# kb

id: antiscience-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiscience-2.md
category: reference
title: Antiscience
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiscience
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:27.931824+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: antiscience-20260505-0
summary:
Historically, antiscience first arose as a reaction against scientific materialism. The 18th century Enlightenment had ushered in "the ideal of a unified system of all the sciences", but there were those fearful of this notion, who "felt that constrictions of reason and science, of a single all-embracing system... were in some way constricting, an obstacle to their vision of the world, chains on their imagination or feeling". Antiscience then is a rejection of "the scientific model [or paradigm]... with its strong implication that only that which was quantifiable, or at any rate, measurable... was real". In this sense, it comprises a "critical attack upon the total claim of the new scientific method to dominate the entire field of human knowledge". However, scientific positivism (logical positivism) does not deny the reality of non-measurable phenomena, only that those phenomena should not be adequate to scientific investigation. Moreover, positivism, as a philosophical basis for the scientific method, is not consensual or even dominant in the scientific community (see philosophy of science). Recent developments and discussions around antiscience attitudes reveal how deeply intertwined these beliefs are with social, political, and psychological factors. A study published by Ohio State News on July 11, 2022, identified


id: antiscience-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiscience-3.md
category: reference
title: Antiscience
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiscience
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:27.931824+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: antiscience-20260505-0
summary:
=== Ecology and health sphere === Within the ecological and health spheres, Levins identifies a conflict "not between science and antiscience, but rather between different pathways for science and technology; between a commodified science-for-profit and a gentle science for humane goals; between the sciences of the smallest parts and the sciences of dynamic wholes... [he] offers proposals for a more holistic, integral approach to understanding and addressing environmental issues". These beliefs are also common within the scientific community, with for example, scientists being prominent in environmental campaigns warning of environmental dangers such as ozone depletion and the greenhouse effect. In the medical sphere, patients and practitioners may choose to reject science and adopt a pseudoscientific approach to health problems. This can be both a practical and a conceptual shift and has attracted strong criticism: "therapeutic touch, a healing technique based upon the laying-on of hands, has found wide acceptance in the nursing profession despite its lack of scientific plausibility. Its acceptance is indicative of a broad antiscientific trend in nursing". Glazer also criticises the therapists and patients, "for abandoning the biological underpinnings of nursing and for misreading philosophy in the service of an antiscientific world-view". In contrast, Brian Martin criticized


id: antiscience-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiscience-4.md
category: reference
title: Antiscience
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiscience
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:27.931824+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: antiscience-20260505-0
summary:
== Bibliography == A Bullock & S Trombley [Eds.], The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought, third edition, London: Harper Collins, 1999 Burger, P and Luckman, T, "The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise" in the Sociology of Knowledge. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966 Collins, Harry and Pinch, Trevor, The Golem. What everyone should know about science, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993 Gross, Paul R and Norman Levitt, Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994 Gerald Holton, Science and anti-science, Harvard University Press, 1993 ISBN 0674792998 Knorr-Cetina, Karin D, & Mulkay, Michael, Science Observed: Perspectives on the Social Study of Science, Sage Publications Ltd, 1983 Knorr-Cetina, Karin D, Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge, Harvard University Press, 1999 Levins, R. "Ten propositions on science and antiscience" in Social Text, 46/47:101–111, 1996. Levins, R. "Touch Red," in Judy Kaplan an Linn Shapiro, eds., Red Diapers: Growing up in the Communist Left, U. of Illinois, 1998, pp. 257–266. Levins, R. "Dialectics and systems theory" in Science and Society 62(3):373–399, 1998. Levins, R. "The internal and external in explanatory theories", Science as Culture, 7(4):557–582, 1998. Levins, R. and Lopez C. "Toward an ecosocial


id: betrayers-of-the-truth-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betrayers_of_the_Truth-0.md
category: reference
title: Betrayers of the Truth
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betrayers_of_the_Truth
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:29.087160+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: betrayers-of-the-truth-20260505-0
summary:
Betrayers of the Truth: Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science is a book by William Broad and Nicholas Wade, published in 1982 by Simon & Schuster in New York, and subsequently (1983) also by Century Publishing in London, and with a simplified subtitle as Betrayers of the Truth: Fraud and Deceit in Science by Oxford University Press in 1985. The book is a critique of some widely held beliefs about the nature of science and the scientific process. Broad and Wade argue that the conventional wisdom that science is a strictly logical process, with objectivity the essence of scientist's attitudes, errors being speedily corrected by rigorous peer scrutiny and experiment replication, is a mythical ideal. Our conclusion, in brief, is that science bears little resemblance to its conventional portrait. We believe that the logical structure discernible in scientific knowledge says nothing about the process by which the structure was built or the mentality of the builders. In the acquisition of knowledge, scientists are not guided by logic and objectivity alone, but also by such nonrational factors as rhetoric, propaganda, and personal prejudice. Scientists do not depend solely on rational thought, and have no monopoly on it. The authors


id: big-science-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_science-0.md
category: reference
title: Big science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:30.298147+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: big-science-20260505-0
summary:
Big science is a term used by scientists and historians of science to describe a series of changes in science which occurred in industrial nations during and after World War II, as scientific progress increasingly came to rely on large-scale projects usually funded by national governments or groups of governments. Individual or small group efforts, or small science, are still relevant today as theoretical results by individual authors may have a significant impact, but very often the empirical verification requires experiments using constructions, such as the Large Hadron Collider, costing between $5 and $10 billion. == Development == While science and technology have always been important to and driven by warfare, the increase in military funding of science following the second World War was on a scale wholly unprecedented. James Conant, in a 1941 letter to Chemical Engineering News, said that World War II "is a physicist's war rather than a chemist's," a phrase that was cemented in the vernacular in post-war discussion of the role that those scientists played in the development of new weapons and tools, notably the proximity fuse, radar, and the atomic bomb. The bulk of these last two activities took place in a new form


id: big-science-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_science-1.md
category: reference
title: Big science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:30.298147+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: big-science-20260505-0
summary:
When history looks at the 20th century, she will see science and technology as its theme; she will find in the monuments of Big Science—the huge rockets, the high-energy accelerators, the high-flux research reactors—symbols of our time just as surely as she finds in Notre Dame a symbol of the Middle Ages. ... We build our monuments in the name of scientific truth, they built theirs in the name of religious truth; we use our Big Science to add to our country's prestige, they used their churches for their cities' prestige; we build to placate what ex-President Eisenhower suggested could become a dominant scientific caste, they built to please the priests of Isis and Osiris. Weinberg's article addressed criticisms of the way in which the era of Big Science could negatively affect science — such as astronomer Fred Hoyle's contention that excessive money for science would only make science fat and lazy — and encouraged, in the end, limiting Big Science only to the national laboratory system and preventing its incursion into the university system. Since Weinberg's article there have been many historical and sociological studies on the effects of Big Science both in and out of the laboratory. Soon


id: conquest-of-abundance-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquest_of_Abundance-0.md
category: reference
title: Conquest of Abundance
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquest_of_Abundance
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:31.442333+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: conquest-of-abundance-20260505-0
summary:
Conquest of Abundance: A Tale of Abstraction versus the Richness of Being is the last book by the Austrian philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend, published posthumously by the University of Chicago Press in 1999. It is edited by Bert Terpstra and includes a foreword from Grazia Borrini-Feyerabend, Feyerabend's 4th and final wife. The book was uncompleted due to Feyerabend's death in 1994 and was written to fulfill a promise made to Borrini-Feyerabend. The unfinished manuscript was published alongside several other previously published papers that engaged with the core themes of the book. == Translations == Conquest of Abundance has been translated into four languages: Spanish translation by Radamés Molina and César Mora: La conquista de la abundancia: La abstracción frente a la riqueza del ser, Paidós: Barcelona and Buenos Aires 2001, 336 pp. Italian translation by P. Adamo: Conquista dell'abbondanza: Storie dello scontro fra astrazione e ricchezza dell'essere, Raffaello Cortina: Milan 2002, 350 pp. German translation by Volker Böhnigk and Rainer Noske: Die Vernichitung der Vielfalt: Ein Bericht, Peter Engelmann (ed.), Passagen: Vienna 2005, 344 pp. Portuguese translation by Cecília Prada and Marcelo Rouanet: A Conquista da Abundância, Unisinos: São Leopoldo 2005. == Content == Conquest of Abundance contains two


id: criticism-of-the-theory-of-relativity-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_theory_of_relativity-0.md
category: reference
title: Criticism of the theory of relativity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_theory_of_relativity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:32.666932+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: criticism-of-the-theory-of-relativity-20260505-0
summary:
Criticism of the theory of relativity of Albert Einstein was mainly expressed in the early years after its publication in the early twentieth century, on scientific, pseudoscientific, philosophical, or ideological bases. Though some of these criticisms had the support of reputable scientists, Einstein's theory of relativity is now accepted by the scientific community. Reasons for criticism of the theory of relativity have included alternative theories, rejection of the abstract-mathematical method, and alleged errors of the theory. Antisemitic objections to Einstein's Jewish heritage also occasionally played a role in these objections. There are still some critics of relativity today, but their opinions are not shared by the majority in the scientific community. == Special relativity == === Relativity principle versus electromagnetic worldview === Around the end of the 19th century, the view was widespread that all forces in nature are of electromagnetic origin (the "electromagnetic worldview"), especially in the works of Joseph Larmor (1897) and Wilhelm Wien (1900). This was apparently confirmed by the experiments of Walter Kaufmann (1901–1903), who measured an increase of the mass of a body with velocity which was consistent with the hypothesis that the mass was generated by its electromagnetic field. Max Abraham (1902) subsequently sketched


id: criticism-of-the-theory-of-relativity-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_theory_of_relativity-1.md
category: reference
title: Criticism of the theory of relativity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_theory_of_relativity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:32.666932+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: criticism-of-the-theory-of-relativity-20260505-0
summary:
=== Claimed experimental refutations === Kaufmann–Bucherer–Neumann experiments: To conclusively decide between the theories of Abraham and Lorentz, Kaufmann repeated his experiments in 1905 with improved accuracy. However, in the meantime the theoretical situation had changed. Alfred Bucherer and Paul Langevin (1904) developed another model, in which the electron is contracted in the line of motion, and dilated in the transverse direction, so that the volume remains constant. While Kaufmann was still evaluating his experiments, Einstein published his theory of special relativity. Eventually, Kaufmann published his results in December 1905 and argued that they are in agreement with Abraham's theory and require rejection of the "basic assumption of Lorentz and Einstein" (the relativity principle). Lorentz reacted with the phrase "I am at the end of my Latin", while Einstein did not mention those experiments before 1908. Yet, others started to criticize the experiments. Max Planck (1906) alluded to inconsistencies in the theoretical interpretation of the data, and Adolf Bestelmeyer (1906) introduced new techniques, which (especially in the area of low velocities) gave different results and which cast doubts on Kaufmann's methods. Therefore, Bucherer (1908) conducted new experiments and arrived at the conclusion that they confirm the mass formula of relativity and


