Links: Underbelly of Doing Science

1. John Horgan @ScientificAmerican

[...] taught me some lessons about science journalism that my subsequent experiences reinforced. First, researchers, when accused of hype, love to blame it on the media. But media hype can usually be traced back to the researchers themselves.

2.  Gary Marcus @NewYorker

But science is not just about conclusions, which are occasionally incorrect. It’s about a methodology for investigation, which includes, at its core, a relentless drive towards questioning that which came before. You can both love science and question it. As my father, who passed away earlier this year, taught me, there is no contradiction between the two.

3. Jesse Singal @NYMag

After all, what both the [...] cases have in common  [...] is the extent to which groups of progressive self-appointed defenders of social justice banded together to launch full-throated assaults on legitimate science, and the extent to which these attacks were abetted by left-leaning academic institutions and activists too scared to stand up to the attackers, often out of a fear of being lumped in with those being attacked, or of being accused of wobbly allyship.

4. Steve Novella @Neurologica

Skeptics are often in a tricky position. We simultaneously are cheerleaders for science, promoting science education, scientific literacy, and the power of science as the best method for understanding the universe. 

At the same time the skeptical approach requires that we explore and discuss all the various flaws, errors, and weaknesses in the institutions and process of science. Science in theory is fantastic, but it is practiced by flawed people with all their cognitive biases and perverse incentives (much like democracy or capitalism).