Related papers: Probably a discovery: Bad mathematics means rough …
Recent years have seen dramatic progress in cosmology and particle astrophysics. So much so that anyone who dares to offer an overview would certainly risk him- or herself for being incomplete and biased at best, and even incorrect due to…
There have been several important recent developments in precision electroweak tests. These include: the new LEP energy scan during the 1993 run; the first high-precision results on the left-right asymmetry from the SLD Collaboration at…
Many published research results are false, and controversy continues over the roles of replication and publication policy in improving the reliability of research. Addressing these problems is frustrated by the lack of a formal framework…
Strongly correlated Fermi systems are among the most intriguing, best experimentally studied and fundamental systems in physics. These are, however, in defiance of theoretical understanding. The ideas based on the concepts like Kondo…
Distorted science communication harms individuals and society as it can lead to unhealthy behavior change and decrease trust in scientific institutions. Given the rapidly increasing volume of science communication in recent years, a…
Curiously overlooked in physics is its dependence on the transmission of numbers. For example the transmission of numerical clock readings is implicit in the concept of a coordinate system. The transmission of numbers and other logical…
When most people think of physics, they think of what they learned in high school physics: that the world is fundamentally predictable. Given the position and velocity of a particle in space, it should be possible to predict its position at…
Arising out of an attempt at a new foundations of mathematics, in which relations are more primitive than sets, and out of the theoretical physicists' concept of underlying causes of empirical phenomena, the idea of a purely mathematical…
It is argued that the nature of probability is essentially informational rather than physical and that quantum mechanical predictions should be viewed as logical inferences made on the basis of the information content of a given…
Misinformation posting and spreading in Social Media is ignited by personal decisions on the truthfulness of news that may cause wide and deep cascades at a large scale in a fraction of minutes. When individuals are exposed to information,…
Mathematical proofs are both paradigms of certainty and some of the most explicitly-justified arguments that we have in the cultural record. Their very explicitness, however, leads to a paradox, because the probability of error grows…
Reproducibility is an important feature of science; experiments are retested, and analyses are repeated. Trust in the findings increases when consistent results are achieved. Despite the importance of reproducibility, significant work is…
Precision measurements of fundamental quantities have played a key role in pointing the way forward in developing our understanding of the universe. Though the enormously successful Standard Model (SM) describes the breadth of both…
The high fraction of published results that turn out to be incorrect is a major concern of today's science. This paper contributes to the understanding of this problem in two independent directions. First, Johnson's recent claim that…
We point out an important hidden inconsistency in Fermi's probability of the quantum states that engendered inconsistent/inaccurate equations-of-state extensively used in the literature to model nonideal plasma systems. The importance of…
Laymen and sometimes even physicists think of natural sciences, in particular of theoretical and mathematical physics often as subjects, which unfold according to an intrinsic logical pattern, with the limitations being set only by the…
The $\Lambda$CDM model provides a good fit to most astronomical observations but harbors large areas of phenomenology and ignorance. With the improvements in the precision and number of observations, discrepancies between key cosmological…
Neuroscientists frequently use a certain statistical reasoning to establish the existence of distinct neuronal processes in the brain. We show that this reasoning is flawed and that the large corresponding literature needs reconsideration.…
Statistical hypothesis testing serves as statistical evidence for scientific innovation. However, if the reported results are intentionally biased, hypothesis testing no longer controls the rate of false discovery. In particular, we study…
Easier access to the internet and social media has made disseminating information through online sources very easy. Sources like Facebook, Twitter, online news sites and personal blogs of self-proclaimed journalists have become significant…