id: criticism-of-the-theory-of-relativity-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_theory_of_relativity-2.md
category: reference
title: Criticism of the theory of relativity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_theory_of_relativity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:32.666932+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: criticism-of-the-theory-of-relativity-20260505-0
summary:
=== Acceleration in special relativity === It was also claimed that special relativity cannot handle acceleration, which would lead to contradictions in some situations. However, this assessment is not correct, since acceleration actually can be described in the framework of special relativity (see Acceleration (special relativity), Proper reference frame (flat spacetime), Hyperbolic motion, Rindler coordinates, Born coordinates). Paradoxes relying on insufficient understanding of these facts were discovered in the early years of relativity. For example, Max Born (1909) tried to combine the concept of rigid bodies with special relativity. That this model was insufficient was shown by Paul Ehrenfest (1909), who demonstrated that a rotating rigid body would, according to Born's definition, undergo a contraction of the circumference without contraction of the radius, which is impossible (Ehrenfest paradox). Max von Laue (1911) showed that rigid bodies cannot exist in special relativity, since the propagation of signals cannot exceed the speed of light, so an accelerating and rotating body will undergo deformations. Paul Langevin and von Laue showed that the twin paradox can be completely resolved by consideration of acceleration in special relativity. If two twins move away from each other, and one of them is accelerating and coming back to


id: criticism-of-the-theory-of-relativity-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_theory_of_relativity-3.md
category: reference
title: Criticism of the theory of relativity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_theory_of_relativity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:32.666932+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: criticism-of-the-theory-of-relativity-20260505-0
summary:
=== Aether and absolute space === Many physicists (like Hendrik Lorentz, Oliver Lodge, Albert Abraham Michelson, Edmund Taylor Whittaker, Harry Bateman, Ebenezer Cunningham, Charles Émile Picard, Paul Painlevé) were uncomfortable with the rejection of the aether, and preferred to interpret the Lorentz transformation based on the existence of a preferred frame of reference, as in the aether-based theories of Lorentz, Larmor, and Poincaré. However, the idea of an aether hidden from any observation was not supported by the mainstream scientific community, therefore the aether theory of Lorentz and Poincaré was superseded by Einstein's special relativity which was subsequently formulated in the framework of four-dimensional spacetime by Minkowski. Others such as Herbert E. Ives argued that it might be possible to experimentally determine the motion of such an aether, but it was never found despite numerous experimental tests of Lorentz invariance (see tests of special relativity). Also attempts to introduce some sort of relativistic aether (consistent with relativity) into modern physics such as by Einstein on the basis of general relativity (1920), or by Paul Dirac in relation to quantum mechanics (1951), were not supported by the scientific community (see Luminiferous aether#End of aether?). In his Nobel lecture, George F. Smoot


id: criticism-of-the-theory-of-relativity-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_theory_of_relativity-4.md
category: reference
title: Criticism of the theory of relativity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_theory_of_relativity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:32.666932+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: criticism-of-the-theory-of-relativity-20260505-0
summary:
=== General covariance === Einstein emphasized the importance of general covariance for the development of general relativity, and took the position that the general covariance of his 1915 theory of gravity ensured implementation of a generalized relativity principle. This view was challenged by Erich Kretschmann (1917), who argued that every theory of space and time (even including Newtonian dynamics) can be formulated in a covariant way, if additional parameters are included, and thus general covariance of a theory would in itself be insufficient to implement a generalized relativity principle. Although Einstein (1918) agreed with that argument, he also countered that Newtonian mechanics in general covariant form would be too complicated for practical uses. Although it is now understood that Einstein's response to Kretschmann was mistaken (subsequent papers showed that such a theory would still be usable), another argument can be made in favor of general covariance: it is a natural way to express the equivalence principle, i.e., the equivalence in the description of a free-falling observer and an observer at rest, and thus it is more convenient to use general covariance together with general relativity, rather than with Newtonian mechanics. Connected with this, also the question of absolute motion was


id: criticism-of-the-theory-of-relativity-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_theory_of_relativity-5.md
category: reference
title: Criticism of the theory of relativity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_theory_of_relativity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:32.666932+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: criticism-of-the-theory-of-relativity-20260505-0
summary:
== Philosophical criticism == The consequences of relativity, such as the change of ordinary concepts of space and time, as well as the introduction of non-Euclidean geometry in general relativity, were criticized by some philosophers of different philosophical schools. Many philosophical critics had insufficient knowledge of the mathematical and formal basis of relativity, which led to the criticisms often missing the heart of the matter. For example, relativity was misinterpreted as some form of relativism. However, this is misleading as it was emphasized by Einstein or Planck. Although space and time did become relative in Einstein's theories, and inertial frames of reference are handled on equal footing, on the other hand, the theory makes natural laws invariant—examples are the constancy of the speed of light and the covariance of Maxwell's equations. Consequently, Felix Klein (1910) called it the "invariant theory of the Lorentz group" instead of relativity theory, and Einstein (who reportedly used expressions like "absolute theory") sympathized with this expression as well. Critical responses to relativity were also expressed by proponents of neo-Kantianism (Paul Natorp, Bruno Bauch etc.), and phenomenology (Oskar Becker, Moritz Geiger etc.). While some of them only rejected the philosophical consequences, others rejected also the physical


id: criticism-of-the-theory-of-relativity-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_theory_of_relativity-6.md
category: reference
title: Criticism of the theory of relativity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_theory_of_relativity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:32.666932+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: criticism-of-the-theory-of-relativity-20260505-0
summary:
=== Academic and non-academic criticism === Some academic scientists, especially experimental physicists such as the Nobel laureates Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark, as well as Ernst Gehrcke, Stjepan Mohorovičić, Rudolf Tomaschek and others criticized the increasing abstraction and mathematization of modern physics, especially in the form of relativity theory, and later quantum mechanics. It was seen as a tendency to abstract theory building, connected with the loss of intuitive "common sense". In fact, relativity was the first theory, in which the inadequacy of the "illustrative" classical physics was thought to have been demonstrated. Some of Einstein's critics ignored these developments and tried to revitalize older theories, such as aether drag models or emission theories (see "Alternative Theories"). However, those qualitative models were never sufficiently advanced to compete with the success of the precise experimental predictions and explanatory powers of the modern theories. Additionally, there was also a great rivalry between experimental and theoretical physicists, as regards the professorial activities and the occupation of chairs at German universities. The opinions clashed at the "Bad Nauheim debates" in 1920 between Einstein and (among others) Lenard, which attracted much public attention. In addition, there were many critics (with or without physical training) whose


id: criticism-of-the-theory-of-relativity-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_theory_of_relativity-7.md
category: reference
title: Criticism of the theory of relativity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_theory_of_relativity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:32.666932+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: criticism-of-the-theory-of-relativity-20260505-0
summary:
While the theory of relativity was enthusiastically studied in Japan and China, it faced criticism in nations with older scientific establishments. Shortly before and during World War I, there appeared some nationalistically motivated criticisms of relativity and modern physics. For example, French theoretical physicists Pierre Duhem regarded relativity as the product of the "too formal and abstract" German spirit, which was in conflict with "common sense". In Germany the Jewish ancestry of some leading relativity proponents such as Einstein and Minkowski made them targets of racially minded critics, although many of Einstein's German critics did not show evidence of such motives. The engineer Paul Weyland, a known nationalistic agitator, arranged the first public meeting against relativity in Berlin in 1919. While Lenard and Stark were also known for their nationalistic opinions, they declined to participate in Weyland's rallies, and Weyland's campaign eventually fizzled out due to a lack of prominent speakers. Lenard and others instead responded to Einstein's challenge to his professional critics to debate his theories at the scientific conference held annually at Bad Nauheim. While Einstein's critics, assuming without any real justification that Einstein was behind the activities of the German press in promoting the triumph of relativity,


id: criticism-of-the-theory-of-relativity-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_theory_of_relativity-8.md
category: reference
title: Criticism of the theory of relativity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_theory_of_relativity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:32.666932+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: criticism-of-the-theory-of-relativity-20260505-0
summary:
=== A Hundred Authors Against Einstein === A collection of various criticisms can be found in the book Hundert Autoren gegen Einstein (A Hundred Authors Against Einstein), published in 1931. It contains very short texts from 28 authors, and excerpts from the publications of another 19 authors. The rest consists of a list that also includes people who only for some time were opposed to relativity. The most targeted one is space-time followed by the speed of light as a constant and the relativity of simultaneity, with other concepts following. Besides philosophic objections (mostly based on Kantianism), also some alleged elementary failures of the theory were included; however, as some commented, those failures were due to the authors' misunderstanding of relativity. For example, Hans Reichenbach wrote a report in the entertainment section of a newspaper, describing the book as "a magnificent collection of naive mistakes" and as "unintended droll literature". Albert von Brunn interpreted the book as a pamphlet "of such deplorable impotence as occurring elsewhere only in politics" and "a fallback into the 16th and 17th centuries" and concluded “it can only be hoped that German science will not again be embarrassed by such sad scribblings”. Jacob Epstein quoted


id: nalin-de-silva-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalin_de_Silva-0.md
category: reference
title: Nalin de Silva
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalin_de_Silva
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:33.818068+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: nalin-de-silva-20260505-0
summary:
Thakurartha Devadithya Guardiyawasam Lindamulage Nalin Kumar de Silva (Sinhala: නලින් ද සිල්වා; 20 October 1944 – 1 May 2024) was a Sri Lankan philosopher, polymath and a political analyst. He was the former Sri Lankan ambassador in Myanmar. He was a professor in the department of mathematics, a member of University Grant Commission and the dean of the faculty of science at the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka. De Silva openly stated that the so-called 'objective scientific method' was a lie. In June 2011 he stated that information regarding the presence of arsenic in water claiming that the cause of Rajarata chronic kidney disease had been given to him by the god Natha. The Sri Lanka Association for the Advancement of Science, an organisation in which De Silva claimed lifelong membership, has said that they consider it "extremely unfortunate that the Dean of a Science Faculty should make it his publicly stated aim to run down science and bring it into disrepute." However the presence of arsenic was verified in water and vegetation, and the source was found to be agrochemical fertilizers. == Early life and education == Nalin de Silva was born on 20 October 1944 in Kovilagodella, Panadura,


