Reading a paper; evaluating its claims

2024-09-06 Fri

Rick Gilmore

Overview

Announcements

• Due
  • Exercise 01: Reading a scientific paper

Last time…

• Repetition/replication \(\rightarrow\) trust
• Social character of science can lead researchers astray (Ritchie)
  • As Feymann would say “Fool ______s”
• Scientific communication is “anachronistic” (Nosek & Bar-Anan, 2012)

• Do you think all research scholarship should be open access (free to anyone)?
  • Who should pay for the costs of publication, maintaining the data?
  • What’s wrong with enterprising people making a living by providing these services?

Today

Work Session: Reading a paper; Evaluating its claims

• Assignment
  • Exercise 02: Textbook Findings

Survey 01

Evaluating textbook claims

Next time

Monday, September 09

Scientific norms and counter-norms

• Read
  • (Merton, 1973). PDF on Canvas.
  • (Mitroff, 1974). PDF on Canvas.
• Assignment
  • Complete (anonymous) survey on scientific norms and counter-norms. No write-up.

Resources

References

Merton, R. W. (1973). The normative structure of science. In R. K. Merton & N. W. Storer (Eds.), The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations (pp. 267–278). The University of Chicago Press.

Mitroff, I. I. (1974). Norms and counter-norms in a select group of the Apollo moon scientists: A case study of the ambivalence of scientists. American Sociological Review, 39(4), 579–595. https://doi.org/10.2307/2094423

Nosek, B. A., & Bar-Anan, Y. (2012). Scientific utopia i: Opening scientific communication. Psychological Inquiry, 23(3), 217–243. https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2012.692215