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science journals

Why trust in “science” is becoming unwise

In case you wondered: "China is also spending lavishly around the world to win supremacy in science — which includes becoming the biggest national sponsor of open access journals published by both Springer Nature and Elsevier, owner of The Lancet." Read More ›

What will the long-term effect be of science journals playing useful idiots around COVID-19?

Some of us have been reflecting on the effect of the COVID-19 panic on the public estimation of science. Here’s an article on the "useful idiot" problem among science journals. Read More ›

Evidence of loss of faith in science due to political partisanship

Time will tell but the effect may prove cumulative. People lose trust for different reasons and the numbers add up, not down … When the next “Trust the Science!” panic sweeps the internet, a third group will join them, asking, “So what’s in this latest crazy for the Voice of Science?” Read More ›

Writing Science Fiction Helps Students Understand Science Better

A recent study published in Issues in Teaching Earth Science suggests that having student write a science fiction story incorporating a concept helps them understand the concept better. Students in an introductory college geology course engaged in one of two exercises to learn more about the concept of cross cutting relationships, a major principle in stratigraphy. One exercise involved writing a report on the concept, the other involved writing a science fiction story based on the concept. Preliminary results suggest that students who engaged with the material within the context of science fiction writing gained a deeper understanding. While the study was focused on geological concepts, we might suggest that Darwinists have been writing science fiction for decades and publishing Read More ›

Science Says It, So It Must Be So, Right?….Right?…Right?

Science says it, so it must be so, right?  Well, here we have one of the most famous studies of all time coming under fire for presenting false data and conclusions.  Shocking (pun intended).  Sixty-plus years ago, Yale University professor Stanley Milgram used a fake shock-torture setup to show that people are frighteningly easy to manipulate into doing as they’re told. One researcher described the setup as designed discover whether “ordinary Americans would obey immoral orders, as many Germans had done during the Nazi period.” The answer Milgram gave that question was a disturbing yes. I recall this study well.  One of my jobs in grad school was taking films from the library to show in various classes on the Read More ›

A science journal’s editors resign en masse over open access foot-dragging

They’ve heard lots of noise but also seen lots of foot-dragging, about making research reports available publicly for free: The board told Nature that given the journal’s subject matter — the assessment and dissemination of science — it felt it needed to be at the forefront of open publishing practices, which it says includes making bibliographic references freely available for analysis and reuse, and being open access and owned by the community. “It’s essential that this work be made openly available and that the communication of the research be managed by the community,” says Cassidy Sugimoto, an information scientist at Indiana University Bloomington and a resigning board member. Board members also wanted Elsevier to lower the journal’s article-publishing charges for Read More ›