id: nalin-de-silva-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalin_de_Silva-1.md
category: reference
title: Nalin de Silva
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalin_de_Silva
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:33.818068+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: nalin-de-silva-20260505-0
summary:
The merit (pina) in this regard should go to the "samyak drshtika devivaru" who first told that Arsenic is present in Rajarata drinking water and later revealed to us that Arsenic which is not found naturally in Sri Lanka has found its way to the wells and the wewas in Rajarata through Agrochemicals. It's simply like this. We can see professors. Professors cannot see Arsenic. We cannot see gods. Gods can see Arsenic. I like this because there is certain symmetry in it... I know very well that the so-called objective scientific method is a lie. Paranagama too has stood by De Silva and defended their methods. She said that they had first been told of the arsenic by the wife of "a university lecturer who had developed her mental faculties to communicate with a higher being", but then used scientific methods to deduce it. The Sri Lanka Association for the Advancement of Science released a statement in July 2011 questioning the validity of the findings and the process and individuals involved in the study. Their statement laid the blame for the scandal firmly on Prof Nalin De Silva, and they called for other scientists and researchers in the group


id: decline-effect-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_effect-0.md
category: reference
title: Decline effect
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_effect
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:35.033819+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: decline-effect-20260505-0
summary:
The decline effect may occur when scientific claims receive decreasing support over time. The term was first described by parapsychologist Joseph Banks Rhine in the 1930s to describe the disappearance of extrasensory perception (ESP) psychic experiments conducted by Rhine over time. More generally, Cronbach, in his review article "Beyond the two disciplines of scientific psychology" referred to the phenomenon as "generalizations decay." The term was once again used in a 2010 article by Jonah Lehrer published in The New Yorker. == Examples == In his article, Lehrer gives several examples where the decline effect is allegedly showing. In the first example, the development of second generation anti-psychotic drugs, reveals that the first tests had demonstrated a dramatic decrease in the subjects' psychiatric symptoms. However, after repeating tests this effect declined and in the end it was not possible to document that these drugs had any better effect than the first generation anti-psychotics. A well-known example of the decline effect can be seen in early experiments conducted by Professor Jonathan Schooler examining the effects of verbalization on non-verbal cognition. In an initial series of studies Schooler found evidence that verbal rehearsal of previously seen faces or colors markedly impaired subsequent recognition.


id: decline-effect-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_effect-1.md
category: reference
title: Decline effect
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_effect
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:35.033819+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: decline-effect-20260505-0
summary:
If the true effect size is small, but the initial study has low power (i.e., small sample size), then the null hypothesis will only be rejected if the effect estimate is far from zero, as illustrated in the figure. This means that subsequent replications, with larger sample sizes, will discover effect estimates that are closer to the true effect, which is closer to zero than the initial estimate. === Publication bias === Another reason may be the publication bias: scientists and scientific journals prefer to publish positive results of experiments and tests over null results, especially with new ideas. As a result, the journals may refuse to publish papers that do not prove that the idea works. Later, when an idea is accepted, journals may refuse to publish papers that support it. === Experimenter effect === In the debate that followed the original article, Lehrer answered some of the questions by claiming that scientific observations might be shaped by one's expectations and desires, sometimes even unconsciously, thus creating a bias towards the desired outcome. This is known as the experimenter effect. For example, in parapsychology, the "experimenter effect" is used to explain how an experimenter who does not believe in


id: decline-effect-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_effect-2.md
category: reference
title: Decline effect
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_effect
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:35.033819+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: decline-effect-20260505-0
summary:
== Criticism == One concern that some have expressed is that Lehrer's article may further fuel people's skepticism about academic science. It was long believed that Lehrer's article originally hinted that academic science is not as rigid as people would like to believe. It is especially the article's ending that has upset many scientists and led to broad criticism of the article. Lehrer ends the article by saying: "Just because an idea is true doesn't mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn't mean it's true. When the experiments are done, we still have to choose what to believe." This has upset scientists in the scientific community. Many have written back to Lehrer and questioned his agenda. Some have characterized Lehrer's assertion as "absurd", while others claiming that Lehrer is trying to use publication bias as an excuse for not believing in anything. As an answer to the many comments Lehrer received upon publishing the article, Lehrer published a comment on his blog, The Frontal Cortex, where he denied that he was implicitly questioning science and scientific methods in any way. In the same blog comment, Lehrer stated that he was not questioning fundamental


id: the-engine-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Engine-0.md
category: reference
title: The Engine
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Engine
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:36.317135+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: the-engine-20260505-0
summary:
The Engine is a fictional device for writing books described in the 1726 satirical novel Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. Eric A. Weiss suggests that it is an early reference to a device resembling what is now known as artificial intelligence. The Engine is a device that generates permutations of word sets. It is found at the Academy of Projectors in Lagado on the flying island of Laputa. It is described thus by Swift: “... Every one knew how laborious the usual method is of attaining to arts and sciences; whereas, by his contrivance, the most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study.” He then led me to the frame, about the sides, whereof all his pupils stood in ranks. It was twenty feet square, placed in the middle of the room. The superfices was composed of several bits of wood, about the bigness of a die, but some larger than others. They were all linked together by slender wires. These bits of wood were covered, on every square, with paper pasted on them; and on


id: farewell-to-reason-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farewell_to_Reason-0.md
category: reference
title: Farewell to Reason
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farewell_to_Reason
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:37.443488+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: farewell-to-reason-20260505-0
summary:
Farewell to Reason is a 1987 book by the Austrian philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend. The book includes some reprinted essays published in other venues and was published by Verso Books, which also published Against Method and Science in a Free Society. The primary goal of the book is to trace the historical origins of "rationalism" and argue for a version of relativism and cultural diversity. == Translations == Farewell to Reason has been translated into numerous languages: Spanish translation by José R. de Rivera: Adios a la razón, Tecnos: Madrid 1984, 300 pp. French translation by Baudouin Jurdant: Adieu à la raison, Seuil: Paris 1989, 373 pp. German translation by Jürgen Blasius: Irrwege der Vernunft, Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main 1989, 471 pp. Reprinted 1990. Italian translation by Marcello D'Agostino: Addio alla ragione, Armando: Roma 1990, 320 pp. Japanese translation: Risei yo saraba, Hoseidaigakushuppankyoku: Tokyo 1992, 34+399 pp. Portuguese translation: Adeus à razão, UNESP: São Paulo 2010, 399 pp. The book was reprinted in 1988, 1990, 1993, 1994, 1996, and 1999. A 2nd edition was released including a new preface by Feyerabend. == Content == Farewell to Reason begins with a lengthy chapter on relativism. He distinguishes it from absolutism,


id: paul-feyerabend-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend-0.md
category: reference
title: Paul Feyerabend
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:42.054365+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: paul-feyerabend-20260505-0
summary:
Paul Karl Feyerabend (; FY-ur-ah-bent; German: [ˈfaɪɐˌʔaːbm̩t]; January 13, 1924 – February 11, 1994) was an Austrian philosopher best known for his work in the philosophy of science. He started his academic career as lecturer in the philosophy of science at the University of Bristol (1955–1958); afterward, he moved to the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught for three decades (1958–1989). At various points in his life, he held joint appointments at the University College London (1967–1970), the London School of Economics (1967), the FU Berlin (1968), Yale University (1969), the University of Auckland (1972, 1975), the University of Sussex (1974), and the ETH Zurich (1980–1990). He gave lectures and lecture series at the University of Minnesota (1958–1962), Stanford University (1967), the University of Kassel (1977), and the University of Trento (1992). Feyerabend's most famous work is Against Method (1975), wherein he argues that there are no universally valid methodological rules for scientific inquiry. He also wrote on topics related to the politics of science in several essays and in his book Science in a Free Society (1978). Feyerabend's later works include Wissenschaft als Kunst (Science as Art) (1984), Farewell to Reason (1987), Three Dialogues on Knowledge (1991), and


id: paul-feyerabend-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend-1.md
category: reference
title: Paul Feyerabend
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:42.054365+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: paul-feyerabend-20260505-0
summary:
=== Nazi Occupation of Austria and World War II === Feyerabend's parents were both welcoming of the Anschluss. His mother was entranced by Hitler's voice and demeanor and his father was similarly impressed by Hitler's charisma and later joined the Nazi Party. Feyerabend himself was unmoved by the Anschluss or World War II, which he saw as an inconvenience that got in the way of reading and astronomy. Feyerabend was in the Hitler Youth as a part of compulsory policies and sometimes rebelled, praising the British or claiming he had to leave a meeting to attend Mass, and sometimes conformed, bringing in members who missed meetings. After the war, Feyerabend recounts that he "did not accept the aims of Nazism" and that he "hardly knew what they were." Later, he wondered why he did not see the occupation and war as moral problems. They were just "inconveniences" and his reactions—recalled with uncommon honesty—were suggested by accidental moods and circumstances rather than by a "well defined outlook". “Looking back, I notice a rather unstable combination of contrariness and a tendency to conform. A critical judgement or a feeling of unease could be silenced or turned into its opposite by an almost


id: paul-feyerabend-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend-2.md
category: reference
title: Paul Feyerabend
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:42.054365+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: paul-feyerabend-20260505-0
summary:
After getting wounded in action, Feyerabend was hospitalized in and around Weimar where he spent more than a year recovering and where he witnessed the end of the war and Soviet occupation. The mayor of Apolda gave him a job in the education sector and he, then still on two crutches, worked in public entertainment including writing speeches, dialogues, and plays. Later, at the music academy in Weimar, he was granted a scholarship and food stamps and took lessons in Italian, harmony, singing, enunciation, and piano. He also joined the Cultural Association for the Democratic Reform of Germany, the only association he ever joined. As Feyerabend moved back to Vienna, he was permitted to pursue a PhD at the University of Vienna. He originally intended to study physics, astronomy, and mathematics (while continuing to practice singing) but decided to study history and sociology to understand his wartime experiences. He became dissatisfied, however, and soon transferred to physics and studied astronomy, especially observational astronomy and perturbation theory, as well as differential equations, nuclear physics, algebra, and tensor analysis. He took classes with Hans Thirring, Hans Leo Przibram, and Felix Ehrenhaft. He also had a small role in a film directed by


