Related papers: Pathological Science
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…
We study a partially observable nonlinear stochastic system with unknown parameters, where the given time scales of the states and measurements may be distinct. The proposed setting is inspired by disease management, particularly leukemia.
A lot. [In this hard, unbiased and objective look at some past and continuing blunders in following Weinberg's suggestions to arrive at a comprehensive description of Nuclear Physics using Effective Field Theories, some names and citations…
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…
In order to describe natural phenomena, science develops sophisticated models that use mathematical and formal languages which seem, and often are, very far from common experience. When a phenomenon is not accessible to our senses, its…
We present a few results about (non)pathology of submeasures and ideals.
The longer-lived excited nuclear states, referred as nuclear isomers, exist due to the hindered decays owing to their peculiar nucleonic structural surroundings. Some of these conditions, being exceptionally rare and limited to achieve,…
Philosophers have spilled much ink over the discovery of ideas in the classical 'context of discovery'. However, there has been little engagement with the question of what constitutes a discovery of 'things in the world'. A much-overlooked…
What science does, what science could do, and how to make science work? If we want to know the answers to these questions, we need to be able to uncover the mechanisms of science, going beyond metrics that are easily collectible and…
Several counterexamples in analysis show the existence of some special object with some sort of pathological behavior. We present three different examples where the pathological behavior is not an isolated exception, but it is the "typical"…
One might have hoped that the immediacy and completeness of scientific information provided through the internet would have made the wrongful appropriation of someone else's ideas --now so easy to detect and document-- a sin of the past.…
Richard Feynman famously said that nobody understands quantum mechanics and cautioned against asking: "But how can it be like that?" Something about the conceptual foundations of the theory is profoundly puzzling, but just what is so…
The crown jewel of particle physics, the Standard Model (SM), has withstood numerous experimental trials. However, there are still some observations it cannot explain. Examples such as dark matter and the matter-antimatter imbalance in the…
Some risks have extremely high stakes. For example, a worldwide pandemic or asteroid impact could potentially kill more than a billion people. Comfortingly, scientific calculations often put very low probabilities on the occurrence of such…
When we study the paradoxes of set theory we find out that there are mainly 2 types: the pathologies and the antinomies. These 2 notions are made precise and compared with the somehow inductively definable concept "abnormal". (See my paper…
Machine learning has been pervasively touching many fields of science. Chemistry and materials science are no exception. While machine learning has been making a great impact, it is still not reaching its full potential or maturity. In this…
In 2007 an international conference engaged a reflection on the present conditions for sciences and scientific practice, to initiate a dialogue between science, philosophy, epistemology and sociology. Starting from many examples taken from…
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:…
Neurodivergent people experience the world, conceptualize scientific concepts, and engage with meaning-making differently than their neurotypical peers. When these differences are actualized in an institutional setting, such as higher…
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…