Related papers: The Gold Effect: Odyssey of Scientific Research
This paper collects some problems that I have encountered during the years, have puzzled me and which, to the best of my knowledge, are still open. Most of them are well-known and have been first stated by other authors. In this sad season…
Conflict in research teams was a near-ubiquitous phenomenon, with the three top issues being lack of respect or overconfidence, non-collegial behaviour and authorship. Most frequently involved (and perceived as most helpful) were informal…
We discuss the problems of consensus and unity in science. The natural sciences seem to contrast with many other areas of endeavor in that a high level of consensus seems to exist in them. However, a careful analysis of the structure of…
Judging the significance and reproducibility of quantitative research requires a good understanding of relevant uncertainties, but it is often unclear how well these have been evaluated and what they imply. Reported scientific uncertainties…
The issue of asymmetric uncertainties resulting from fits, nonlinear propagation and systematic effects is reviewed. It is shown that, in all cases, whenever a published result is given with asymmetric uncertainties, the value of the…
Contrary to claims about the irrelevance of philosophy for science, I argue that philosophy has had, and still has, far more influence on physics than is commonly assumed. I maintain that the current anti-philosophical ideology has had…
Without a doubt many problems in physics arise as a consequence of our philosophical conception of the world. In this contribution however we endeavor to alleviate this scenario by putting forward a philosophical approach under which some…
Some thoughts are presented on the inter-relation between beauty and truth in science in general and theoretical physics in particular. Some conjectural procedures that can be used to create new ideas, concepts and results are illustrated…
There are countless examples in the history of science that not only were the laws of physics often incomplete and more limited in their domain of validity than was realized, but at times they missed the mark completely. Despite this, our…
The effects of the experiment itself upon the obtained results and, especially, the influence of a large number of experiments are extensively discussed in the literature. We show that the important factor that stands at the basis of these…
We examine the tension between academic impact - the volume of citations received by publications - and scientific disruption. Intuitively, one would expect disruptive scientific work to be rewarded by high volumes of citations and,…
This paper examines the processes involved in attempting to capture the subtlest aspects of nature by the scientific method and argues on this basis that nature is fundamentally elusive and may resist grasping by the methods of science. If…
Many 'interesting; correlated electron materials exhibit an unusual sensitivity of measured properties to external perturbations, and in particular to imperfections in the sample being measured. It is argued that in addition to its…
It appears paradoxical that science is producing outstanding new results and theories at a rapid rate at the same time that researchers are identifying serious problems in the practice of science that cause many reports to be irreproducible…
We analyse the implications of the closure of the physical for experiments in the scientific study of consciousness when all the details are considered, especially how measurement results relate to physical events. It turns out that the…
This article addresses broad trends in interdisciplinary research in physics where interactions with colleagues in fields such as computer science, ecology, or economics can often be derailed by unintentional clashes of methodologies and…
Life occurs in ionic solutions, not pure water. The ionic mixtures of these solutions are very different from water and have dramatic effects on the cells and molecules of biological systems, yet theories and simulations cannot calculate…
The contradiction between physical and economical sciences concerning the growth of the production/consumption mechanism is analyzed. It is then shown that if one wishes to keep the security level stable or to enhance it in a growing…
The fundamental physical theories that interpret and explain behaviour of matter in nature are dependent on several unobservables and insensibles in their construction. While a rigorous natural philosophy cannot take them for granted, there…
The physics of matter in the condensed state is concerned with problems in which the number of constituent particles is vastly greater than can be easily comprehended. The inherent physical limitations of the human mind are fundamental and…