id: paul-feyerabend-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend-3.md
category: reference
title: Paul Feyerabend
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:42.054365+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: paul-feyerabend-20260505-0
summary:
Feyerabend's primary academic appointment was at the University of California at Berkeley. While he was hired there in 1958, he spent part of his first years in the United States at the University of Minnesota, working closely with Herbert Feigl and Paul Meehl after rejecting a job offer from Cornell University. In California, he met and befriended Rudolf Carnap, whom he described as a "wonderful person, gentle, understanding, not at all as dry as would appear from some (not all) of his writings", and Alfred Tarski, among others. He also married for a third time. At Berkeley, Feyerabend mostly lectured on general philosophy and philosophy of science. During the student revolution, he also lectured on revolutionaries (Lenin, Mao, Mill, and Cohn-Bendit). He often invited students and outsiders, including Lenny Bruce and Malcolm X, to guest lecture on a variety of issues including gay rights, racism, and witchcraft. He supported the students but did not support student strikes. John Searle attempted to get Feyerabend fired from his position for hosting lectures off-campus. As Feyerabend was highly marketable in academia and personally restless, he kept accepting and leaving university appointments while holding more 'stable' positions in Berkeley and London. For instance, starting


id: paul-feyerabend-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend-4.md
category: reference
title: Paul Feyerabend
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:42.054365+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: paul-feyerabend-20260505-0
summary:
Feyerabend had become more and more aware of the limitation of theories – no matter how well conceived – compared with the detailed, idiosyncratic issues encountered in the course of scientific practice. The "poverty of abstract philosophical reasoning" became one of the "feelings" that motivated him to pull together the collage of observations and ideas that he had conceived for the project with Imre Lakatos, whose first edition was published in 1975 as Against Method. Feyerabend added to it some outrageous passages and terms, including about an 'anarchistic theory of knowledge', for the sake of provocation and in memory of Imre. He mostly wanted to encourage attention to scientific practice and common sense rather than to the empty 'clarifications' of logicians, but his views were not appreciated by the intellectuals who were then directing traffic in the philosophical community, who tended to isolate him. Against Method also suggested that "approaches not tied to scientific institutions" may have value, and that scientists should work under the control of the larger public-- views not appreciated by all scientists either. Some gave him the dubious fame of 'worst enemy of science'. Moreover, Feyerabend was aware that "scientific jargon" – read literally, world for


id: paul-feyerabend-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend-5.md
category: reference
title: Paul Feyerabend
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:42.054365+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: paul-feyerabend-20260505-0
summary:
==== Kraft Circle, hidden variables, and no-go proofs ==== During Feyerabend's PhD, he retrospectively describes himself as a "raving positivist." He was the head organizer of the 'Kraft circle' which discussed many issues in the foundations of physics and on the nature of basic statements, which was the topic of his dissertation. In 1948, Feyerabend wrote a short paper in response to Schrödinger's paper "On the Peculiarity of the Scientific Worldview." Here, Feyerabend argued that Schrödinger's demand that scientific theories present are Anschaulich (i.e., intuitively visualizable) is too restrictive. Using the example of the development of Bohr's atomic theory, he claims that theories that are originally unvisualizable develop new ways of making phenomena visualizable. His unpublished paper, "Philosophers and the Physicists," argues for a naturalistic understanding of philosophy where philosophy is "petrified" without physics and physics is "liable to become dogmatic" without philosophy. Feyerabend's early career is also defined by a focus on technical issues within the philosophy of quantum mechanics. Feyerabend argues that von Neumann's 'no-go' proof only shows that the Copenhagen interpretation is consistent with the fundamental theorems of quantum mechanics but it does not logically follow from them. Therefore, causal theories of quantum mechanics (like Bohmian mechanics)


id: paul-feyerabend-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend-6.md
category: reference
title: Paul Feyerabend
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:42.054365+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: paul-feyerabend-20260505-0
summary:
==== Empiricism, pluralism, and incommensurability ==== Much of Feyerabend's work from the late 1950s until the late 1960s was devoted to methodological issues in science. Specifically, Feyerabend offers several criticisms of empiricism and offers his own brand of theoretical pluralism. One such criticism concerns the distinction between observational and theoretical terms. If an observational term is understood as one whose acceptance can be determined by immediate perception, then what counts as 'observational' or 'theoretical' changes throughout history as our patterns of habituation change and our ability to directly perceive entities evolve. On another definition, observation terms are those that can be known directly and with certainty whereas theoretical terms are hypothetical. Feyerabend argues that all statements are hypothetical, since the act of observation requires theories to justify its veridicality. To replace empiricism, Feyerabend advances theoretical pluralism as a methodological rule for scientific progress. On this view, proliferating new theories increases the testability of previous theories that might be well-established by observations. This is because some tests cannot be unearthed without the invention of an alternative theory. One example Feyerabend uses repeatedly is Brownian motion which was not a test of the second law of classical thermodynamics. To become a test,


id: paul-feyerabend-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend-7.md
category: reference
title: Paul Feyerabend
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:42.054365+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: paul-feyerabend-20260505-0
summary:
==== Departure from Popper ==== Beginning in at least the mid-to-late 1960s, Feyerabend distanced himself from Popper both professionally and intellectually. There is a great amount of controversy about the source and nature of Feyerabend's distancing from Popper. Joseph Agassi claims that it was caused by the student revolutions at Berkeley, which somehow promoted Feyerabend's move towards epistemological anarchism defended in the 1970s. Feyerabend's friend Roy Edgley claims that Feyerabend became distanced from Popper as early as the mid-1950s, when he went to Bristol and then Berkeley and was more influenced by Thomas Kuhn and the Marxism of David Bohm. Feyerabend's first paper that explicitly repudiates Popper is his two-part paper on Niels Bohr's conception of complementarity. According to Popper, Bohr and his followers accepted complementarity as a consequence of accepting positivism. Popper was the founder of the theory of falsification, which Feyerabend was very critical of. He meant that no science is perfect, and therefore cannot be proven false. Once one repudiates positivism as a philosophical doctrine, Popper claims, one undermines the principle of complementarity. Against this, Feyerabend claims that Bohr was a pluralist who attempting to pursue a realistic interpretation of quantum mechanics (the Bohr-Kramer-Slater conjecture) but abandoned


id: paul-feyerabend-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend-8.md
category: reference
title: Paul Feyerabend
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:42.054365+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: paul-feyerabend-20260505-0
summary:
In Feyerabend's later work, especially in Conquest of Abundance, Feyerabend articulates a metaphysical theory in which the universe around us is 'abundant' in the sense that it allows for many realities to be accepted simultaneously. According to Feyerabend, the world, or 'Being' as he calls it, is pliable enough that it can change in accordance with the ways in which we causally engage with the world. In laboratories, for example, scientists do not simply passively observe phenomena but actively intervene to create phenomena with the help of various techniques. This makes entities like 'electrons' or 'genes' real because they can be stably used in a life that one may live. Since our choices about what lives we should live depend on our ethics and our desires, what is 'real' depends on what plays a role in a life that we think is worth living. Feyerabend calls this 'Aristotle's principle' as he believes that Aristotle held the same view. Being, therefore, is pliable enough to be manipulated and transformed to make many realities that conform to different ways of living in the world. However, not all realities are possible. Being resists our attempts to live with it in certain ways and


id: paul-feyerabend-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend-9.md
category: reference
title: Paul Feyerabend
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:42.054365+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: paul-feyerabend-20260505-0
summary:
==== Expertise in a free society ==== Starting from the argument that a historical universal scientific method does not exist, Feyerabend argues that science does not deserve its privileged status in western society. Since scientific points of view do not arise from using a universal method which guarantees high quality conclusions, he thought that science has no intrinsic claim to intellectual authority over other intellectual traditions like religion or myths. Based on these arguments, Feyerabend defended the idea that science should be separated from the state in the same way that religion and state are separated in a modern secular society He envisioned a free society in which "all traditions have equal rights and equal access to the centres of power." For example, parents should be able to determine the ideological context of their children's education, instead of having limited options because of scientific standards. According to Feyerabend, science should also be subjected to democratic control: not only should the subjects that are investigated by scientists be determined by popular election, scientific assumptions and conclusions should also be supervised by committees of lay people. He thought that citizens should use their own principles when making decisions about these matters. He


id: paul-feyerabend-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend-10.md
category: reference
title: Paul Feyerabend
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:42.054365+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: paul-feyerabend-20260505-0
summary:
=== In philosophy === While the immediate academic reception of Feyerabend's most read text, Against Method, was largely negative, Feyerabend is recognized today as one of the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th Century. Feyerabend's arguments against a universal method have become largely accepted, and are often taken for granted by many philosophers of science in the 21st century. His arguments for pluralism moved the topic into the mainstream and his use of historical case studies were influential in the development of the History and Philosophy of Science (HPS) as an independent discipline. His arguments against reductionism were also influential on John Dupré, Cliff Hooker, and Alan Chalmers. He was also one of the intellectual precursors of social constructivism and science and technology studies, although he participated little in either field during his lifetime. === Outside philosophy === Feyerabend's analysis of the Galileo affair, where he claims the Church was "on the right track" for censuring Galileo on moral grounds and were empirically correct, was quoted with approval by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) in a speech in 1990. In his autobiography, Feyerabend recalls a conversation with Stephen Jay Gould, in 1991, when Gould stated that Against


id: paul-feyerabend-20260505-11
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend-11.md
category: reference
title: Paul Feyerabend
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:42.054365+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: paul-feyerabend-20260505-0
summary:
=== Individual articles === Hentschel, Klaus. 1985. "On Feyerabend's Version of 'Mach's Theory of Research and its Relation to Einstein." Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 16: 387–394. Zahar, Elie. 1982. "Feyerabend on Observation and Empirical Content." The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 33(4): 397–409. Couvalis, George. 1988. "Feyerabend and Laymon on Brownian Motion." Philosophy of Science, 415–421. Thomason, Neil. 1994. "The Power of ARCHED Hypotheses: Feyerabend's Galileo as a Closet Rationalist." The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 45(1), 255–264. Preston, John. 1995. "Frictionless Philosophy: Paul Feyerabend and Relativism." History of European Ideas, 963–968. Benvenuto, Sergio. 1995. "Paul K. Feyerabend (1924-1994) - Search for Abundance", Telos, 102: 107-114. Van Fraassen, Bas. 1997. "Sola Experientia?—Feyerabend's Refutation of Classical Empiricism." Philosophy of Science, 64(S4), S385-S395. Farrell, Robert. 2000. "Will the Popperian Feyerabend Please Step Forward: Pluralistic, Popperian Themes in the Philosophy of Paul Feyerabend." International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 14(3), 257–266. Oberheim, Eric. 2005. "On the Historical Origins of the Contemporary Notion of Incommensurability: Paul Feyerabend's Assault on Conceptual Conservativism." Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 36(2), 363–390. Brown, Matthew. 2009. "Models and Perspectives on Stage: Remarks on Giere's Scientific Perspectivism." Studies


