Related papers: What Makes A Discovery
I provide a critical commentary regarding the attitude of the logician and the philosopher towards the physicist and physics. The commentary is intended to showcase how a general change in attitude towards making scientific inquiries can be…
The claim that life is an emergent phenomenon exhibiting novel properties and principles is often criticized for being in conflict with causal closure at the microscopic level. I argue that advances in cosmological theory suggesting an…
In this paper, using a significantly improved version of the model-independent, cosmographic approach to cosmology (John, M. V. 2004, ApJ, 614, 1), we address an important question: Was there a decelerating past for the universe? To answer…
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…
Ours could realistically be the generation to discover evidence of life beyond Earth. With this privileged potential comes responsibility. The magnitude of the question, "are we alone?", and the public interest therein, opens the…
References, the mechanism scientists rely on to signal previous knowledge, lately have turned into widely used and misused measures of scientific impact. Yet, when a discovery becomes common knowledge, citations suffer from obliteration by…
This is a broad and in places unconventional overview of the strengths and shortcomings of our standard models of fundamental physics and of cosmology. The emphasis is on ideas that have accessible experimental consequences. It becomes…
Here, we present a simple solution to problems that have plagued (extra)"galactic" astronomers and cosmologists over the last century. We show that "galaxy" formation, dark matter, and the tension in the expansion of the universe can all be…
We explore a paradox of collective action and certainty in science wherein the more scientists research together, the less that work contributes to the value of their collective certainty. When scientists address similar problems and share…
We review the relatively new, internet-enabled, and rapidly-evolving field of citizen science, focusing on research projects in stellar, extragalactic and solar system astronomy that have benefited from the participation of members of the…
A probabilistic technique for the joint estimation of background and sources with the aim of detecting faint and extended celestial objects is described. Bayesian probability theory is applied to gain insight into the coexistence of…
Astronomers, and in particular exoplaneteers, have a curious habit of expressing Bayes factors as frequentist sigma values. This is of course completely unnecessary and arguably rather ill-advised. Regardless, the practice is common -…
The physics community has adopted the principle that when new experimental data appears, physicists should first try to explain it based on existing science. Only if all such attempts fail can new exotic explanations be brought in. However,…
Although dark matter is a central element of modern cosmology, the history of how it became accepted as part of the dominant paradigm is often ignored or condensed into a brief anecdotical account focused around the work of a few pioneering…
The accelerating expansion of the universe presents an exciting, fundamental challenge to the standard models of particle physics and cosmology. I highlight some of the outstanding challenges in both developing theoretical models and…
Interdisciplinary collaborations now sweep most fields of the natural and life sciences, necessary to tackle the world's most challenging problems. Yet, the scientific enterprise continues to be dominated by old stereotypes:…
This paper summarizes recents results in gamma-ray astronomy, most of which were derived with data from ground-based gamma-ray detectors. Many of the contributions presented at this conference involve multiwavelength studies which combine…
In research policy, effective measures that lead to improvements in the generation of knowledge must be based on reliable methods of research assessment, but for many countries and institutions this is not the case. Publication and citation…
Decisions in organizations are about evaluating alternatives and choosing the one that would best serve organizational goals. To the extent that the evaluation of alternatives could be formulated as a predictive task with appropriate…
Many see modern science as having serious defects, intellectual, social, moral. Few see this as having anything to do with the philosophy of science. I argue that many diverse ills of modern science are a consequence of the fact that the…