Objective Science

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Christoph Laucht - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • Elemental Germans: Klaus Fuchs, Rudolf Peierls and the Making of British Nuclear Culture 1939-59
    2012
    Co-Authors: Christoph Laucht
    Abstract:

    Contents List of Figures Preface List of Abbreviations Introduction Difficult Beginnings: Social Integration between Survival and Internment Almost Accidental Beginnings: Professional Integration between Marginalization and British-American Nuclear Co-operation American Interlude: The Manhattan Project, the Atom Bomb and the Emergence of a New Approach to Nuclear Research A Nation Betrayed? The Klaus Fuchs Atomic Espionage Case Reconsidered Subject to Suspicion: Rudolf Peierls and the Klaus Fuchs Espionage Case The Responsible Scientist: Rudolf Peierls and the Formation of the Atomic Scientists' Association The 'Unpolitical' Scientist: Rudolf Peierls, the Concept of 'Objective' Science and the End of the Atomic Scientists' Association Conclusions and Afterthoughts Notes and References Bibliography Index

  • the unpolitical scientist rudolf peierls the concept of Objective Science and the end of the atomic scientists association
    2012
    Co-Authors: Christoph Laucht
    Abstract:

    If Rudolf Peierls helped create the Atomic Scientists’ Association (ASA) and shape its Objectives tremendously, he also had a significant share in its demise. Shortly after its formation, the ASA faced problems regarding its future existence, especially its approach to politics and recruitment. Peierls substantially contributed to these issues through his insistence on the concept of ‘ObjectiveScience. His socialization in the academic milieu of inter-war Germany informed this ambivalent concept that ultimately led to the dissolution of the ASA. The ideal of political ‘objectivity’ not only generated internal problems for the ASA, but it also had a serious impact on its mission. What seemed to work in the immediate post-war period soon became outdated and was, as Matt Price has argued in the context of the United States, ‘a fiction’.1 But Peierls himself was inconsistent in adhering to his concept of political ‘objectivity’, even after the coming of the H-bomb.

  • The ‘Unpolitical’ Scientist: Rudolf Peierls, the Concept of ‘ObjectiveScience and the End of the Atomic Scientists’ Association
    Elemental Germans, 2012
    Co-Authors: Christoph Laucht
    Abstract:

    If Rudolf Peierls helped create the Atomic Scientists’ Association (ASA) and shape its Objectives tremendously, he also had a significant share in its demise. Shortly after its formation, the ASA faced problems regarding its future existence, especially its approach to politics and recruitment. Peierls substantially contributed to these issues through his insistence on the concept of ‘ObjectiveScience. His socialization in the academic milieu of inter-war Germany informed this ambivalent concept that ultimately led to the dissolution of the ASA. The ideal of political ‘objectivity’ not only generated internal problems for the ASA, but it also had a serious impact on its mission. What seemed to work in the immediate post-war period soon became outdated and was, as Matt Price has argued in the context of the United States, ‘a fiction’.1 But Peierls himself was inconsistent in adhering to his concept of political ‘objectivity’, even after the coming of the H-bomb.

Geoff Darch - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • decision making in contexts of deep uncertainty an alternative approach for long term climate policy
    Environmental Science & Policy, 2020
    Co-Authors: Mark Workman, Kate Dooley, Guy Lomax, James Maltby, Geoff Darch
    Abstract:

    Abstract The majority of global emissions scenarios compatible with holding global warming to less than 2 °C depend on the large-scale use of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) to compensate for an overshoot of atmospheric CO2 budgets. Recent critiques have highlighted the ethical and environmental risks of this strategy and the danger of building long-term climate policy on such speculative technological scenarios emerging from integrated assessment models. Here, we critically examine both the use of BECCS in mitigation scenarios and the decision making philosophy underlying the use of integrated assessment modelling to inform climate policy. We identify a number of features of integrated assessment models that favour selection of BECCS over alternative strategies. However, we argue that the deeper issue lies in the tendency to view model outputs as Objective Science, capable of defining “optimal” goals and strategies for which climate policy should strive, rather than as exploratory tools within a broader policy development process. This model-centric decision making philosophy is highly sensitive to uncertainties in model assumptions and future trends, and tends to favour solutions that perform well within the model framework at the expense of a wider mix of strategies and values. Drawing on the principles of Robust Decision Making, we articulate the need for an alternative approach that explicitly embraces uncertainty, multiple values and diversity among stakeholders and viewpoints, and in which modelling exists in an iterative exchange with policy development rather than separate from it. Such an approach would provide more relevant and robust information to near-term policymaking, and enable an inclusive societal dialogue about the appropriate role for carbon dioxide removal within climate policy.