id: flatline-b-o-b-song-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatline_(B.o.B_song)-0.md
category: reference
title: Flatline (B.o.B song)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatline_(B.o.B_song)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:43.220975+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: flatline-b-o-b-song-20260505-0
summary:
"Flatline" is a song by American rapper B.o.B, initially released on SoundCloud in January 2016. It is a diss track aimed at physicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, whom he had gotten into an argument with on Twitter, over B.o.B's stated belief that the Earth is flat. The lyrics to the song refer to science as a cult. == Reception == Vulture music critic Nate Jones commented, "It's called 'Flatline,' which is both a reference to the horizon of the Earth and also a fitting description of B.o.B's career." Following criticism, B.o.B removed the song from his SoundCloud account, but it survives on YouTube and other sites where it was reposted. In April 2016, B.o.B included the song on a mixtape titled E.A.R.T.H. (Educational Avatar Reality Training Habitat), but the song lyrics had been rewritten as titled as pt. 2. In response to B.o.B's Twitter arguments with Neil deGrasse Tyson, the latter's nephew, an amateur rapper using the stage name Ellect, released a dis track of his own titled "Flat to Fact" which echoes several of his uncle's talking points and features Tyson himself providing spoken word interjections. == References ==


id: funding-bias-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funding_bias-0.md
category: reference
title: Funding bias
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funding_bias
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:44.436261+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: funding-bias-20260505-0
summary:
Funding bias, also known as sponsorship bias, funding outcome bias, funding publication bias, and funding effect, is a tendency of a scientific study to support the interests of the study's financial sponsor. This phenomenon is recognized sufficiently that researchers undertake studies to examine bias in past published studies. Funding bias has been associated, in particular, with research into chemical toxicity, tobacco, and pharmaceutical drugs. It is an instance of experimenter's bias. == Causes == === Human nature === The psychology text Influence: Science and Practice describes the act of reciprocity as a trait in which a person feels obliged to return favors. This trait is embodied in all human cultures. Human nature may influence even the most ethical researchers to be affected by their sponsors, although they may genuinely deny it. === Misconduct === Scientific malpractice involving shoddy research or data manipulation does occur in rare instances. Often, however, the quality of manufacturers' studies are at least as good as studies that were not funded by a special interest. Therefore, bias usually occurs for other reasons. === Predetermined conclusion === Research results can be selected or discarded to support a predetermined conclusion. The tobacco industry, for example, would publish their


id: bill-gaede-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gaede-0.md
category: reference
title: Bill Gaede
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gaede
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:45.577224+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: bill-gaede-20260505-0
summary:
Guillermo "Bill" Gaede (born November 19, 1952) is an Argentine engineer and programmer who is best known for Cold War industrial spying on behalf of Cuba, Iran, and China conducted while he worked at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Intel Corporation (Intel). While at AMD, he provided the Cuban government with technical information from the semiconductor industry, which the Cubans passed on to the Soviet bloc, primarily to the Soviet Union and East Germany. In 1992, Gaede turned himself over to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which placed him in contact with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The FBI began working with Gaede in a counter-espionage operation intended to penetrate Cuban intelligence using his contacts on the island. During this time, Gaede obtained work at Intel Corp. in Chandler, Arizona. Intel Security discovered the nature of his activities at AMD and terminated him, but not before Gaede filmed Intel's state-of-the-art Pentium process from home. Gaede fled with this technology to South America, where he allegedly sold the information to Chinese and Iranian representatives. Upon his return to the United States, Gaede was arrested, prosecuted, and convicted. He was convicted and sentenced to 33 months in prison in June 1996,


id: bill-gaede-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gaede-1.md
category: reference
title: Bill Gaede
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gaede
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:45.577224+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: bill-gaede-20260505-0
summary:
== The Industrial Espionage Act of 1996 == During Gaede's prosecution, AMD, the FBI, the U.S. Attorney, and all affected parties complained that there were no laws to prosecute cases such as his. Shortly after Gaede's plea, the United States Congress enacted the Industrial Espionage Act of 1996, legislation that would soon be used to prosecute activities of the type Gaede was involved in. == Charges against him == National Stolen Property Act – US Code Title 18 Section 2314 Mail Fraud – US Code Title 18 Section 1341 == Accusations against José Cohen Valdés and the Cuban government == Gaede created some controversy in the Cuban exile community in July 2009 by publicly accusing Miami businessman and ex-DGI (Cuban Intelligence Directorate) Captain José (Pepe) Cohen Valdés of working under the supervision of the Cuban government while on the island. Gaede claims that the American intelligence agencies never recruited Cohen because they did not believe Cohen to be credible. Gaede further accuses Cohen of deliberately misinforming the American intelligence agencies by channeling false information through him to the CIA and of betraying both him and their comrade in arms, Rolando Sarraff Trujillo, sentenced to 25 years in prison for espionage


id: infinite-energy-magazine-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Energy_(magazine)-0.md
category: reference
title: Infinite Energy (magazine)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Energy_(magazine)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:46.734009+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: infinite-energy-magazine-20260505-0
summary:
Infinite Energy: The Magazine of New Energy Technology, more commonly referred to simply as Infinite Energy, is a bi-monthly magazine published in New Hampshire that details theories and experiments concerning alternative energy, new science and new physics. The phrase "new energy" in the subtitle is a euphemism for perpetual motion. The magazine was founded by Eugene Mallove, who was its editor-in-chief, and is owned by the non-profit New Energy Foundation. It was established in 1994 as Cold Fusion magazine and changed its name in March 1995. Topics of interest include "new hydrogen physics," also called cold fusion; vacuum energy, or zero point energy; and so-called "environmental energy" which they define as the attempt to violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics, for example with a perpetual motion machine Archived March 6, 2009, at the Wayback Machine. This is done in pursuit of the founder's commitment to "unearthing new sources of energy and new paradigms in science." The magazine has also published articles and book reviews that are critical of the Big Bang theory that describes the origin of the universe. The magazine had a print run of 3,000, and is available on U.S. newsstands. The issues ranged in size from 48


id: interrogating-ethnography-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrogating_Ethnography-0.md
category: reference
title: Interrogating Ethnography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrogating_Ethnography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:47.904584+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: interrogating-ethnography-20260505-0
summary:
Interrogating Ethnography: Why Evidence Matters is a 2017 book by Steven Lubet of Northwestern University Law School, critiquing methods used in the discipline of ethnography. Writing in Contexts, Syid Ali of Long Island University called it "an essential critique of the most public-facing product sociology has to offer." Interrogating Ethnography, which criticizes ethnographers for the practice of changing the name of the area they study, is part of the Replication crisis. But it is largely a critique of ethnography methodology when it relies on the narratives of interviewees with no attempt to verify assertions of fact. Lubet began the project of writing this book after reading and publishing a notable critique of the use of evidence Alice Goffman's controversial 2014 book On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City, That critique led him to read and attempt to verify "more than 50 ethnographic monographs and an equivalent number of articles. Focusing on sociologists’ studies of American cities... (and checking) facts that could be documented — or not... by consulting experts and pulling public records." According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the book "has touched off a debate about what ethnographers might learn from legal scholars, and vice versa.


id: luddite-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite-0.md
category: reference
title: Luddite
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:49.155061+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: luddite-20260505-0
summary:
The Luddites were members of a 19th-century movement of English textile workers who opposed the use of certain types of automated machinery due to concerns relating to worker pay and output quality. They often destroyed the machines in organised raids. Members of the group referred to themselves as Luddites, self-described followers of "Ned Ludd", a legendary weaver whose name was used as a pseudonym in threatening letters to mill owners and government officials. The Luddite movement began in Nottingham, England, and spread to the North West and Yorkshire between 1811 and 1816. Mill and factory owners took to shooting protesters and eventually the movement was suppressed by legal and military force, which included execution and penal transportation of accused and convicted Luddites. Over time, the term has been used to refer to those opposed to the introduction of new technologies. == Etymology == The name Luddite ( LUD-ite) occurs in the movement's writings as early as 1811. The movement utilised the eponym of Ned Ludd, an apocryphal apprentice who allegedly smashed two stocking frames in 1779 after being criticised and instructed to change his method. The name often appears as Captain, General, or King Ludd. Different versions of the legends


id: luddite-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite-1.md
category: reference
title: Luddite
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:49.155061+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: luddite-20260505-0
summary:
The Luddite movement emerged during the harsh economic climate of the Napoleonic Wars, which saw a rise in difficult working conditions in the new textile factories paired with decreasing birth rates and a rise in education standards in England and Wales. Luddites were not opposed to the use of machines per se (many were skilled operators in the textile industry); they attacked manufacturers who were trying to circumvent standard labour practices of the time. The movement began in Arnold, Nottinghamshire, on 11 March 1811 and spread rapidly throughout England over the following two years. The British economy suffered greatly in 1810 to 1812, especially in terms of high unemployment and inflation. The causes included the high cost of the wars with Napoleon, Napoleon's Continental System of economic warfare, and escalating conflict with the United States. The crisis led to widespread protest and violence, but the middle classes and upper classes strongly supported the government, which used the army to suppress all working-class unrest, especially the Luddite movement. The Luddites met at night on the moors surrounding industrial towns to practise military-like drills and manoeuvres. Their main areas of operation began in Nottinghamshire in November 1811, followed by the West Riding


id: luddite-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite-2.md
category: reference
title: Luddite
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:49.155061+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: luddite-20260505-0
summary:
== Legacy == The Luddites (specifically the croppers, those who operated cropping machinery) are memorialised in the Yorkshire-area folk song "The Cropper Lads", which has been recorded by artists including Lou Killen and Maddy Prior. The croppers were very highly skilled and highly paid before the introduction of cropping machinery, and thus had more to lose and more reason to rebel against the factory owners' use of machinery. Another traditional song which celebrates the Luddites is the song "The Triumph of General Ludd", which was recorded by Chumbawamba for their 1988 album English Rebel Songs. == Modern usage == Nowadays, the term "Luddite" is often used to describe someone who either opposes or is resistant to the use of new technologies. In 1956, during a British Parliamentary debate, a Labour spokesman said that "organised workers were by no means wedded to a 'Luddite Philosophy'." By 2006, the term neo-Luddism had emerged to describe opposition to many forms of technology. According to a manifesto drawn up by the Second Luddite Congress (April 1996; Barnesville, Ohio), neo-Luddism is "a leaderless movement of passive resistance to consumerism and the increasingly bizarre and frightening technologies of the Computer Age". The term "Luddite fallacy" is


