Bellamy called Weather in the Anthropocene: Extreme event attribution and a modelled nature–culture divide. I’ve written about event attribution before, and I’m largely in favour of the storyline approach; given … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, Environmental change, Global warming, Philosophy for Bloggers, Severe Events, The philosophy of science, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , , | 138 Comments

The Imperial College code

Posted on May 16, 2020 by

The Imperial College code, the results from which are thought to have changed the UK government’s coronavirus policy, has been available for a while now on github. Since being made available, it’s received criticism from some quarters, as discussed by … Continue reading →

Posted in Policy, Research, Scientists, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , , , | 614 Comments

Outgoing longwave radiation

Posted on April 30, 2020 by

Something that often strikes me is that when I think I understand something quite well, there often turns out to be an aspect that I haven’t understood particularly well. I sometimes think that this is can be an important thing … Continue reading →

Posted in Global warming, Greenhouse effect, Philosophy for Bloggers, The philosophy of science, The scientific method, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 37 Comments

Models

Posted on April 12, 2020 by

I have a feeling that our response to this pandemic may lead to some reflections on the role of scientific models in the decision making process. I would normally err on the side of defending scientific advisors, but I have … Continue reading →

Posted in Philosophy for Bloggers, Research, Scientists, The philosophy of science, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , , , | 461 Comments