Week 11: Scientific practice & Nietzsche Flashcards
(15 cards)
Does science exist independently of society, according to Merton?
No, science relies on and interacts with society and its beliefs; it is shaped by social context.
Why is science considered public property?
Because it is a collaborative effort, built through shared knowledge and collective inquiry.
How does capitalism conflict with the public nature of science?
Capitalism allows inventors to privatize discoveries (e.g. through patents), limiting public access to scientific advancements.
What is the contradiction in scientific universalism, according to Merton?
Although science claims to be universal and unbiased, in practice it often reinforces existing social biases.
Netherlands Code of Conduct: Core principles
1) honesty
2) scrupulousness
3) transparency
4) independence
5) responsibility
Merton’s five principles of science (CUDOS)
1) Communalism: scientists value working together as a community
2) Universalism: the identity of the scientist making a scientific claim should be irrelevant in judging whether the claims any good.
3) Disinterestedness: having no bias towards a desired outcome of the research
4) Originality: we want scientists to come up with new things, not repeat things which have already been done
5) Scepticism: we want scientists to be sceptical and rethink their ideas
How are researchers rewarded for their work?
By receiving recognition and money.
Publish-or-perish culture:
Scientists have to publish a lot, especially in prestigious articles, in order to be successful.
How is pressure to publish bad?
- Speed becomes more important that quality.
- Smaller, fragmented articles are published instead of longer ones.
- Concentration of efforts in popular, productive areas of research.
- Preference for research that leads to guaranteed results
- More shared authorship, mutual citation agreements etc.
Important scientific sins:
1) fabricating research results
2) plagiarism
3) making your own research look better than it actually is
4) using dubious tricks to have your results published before other scientists do
How can we better understand fraud?
We can better understand fraud when we think of fraudulent science as a continuity, not a black-or-white thing
Nietzsche
Believes that every attempt to give a foundation is bound to fail. If you find one, you’re deceiving yourself.
1. Truth is an error.
2. Skeptical of objective truth.
3. Truths can contradict each other.
4. “There are no facts, only interpretations.”
5. This is the postmodernist view about truth.
Conscience
When you consult your conscience, it will be right (when asking yourself to if it is right to kill people, your conscious is proof that it’s wrong): “Foundation: justifies some of your claims, but doesn’t need justification itself.”
Genealogy (Nietzsche)
Stories about the origins of our values in order to show that they are not as obvious as we believe (an investigation into the origins of our values that shows that those values are the results of events that are not worthy of our respect).
* Perhaps we want to hurt other people, but because society has a norm that it is wrong, these intentions are turned inwards where we then hurt ourselves (guilt).
Two attacks of postmodernism:
- Attack on foundations
- Attack on the idea that Truth is One