id: luddite-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite-3.md
category: reference
title: Luddite
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:49.155061+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: luddite-20260505-0
summary:
== Further reading == Anderson, Gary M.; Tollison, Robert D. (1986). "Luddism as cartel enforcement". Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE)/Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft. 142 (4): 727–738. JSTOR 40750927. Archer, John E. (2000). "Chapter 4: Industrial Protest". Social unrest and popular protest in England, 1780–1840. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-57656-7. Bailey, Brian J. (1998). The Luddite Rebellion. NYU Press. ISBN 0-8147-1335-1. Darvall, F. (1934). Popular Disturbances and Public Order in Regency England. Oxford University Press. Dinwiddy, John (1979). "Luddism and politics in the northern counties". Social History. 4 (1): 33–63. doi:10.1080/03071027908567438. Fox, Nicols (2003). Against the Machine: The Hidden Luddite History in Literature, Art, and Individual Lives. Island Press. ISBN 1-55963-860-5. Grint, Keith; Woolgar, Steve (1997). "The Luddites: Diablo ex Machina". The machine at work: technology, work, and organization. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-7456-0924-9. Haywood, Ian (2006). "Unruly People: The Spectacular Riot". Bloody Romanticism. London: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 181–222. Horn, Jeff (2015). "Machine-Breaking and the 'Threat from Below' in Great Britain and France during the Early Industrial Revolution". Crowd actions in Britain and France from the middle ages to the modern world. London: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 165–178. Linebaugh, Peter (2012). Ned Ludd & Queen Mab: machine-breaking, romanticism, and the several


id: paul-marmet-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Marmet-0.md
category: reference
title: Paul Marmet
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Marmet
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:50.469832+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: paul-marmet-20260505-0
summary:
Paul Marmet, (20 May 1932 – 20 May 2005) was a Canadian physicist, inventor, author, and professor at Laval University in Quebec City, Canada, who served as the President of the Canadian Association of Physicists. Marmet is notable for developing a novel high-resolution electron velocity selector, a scientific instrument which became widely used by scientists around the world. == Inventions == Early in his career, Marmet developed a high-resolution electron selector with his mentor Larkin Kerwin, a scientific instrument for studying ionic electronic states. Along with a mass spectrometer Marmet developed, the novel instrument had an energy resolution superior to then-available instruments and has been used widely by scientists studying electron scattering, which led to the discovery of enhanced vibrational excitation in nitrogen and of Feshbach resonances. == Research == Using the Marmet-Kerwin electron selector, Marmet and his research group discovered atomic and molecular states excited by electron impact but not by photons, such as doubly excited states that disobey spectroscopic selection rules. The group also found negative-ion resonances in which the incident electron temporarily attaches to the target atom or molecule. == Career == After receiving his physics BSc in 1956 and DSc in 1960 from Laval University and


id: brian-martin-social-scientist-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Martin_(social_scientist)-0.md
category: reference
title: Brian Martin (social scientist)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Martin_(social_scientist)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:51.577460+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: brian-martin-social-scientist-20260505-0
summary:
Brian Martin (born 1947) is a social scientist in the School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, Faculty of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, at the University of Wollongong (UOW) in NSW, Australia. He was appointed a professor at the university in 2007, and in 2017 was appointed emeritus professor. His work is in the fields of peace research, scientific controversies, science and technology studies, sociology, political science, media studies, law, journalism, freedom of speech, education and corrupted institutions, as well as research on whistleblowing and dissent in the context of science. Martin was president of Whistleblowers Australia from 1996 to 1999 and remains their International Director. He has been criticized by medical professionals and public health advocates for promoting the disproven oral polio vaccine AIDS hypothesis and supporting vaccine hesitancy in the context of his work. Martin has spoken at a British Science Association Festival of Science, and testified at the Australian Federal Senate's Inquiry into Academic Freedom. The crustacean Polycheles martini was named after him. == Biography == Martin was born in the United States in 1947 and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He earned a BA in physics at Rice University in Texas in 1969, and, seeking to avoid


id: brian-martin-social-scientist-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Martin_(social_scientist)-1.md
category: reference
title: Brian Martin (social scientist)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Martin_(social_scientist)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:51.577460+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: brian-martin-social-scientist-20260505-0
summary:
=== Vaccines === Martin has offered support for the discredited proposal that oral polio vaccine caused AIDS. The hypothesis first came to notice in Rolling Stone magazine by way of journalist Curtis and AIDS activist Elswood in 1992, and was later further promoted by the journalist/writer Hooper and Martin, with Hooper crediting Martin for giving the OPV-AIDS link hypothesis "further publicity and credibility". Martin disputes the claim that he has been a supporter of the hypothesis, instead saying that he has "never argued in favour of the OPV theory", but has instead stated "that it was and remains worthy of consideration yet in many ways has been unfairly dismissed". A 2016 article in The Australian described Martin's 2010 paper as claiming "that medical researchers had colluded to silence the theory that the AIDS virus was caused by contaminated polio vaccines in 1950s Africa." Immunologist and research scientist Greg Woods refuted Martin's posit on the Tasmanian devil facial tumour disease stating Martin's 2014 paper in The Conversation on the theory behind the cancer "misrepresents the state of the science". In 2014, Martin published a paper characterising criticism of Andrew Wakefield's discredited claims about vaccines and autism as "suppression of vaccination dissent".


id: miracles-insane-clown-posse-song-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracles_(Insane_Clown_Posse_song)-0.md
category: reference
title: Miracles (Insane Clown Posse song)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracles_(Insane_Clown_Posse_song)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:52.771163+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: miracles-insane-clown-posse-song-20260505-0
summary:
"Miracles" is a song written by the American hip hop duo Insane Clown Posse and record producer Mike E. Clark. It was released as a single from the duo's 2009 album Bang! Pow! Boom!. A music video was produced for the 2010 reissue of the album, dubbed the "Nuclear Edition". The song's lyrics focus on things experienced in everyday life, displaying an appreciation for them, and perceiving them as miraculous and outside of the laws of physics. The song sparked a number of Internet memes, and was parodied on Saturday Night Live and by Lonely Island in the song "Incredible Thoughts". == Music and lyrics == Inspiration for the song's lyrics came via the Internet generation and group members Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope raising children. In response to both modern jadedness and their children experiencing wonders of the world for the first time, the group wanted to write a song about natural phenomena humans experience in life which often go unacknowledged. The closing lyrics encourage listeners to take time to look at the world and "appreciate the things that life has to offer". According to Violent J, "What's a shame is how people walk around blind to it


id: the-monsanto-years-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monsanto_Years-0.md
category: reference
title: The Monsanto Years
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monsanto_Years
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:57.558758+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: the-monsanto-years-20260505-0
summary:
The Monsanto Years is the 37th studio album by Canadian-American singer-songwriter Neil Young and the American rock group Promise of the Real, released on June 29, 2015, on Reprise Records. A concept album which criticizes the agribusiness company Monsanto, it is Young's thirty-fifth studio album and the third by Promise of the Real. The album is the first collaboration between Young and Promise of the Real. The group is fronted by Lukas Nelson and features his brother Micah, both sons of Willie Nelson. The album was produced by both Young and John Hanlon, and is accompanied by a film documenting the recording process. == Background == Young had a long-time friendship with Willie Nelson and his sons, Lukas and Micah, and jammed with Lukas' bandmates in Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real after 2014's Farm Aid. Micah reflects on their relationship with Young: "Neil doesn't want us to hold back musically, and we all were quickly absorbed into the fold with him. We look up to him with respect, but he never treated us like we were younger, he treats us as equals. He's now our homie and he doesn’t act like he's 71." == Writing == Songs on


id: objections-to-evolution-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution-0.md
category: reference
title: Objections to evolution
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:58.826933+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: objections-to-evolution-20260505-0
summary:
Objections to evolution have been raised since evolutionary ideas came to prominence in the 19th century. When Charles Darwin published his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, his theory of evolution (the idea that species arose through descent with modification from a single common ancestor in a process driven by natural selection) initially met opposition from scientists with different theories, but eventually came to receive near-universal acceptance in the scientific community. The observation of evolutionary processes occurring (as well as the modern evolutionary synthesis explaining that evidence) has been uncontroversial among mainstream biologists since the 1940s. Since then, criticisms and denials of evolution have come from religious groups, rather than from the scientific community. Although many religious groups have found reconciliation of their beliefs with evolution, such as through theistic evolution, other religious groups continue to reject evolutionary explanations in favor of creationism, the belief that the universe and life were created by supernatural forces. The U.S.-centered creation–evolution controversy has become a focal point of perceived conflict between religion and science. Several branches of creationism, including creation science, neo-creationism, geocentric creationism and intelligent design, argue that the idea of life being directly designed by a god or intelligence is


id: objections-to-evolution-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution-1.md
category: reference
title: Objections to evolution
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:58.826933+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: objections-to-evolution-20260505-0
summary:
Evolutionary ideas came to prominence in the early 19th century with the theory (developed between 1800 and 1822) of the transmutation of species put forward by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829). The scientific community initially opposed the idea of evolution, with notable criticism from Georges Cuvier (1769–1832). The idea that laws control nature and society gained vast popular audiences with George Combe's The Constitution of Man of 1828 and with the anonymous Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation of 1844. When Charles Darwin published his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, he convinced most of the scientific community that new species arise through descent through modification in a branching pattern of divergence from common ancestors, but while most scientists accepted natural selection as a valid and empirically testable hypothesis, Darwin's view of it as the primary mechanism of evolution was rejected by some. Darwin's contemporaries eventually came to accept the transmutation of species based upon fossil evidence, and the X Club (operative from 1864 to 1893) formed to defend the concept of evolution against opposition from the church and wealthy amateurs. At that time the specific evolutionary mechanism which Darwin provided – natural selection – was actively disputed by scientists


id: objections-to-evolution-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution-2.md
category: reference
title: Objections to evolution
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:58.826933+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: objections-to-evolution-20260505-0
summary:
Creationists have appealed to democratic principles of fairness, arguing that evolution is controversial and that science classrooms should therefore "Teach the Controversy". These objections to evolution culminated in the intelligent-design movement in the 1990s and early 2000s that unsuccessfully attempted to present itself as a scientific alternative to evolution.