Aaron Panofsky - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • Rethinking scientific authority: Behavior genetics and race controversies
    American Journal of Cultural Sociology, 2018
    Co-Authors: Aaron Panofsky
    Abstract:

    The controversy over the genetic explanation for racial differences in intelligence and behavior has been sustained by the platform the field of behavior genetics has offered race researchers. Explanations of this support have focused on political or scientific rationalities: behavior geneticists must support the claim that blacks are genetically less intelligent either for political reasons or they believe that conclusion is an unavoidable conclusion of Objective Science. These explanations do not withstand scrutiny given the field’s political diversity, self-image as a scientific endeavor, and skepticism about the scientificity of genetic racial explanations. Using qualitative data from interviews and the historical record, this article offers an alternate two-part explanation that focuses first, on the forces and struggles behavior geneticists faced as a field during the IQ and race controversy in the 1970s, and second, on the way sanctuary for race researchers has helped the field project images of strength to build scientific authority. The article offers a retheorization of scientific authority beyond the Weberian focus on legitimacy. It is shown to be first embedded in the relational structure of the field and second connected to the symbolic resources that provocative, though illegitimate, ideas can offer scientists.

Mark Workman - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • decision making in contexts of deep uncertainty an alternative approach for long term climate policy
    Environmental Science & Policy, 2020
    Co-Authors: Mark Workman, Kate Dooley, Guy Lomax, James Maltby, Geoff Darch
    Abstract:

    Abstract The majority of global emissions scenarios compatible with holding global warming to less than 2 °C depend on the large-scale use of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) to compensate for an overshoot of atmospheric CO2 budgets. Recent critiques have highlighted the ethical and environmental risks of this strategy and the danger of building long-term climate policy on such speculative technological scenarios emerging from integrated assessment models. Here, we critically examine both the use of BECCS in mitigation scenarios and the decision making philosophy underlying the use of integrated assessment modelling to inform climate policy. We identify a number of features of integrated assessment models that favour selection of BECCS over alternative strategies. However, we argue that the deeper issue lies in the tendency to view model outputs as Objective Science, capable of defining “optimal” goals and strategies for which climate policy should strive, rather than as exploratory tools within a broader policy development process. This model-centric decision making philosophy is highly sensitive to uncertainties in model assumptions and future trends, and tends to favour solutions that perform well within the model framework at the expense of a wider mix of strategies and values. Drawing on the principles of Robust Decision Making, we articulate the need for an alternative approach that explicitly embraces uncertainty, multiple values and diversity among stakeholders and viewpoints, and in which modelling exists in an iterative exchange with policy development rather than separate from it. Such an approach would provide more relevant and robust information to near-term policymaking, and enable an inclusive societal dialogue about the appropriate role for carbon dioxide removal within climate policy.

John J Mcgrath - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • myths and plain truths about schizophrenia epidemiology the nape lecture 2004
    Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 2005
    Co-Authors: John J Mcgrath
    Abstract:

    Objective: Science needs to constantly match research models against the data. With respect to the epidemiology of schizophrenia, the widely held belief that the incidence of schizophrenia shows little variation may no longer be supported by the data. The aims of this paper are (i) to explore data-vs.-belief mismatch with respect to the incidence of schizophrenia, and (ii) to speculate on the causes and consequences of such discrepancies. Method: Based on a recently published systematic review of the incidence of schizophrenia, the distribution of incidence rates around the world was examined. In order to examine if the incidence of schizophrenia differed by sex, male vs. female risk ratios were generated. Results: The distribution of incidence rates for schizophrenia is asymmetrical with many high rates skewing the distribution. Based on the central 80% of rates, the incidence of schizophrenia varies in a five-fold range (between 7.7 and 43.0 per 100 000). Males have a significantly higher incidence of schizophrenia compared with females (median male to female risk ratio = 1.4), and this difference could not be accounted for by diagnostic criteria or age range. Conclusion: The beliefs that (i) the incidence of schizophrenia does not vary between sites and (ii) males and females are equally affected, may have persisted because of an unspoken deeper belief that schizophrenia is an egalitarian and exceptional disorder. Our ability to generate productive hypotheses about the aetiology of schizophrenia rests on an accurate appraisal of the data. Beliefs not supported by data should be identified and relabelled as myths.