Posted
11:59 am
by Ken
Scientists behaving badly? Social Sessions 04
Over the past few months the Genomics Forum has hosted three very successful public events, the Social Sessions, on: the scientist as seen in literature and in science studies; genetics and crime; and science as an inspiration for poetry.
We are now planning a fourth, to be held in March, on the relevance of science studies to the controversy arising from the East Anglia emails hack - labelled 'Climategate' in the media and online. Our panel and audience will discuss whether the attitudes and actions apparently shown in the emails and other documents are as scandalous as has been claimed, or whether they are (as some of the science studies literature would suggest) fairly typical of what goes on in everyday scientific practice. And if the latter is the case, how is that the results of scientific practice can be regarded as reliable?
Date: 10 Mar 2010 17:30
Time: 5.30pm for 6.00pm, drinks and nibbles provided
Venue:
ESRC Genomics and Policy Research Forum, 3rd Floor, St John's Land, Holyrood Road, Edinburgh EH8 8AQ
email:
forum@genomicsnetwork.ac.ukOrganised by:
ESRC Genomics and Policy Research Forum Speakers:
Simon Shackley - School of Geosciences
Colin Macilwain - Nature
Ben Pile - Climate Resistance blog
Colin Campbell - EaSTCHEM Fellow, School of Chemistry
Steve Sturdy - Genomics Forum Deputy Director
This event is FREE, but as space is limited, please confirm your attendance as soon as possible to:
forum@genomicsnetwork.ac.ukLabels: climate, coming attractions, genomics, local
I wish I could be there. As for "Science Studies," my opinions are mixed and biased against most of what I have seen. As sociology I don't mind it at all, although some of the detailed institutional history I just skip. The field is at its best whena text (oops: book) combines detailed history with abundant technical presentation. See "The Mind's Eye," for a fine example of that. It's a description of the great debate between Ewald Hering and Hermann von Helmholtz on colour vision and (another topic) the geometry of eye movements. The worst that I have seen was S. Shapin's "The Scientific Revolution, " whose 1st sentence is close to "There was no scientific revolution and this is a book about it." Lots of organisational and instrumental description, but too little detail. This double status in the Anglophone world (there are German and French precedents) is an effect of Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." It and Kuhn's later essays stress history, which is fine. But it employs a notion of paradigm change (might also be OK) to describe the history; a notion that leads Kuhn to deny any notion of demonstrable scientific truth and progress. He does this with not one argument. That got me annoyed and too many enthusiastically convinced. It was in the Zeitgeist. I hope that such problems get discussed.
By George Berger, at Sunday, February 28, 2010 10:36:00 am