id: objections-to-evolution-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution-3.md
category: reference
title: Objections to evolution
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:58.826933+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: objections-to-evolution-20260505-0
summary:
== Defining evolution == A major source of confusion and ambiguity in any creation–evolution debate arises from the definition of evolution itself. In the context of biology, evolution is genetic changes in populations of organisms over successive generations. The word also has a number of different meanings in different fields, from evolutionary computation to molecular evolution to sociocultural evolution to stellar and galactic evolution. Evolution in colloquial contexts can refer to any sort of "progressive" development or gradual improvement, and a process that results in greater quality or complexity. When misapplied to biological evolution this common meaning can lead to frequent misunderstandings. For example, the idea of devolution ("backwards" evolution) is a result of erroneously assuming that evolution is directional or has a specific goal in mind (cf. orthogenesis). In reality, the evolution of a biological organism has no "objective" and is only showing increasing ability of successive generations to survive and reproduce in their environment; and increased suitability is only defined in relation to this environment. Biologists do not regard any one species (such as humans) as more highly evolved or advanced than another. Certain sources have been criticized for indicating otherwise due to a tendency to evaluate nonhuman


id: objections-to-evolution-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution-4.md
category: reference
title: Objections to evolution
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:58.826933+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: objections-to-evolution-20260505-0
summary:
An objection is often made in the teaching of evolution that evolution is controversial or contentious. Unlike past creationist arguments which sought to abolish the teaching of evolution altogether, this argument makes the claim that evolution should be presented alongside alternative views since it is controversial, and students should be allowed to evaluate and choose between the options on their own. This objection forms the basis of the "Teach the Controversy" campaign by the Discovery Institute, a think tank based in Seattle, Washington, to promote the teaching of intelligent design in U.S. public schools. This goal followed the Institute's "wedge strategy", an attempt to gradually undermine evolution and ultimately to "reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions." Several other attempts were made to insert intelligent design or creationism into the U.S. public school curriculum, including the failed Santorum Amendment in 2001. Scientists and U.S. courts have rejected this objection on the grounds that science is not based on appeals to popularity, but on evidence. The scientific consensus of biologists determines what is considered acceptable science, not popular opinion or fairness, and although evolution is controversial in


id: objections-to-evolution-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution-5.md
category: reference
title: Objections to evolution
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:58.826933+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: objections-to-evolution-20260505-0
summary:
Assuming for the purposes of argument, however, that evolution is a religion or religious tenet, the remedy is to stop the teaching of evolution, not establish another religion in opposition to it. Yet it is clearly established in the case law, and perhaps also in common sense, that evolution is not a religion and that teaching evolution does not violate the Establishment Clause, Epperson v. Arkansas, supra, Willoughby v. Stever, No. 15574-75 (D.D.C. May 18, 1973); aff'd. 504 F.2d 271 (D.C. Cir. 1974), cert. denied, 420 U.S. 924 (1975); Wright v. Houston Indep. School Dist., 366 F. Supp. 1208 (S.D. Tex 1978), aff.d. 486 F.2d 137 (5th Cir. 1973), cert. denied 417 U.S. 969 (1974). A related claim is that evolution is atheistic (see the Atheism section below); creationists sometimes merge the two claims and describe evolution as an "atheistic religion" (cf. humanism). This argument against evolution is also frequently generalized into a criticism of all science; it is argued that "science is an atheistic religion", on the grounds that its methodological naturalism is as unproven, and thus as "faith-based", as the supernatural and theistic beliefs of creationism. === Unfalsifiability === A statement is considered falsifiable if there is an


id: objections-to-evolution-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution-6.md
category: reference
title: Objections to evolution
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:58.826933+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: objections-to-evolution-20260505-0
summary:
=== Lack of observation === A common claim of creationists is that evolution has never been observed. Challenges to such objections often come down to debates over how evolution is defined (see the Defining evolution section above). Under the conventional biological definition of evolution, it is a simple matter to observe evolution occurring. Evolutionary processes, in the form of populations changing their genetic composition from generation to generation, have been observed in different scientific contexts, including the evolution of fruit flies, mice, and bacteria in the laboratory, and of tilapia in the field. Such studies on experimental evolution, particularly those using microorganisms, are now providing important insights into how evolution occurs, especially in the case of antibiotic resistance. In response to such examples, creationists say there are two major subdivisions of evolution to be considered, microevolution and macroevolution, and it is questionable if macro-evolution has been physically observed to occur. Most creationist organizations do not dispute the occurrence of short-term, relatively minor evolutionary changes, such as that observed even in dog breeding. Rather, they dispute the occurrence of major evolutionary changes over long periods of time, which by definition cannot be directly observed, only inferred from microevolutionary processes and the


id: objections-to-evolution-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution-7.md
category: reference
title: Objections to evolution
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:58.826933+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: objections-to-evolution-20260505-0
summary:
Critics of evolution commonly appeal to past scientific hoaxes such as the Piltdown Man forgery. It is argued that because scientists have been mistaken and deceived in the past about evidence for various aspects of evolution, the current evidence for evolution is likely to also be based on fraud and error. Much of the evidence for evolution has been accused of being fraudulent at various times, including Archaeopteryx, peppered moth melanism, and Darwin's finches; these claims have been subsequently refuted. It has also been claimed that certain former pieces of evidence for evolution which are now considered out-of-date and erroneous, such as Ernst Haeckel's 19th-century comparative drawings of embryos, used to illustrate his recapitulation theory ("ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"), were not merely errors but frauds. Molecular biologist Jonathan Wells criticizes biology textbooks by alleging that they continue to reproduce such evidence after it has been debunked. In response, the National Center for Science Education notes that none of the textbooks reviewed by Wells makes the claimed error, as Haeckel's drawings are shown in a historical context with discussion about why they are wrong, and the accurate modern drawings and photos used in the textbooks are misrepresented by Wells. === Unreliable chronology


id: objections-to-evolution-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution-8.md
category: reference
title: Objections to evolution
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:58.826933+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: objections-to-evolution-20260505-0
summary:
Supporters of evolution generally respond by arguing that this objection is simply an argument by lack of imagination, or argument from incredulity: a certain explanation is seen as being counterintuitive, and therefore an alternate, more intuitive explanation is appealed to instead. In actuality, evolution is not based on "chance", but on predictable chemical interactions: natural processes, rather than supernatural beings, are the "designer". Although the process involves some random elements, it is the non-random selection of survival-enhancing genes that drives the evolution of complex and ordered patterns. The fact that the results are ordered and seem "designed" is no more evidence for a supernatural intelligence than the appearance of complex non-living phenomena (e.g. snowflakes). It is also argued that there is insufficient evidence to make statements about the plausibility or implausibility of abiogenesis, that certain structures demonstrate poor design, and that the implausibility of life evolving exactly as it did is no more evidence for an intelligence than the implausibility of a deck of cards being shuffled and dealt in a certain random order. It has also been noted that arguments against some form of life arising "by chance" are really objections to nontheistic abiogenesis, not to evolution. Indeed, arguments


id: objections-to-evolution-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution-9.md
category: reference
title: Objections to evolution
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:58.826933+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: objections-to-evolution-20260505-0
summary:
There's got to be a series of advantages all the way in the feather. If you can't think of one, then that's your problem not natural selection's problem... It's perfectly possible feathers began as fluffy extensions of reptilian scales to act as insulators... The earliest feathers might have been a different approach to hairiness among reptiles keeping warm. Creationist arguments have been made such as "What use is half an eye?" and "What use is half a wing?". Research has confirmed that the natural evolution of the eye and other intricate organs is entirely feasible. Creationist claims have persisted that such complexity evolving without a designer is inconceivable and this objection to evolution has been refined in recent years as the more sophisticated irreducible complexity argument of the intelligent design movement, formulated by Michael Behe. Biochemist Michael Behe has argued that current evolutionary theory cannot account for certain complex structures, particularly in microbiology. On this basis, Behe argues that such structures were "purposely arranged by an intelligent agent". Irreducible complexity is the idea that certain biological systems cannot be broken down into their constituent parts and remain functional, and therefore that they could not have evolved naturally from less complex


id: objections-to-evolution-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution-10.md
category: reference
title: Objections to evolution
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:58.826933+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: objections-to-evolution-20260505-0
summary:
A recent objection of creationists to evolution is that evolutionary mechanisms such as mutation cannot generate new information. Creationists such as William A. Dembski, Werner Gitt, and Lee Spetner have attempted to use information theory to dispute evolution. Dembski has argued that life demonstrates specified complexity, and proposed a law of conservation of information that extremely improbable "complex specified information" could be conveyed by natural means but never originated without an intelligent agent. Gitt asserted that information is an intrinsic characteristic of life and that an analysis demonstrates the mind and will of their Creator. These claims have been widely rejected by the scientific community, which asserts that new information is regularly generated in evolution whenever a novel mutation or gene duplication arises. Dramatic examples of entirely new and unique traits arising through mutation have been observed in recent years, such as the evolution of nylon-eating bacteria which developed new enzymes to efficiently digest a material that never existed before the modern era. There is no need to account for the creation of information when an organism is considered together with the environment it evolved in. The information in the genome forms a record of how it was possible to


id: objections-to-evolution-20260505-11
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution-11.md
category: reference
title: Objections to evolution
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:58.826933+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: objections-to-evolution-20260505-0
summary:
In 1917, Vernon Kellogg published Headquarters Nights: A Record of Conversations and Experiences at the Headquarters of the German Army in France and Belgium, which asserted that German intellectuals were totally committed to might-makes-right due to "whole-hearted acceptance of the worst of Neo-Darwinism, the Allmacht of natural selection applied rigorously to human life and society and Kultur." This strongly influenced the politician William Jennings Bryan, who saw Darwinism as a moral threat to America and campaigned against evolutionary theory; his campaign culminated in the Scopes Trial, which effectively prevented teaching of evolution in most public schools until the 1960s. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, wrote August 8, 2005, in NPR's Taking Issue essay series, that "Debates over education, abortion, environmentalism, homosexuality and a host of other issues are really debates about the origin — and thus the meaning — of human life. ...evolutionary theory stands at the base of moral relativism and the rejection of traditional morality." Henry M. Morris, engineering professor and founder of the Creation Research Society and the Institute of Creation Research, claims that evolution was part of a pagan religion that emerged after the Tower of Babel,


id: objections-to-evolution-20260505-12
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution-12.md
category: reference
title: Objections to evolution
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:58.826933+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: objections-to-evolution-20260505-0
summary:
Another charge leveled at evolutionary theory by creationists is that belief in evolution is either tantamount to atheism, or conducive to atheism. It is commonly claimed that all proponents of evolutionary theory are "materialistic atheists". On the other hand, Davis A. Young argues that creation science itself is harmful to Christianity because its bad science will turn more away than it recruits. Young asks, "Can we seriously expect non-Christians to develop a respect for Christianity if we insist on teaching the brand of science that creationism brings with it?" However, evolution neither requires nor rules out the existence of a supernatural being. Philosopher Robert T. Pennock makes the comparison that evolution is no more atheistic than plumbing. H. Allen Orr, professor of biology at University of Rochester, notes that: Of the five founding fathers of twentieth-century evolutionary biology—Ronald Fisher, Sewall Wright, J. B. S. Haldane, Ernst Mayr, and Theodosius Dobzhansky—one was a devout Anglican who preached sermons and published articles in church magazines, one a practicing Unitarian, one a dabbler in Eastern mysticism, one an apparent atheist, and one a member of the Russian Orthodox Church and the author of a book on religion and science. In addition, a wide


id: objections-to-evolution-20260505-13
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution-13.md
category: reference
title: Objections to evolution
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:58.826933+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: objections-to-evolution-20260505-0
summary:
== Bibliography == Behe, Michael J. (1996). Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. New York: Free Press. ISBN 978-0-684-82754-4. LCCN 96000695. OCLC 34150540. Bowler, Peter J. (1992) [Original hardback edition published 1983]. The Eclipse of Darwinism: Anti-Darwinian Evolution Theories in the Decades Around 1900 (Johns Hopkins Paperbacks ed.). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-4391-4. LCCN 82021170. OCLC 611262030. Bowler, Peter J. (2003). Evolution: The History of an Idea (3rd ed.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-23693-6. LCCN 2002007569. OCLC 49824702. Butterfield, Nicholas J. (2001). "Ecology and evolution of Cambrian plankton". In Zhuravlev, Andrey Yu.; Riding, Robert (eds.). The Ecology of the Cambrian Radiation. Critical Moments in Paleobiology and Earth History Series; Perspectives in Paleobiology and Earth History Series. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-10613-9. LCCN 00063901. OCLC 44869047. Darwin, Charles (1859). On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1st ed.). London: John Murray. LCCN 06017473. OCLC 741260650. The book is available from The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online. Retrieved 2015-03-30. Darwin, Charles (1866). On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured


id: objections-to-evolution-20260505-14
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution-14.md
category: reference
title: Objections to evolution
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:36:58.826933+00:00
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parent: objections-to-evolution-20260505-0
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Young, David A. (1988) [Originally published 1982; Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan]. Christianity and the Age of the Earth. Thousand Oak, CA: Artisan Publishers. ISBN 978-0-934666-27-5. LCCN 81016266. OCLC 20135091. Meyer, Stephen C., and Mark Terry. "Darwin's doubt: The explosive origin of animal life and the case for intelligent design Archived 2024-06-13 at the Wayback Machine." New York (2013). == Further reading == Coleman, Simon; Carlin, Leslie, eds. (2004). The Cultures of Creationism: Anti-Evolution in English-Speaking Countries. Aldershot, Hants, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate. ISBN 978-0-7546-0912-4. LCCN 2003045172. OCLC 51867865. Denton, Michael (1986) [Originally published in Great Britain in 1985 by Burnett Books Limited]. Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1st U.S. ed.). Bethesda, MD: Adler & Adler. ISBN 978-0-917561-05-4. LCCN 85013556. OCLC 12214328. == External links == Video (10:56) − "Raising Doubts About Evolution... in Science Class" on YouTube − (NYT / Retro Report; November 2017)


id: philosophical-skepticism-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_skepticism-0.md
category: reference
title: Philosophical skepticism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_skepticism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:00.045187+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: philosophical-skepticism-20260505-0
summary:
Philosophical skepticism (UK spelling: scepticism; from Greek σκέψις skepsis, "inquiry") is a family of philosophical views that question the possibility of knowledge. It differs from other forms of skepticism in that it even rejects very plausible knowledge claims that belong to basic common sense. Philosophical skeptics are often classified into two general categories: Those who deny all possibility of knowledge, and those who advocate for the suspension of judgment due to the inadequacy of evidence. This distinction is modeled after the differences between the Academic skeptics and the Pyrrhonian skeptics in ancient Greek philosophy. Pyrrhonian skepticism is a practice of suspending judgment, and skepticism in this sense is understood as a way of life that helps the practitioner achieve inner peace. Some types of philosophical skepticism reject all forms of knowledge while others limit this rejection to certain fields, for example, knowledge about moral doctrines or about the external world. Some theorists criticize philosophical skepticism based on the claim that it is a self-refuting idea since its proponents seem to claim to know that there is no knowledge. Other objections focus on its implausibility and distance from regular life. == Overview == Philosophical skepticism is a doubtful attitude toward commonly


id: philosophical-skepticism-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_skepticism-1.md
category: reference
title: Philosophical skepticism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_skepticism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:00.045187+00:00
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parent: philosophical-skepticism-20260505-0
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=== Skeptical scenarios === A skeptical scenario is a hypothetical situation which can be used in an argument for skepticism about a particular claim or class of claims. Usually the scenario posits the existence of a deceptive power that deceives our senses and undermines the justification of knowledge otherwise accepted as justified, and is proposed in order to call into question our ordinary claims to knowledge on the grounds that we cannot exclude the possibility of skeptical scenarios being true. Skeptical scenarios have received a great deal of attention in modern Western philosophy. The first major skeptical scenario in modern Western philosophy appears in René Descartes's Meditations on First Philosophy. At the end of the first Meditation Descartes writes: "I will suppose ... that some evil demon of the utmost power and cunning has employed all his energies to deceive me." The "evil demon problem", also known as "Descartes's evil demon", was first proposed by René Descartes. It invokes the possibility of a being who could deliberately mislead one into falsely believing everything that you take to be true. The "brain in a vat" hypothesis is cast in contemporary scientific terms. It supposes that one might be a disembodied brain


id: philosophical-skepticism-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_skepticism-2.md
category: reference
title: Philosophical skepticism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_skepticism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:00.045187+00:00
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parent: philosophical-skepticism-20260505-0
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=== Criticism === Philosophical skepticism has been criticized in various ways. Some criticisms see it as a self-refuting idea while others point out that it is implausible, psychologically impossible, or a pointless intellectual game. This position is based on the idea that philosophical skepticism not only rejects the existence of knowledge but seems to make knowledge claims itself at the same time. For example, to claim that there is no knowledge seems to be itself a knowledge claim. This problem is particularly relevant for versions of philosophical skepticism that deny any form of knowledge. So the global skeptic denies that any claim is rationally justified but then goes on to provide arguments in an attempt to rationally justify their denial. Some philosophical skeptics have responded to this objection by restricting the denial of knowledge to certain fields without denying the existence of knowledge in general. Another defense consists in understanding philosophical skepticism not as a theory but as a tool or a methodology. In this case, it may be used fruitfully to reject and improve philosophical systems despite its shortcomings as a theory. Another criticism holds that philosophical skepticism is highly counterintuitive by pointing out how far removed it is


id: philosophical-skepticism-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_skepticism-3.md
category: reference
title: Philosophical skepticism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_skepticism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:00.045187+00:00
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parent: philosophical-skepticism-20260505-0
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===== Sextus Empiricus ===== The works of Sextus Empiricus (c. 200 CE) are the main surviving account of ancient Pyrrhonism. Long before Sextus's time, the Academy had abandoned skepticism and had been destroyed as a formal institution. Sextus compiled and further developed the Pyrrhonists' skeptical arguments, most of which were directed against the Stoics but included arguments against all of the schools of Hellenistic philosophy, including the Academic skeptics. Sextus, as the most systematic author of the works by Hellenistic skeptics which have survived, noted that there are at least ten modes of skepticism. These modes may be broken down into three categories: one may be skeptical of the subjective perceiver, of the objective world, and the relation between perceiver and the world. His arguments are as follows. Subjectively, the powers of the senses and reasoning may vary among different people. And since knowledge is a product of one or the other, and since neither are reliable, knowledge would seem to be in trouble. For instance, a color-blind person sees the world quite differently from everyone else. Moreover, one cannot even give preference based on the power of reason, i.e., by treating the rational animal as a carrier of greater


id: philosophical-skepticism-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_skepticism-4.md
category: reference
title: Philosophical skepticism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_skepticism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:00.045187+00:00
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parent: philosophical-skepticism-20260505-0
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Dissent – The uncertainty demonstrated by the differences of opinions among philosophers and people in general. Progress ad infinitum – All proof rests on matters themselves in need of proof, and so on to infinity, i.e, the regress argument. Relation – All things are changed as their relations become changed, or, as we look upon them from different points of view. Assumption – The truth asserted is based on an unsupported assumption. Circularity – The truth asserted involves a circularity of proofs. According to Victor Brochard "the five tropes can be regarded as the most radical and most precise formulation of philosophical skepticism that has ever been given. In a sense, they are still irresistible today." ==== Academic skepticism ==== Pyrrho's thinking subsequently influenced the Platonic Academy, arising first in the Academic skepticism of the Middle Academy under Arcesilaus (c. 315 – 241 BCE) and then the New Academy under Carneades (c. 213–129 BCE). Clitomachus, a student of Carneades, interpreted his teacher's philosophy as suggesting an account of knowledge based on truth-likeness. The Roman politician and philosopher, Cicero, was also an adherent of the skepticism of the New Academy, even though a return to a more dogmatic orientation of the


id: philosophical-skepticism-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_skepticism-5.md
category: reference
title: Philosophical skepticism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_skepticism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:00.045187+00:00
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parent: philosophical-skepticism-20260505-0
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Humans do agree about some things, for example, an ant is smaller than an elephant There are natural laws governing our sense-perceptions, such as optics, which allow us to eliminate inaccuracies Man created tools such as rulers and scales to measure things and eliminate doubts such as bent oars, pigeons' necks, and round towers. A Pyrrhonist might refute these points by saying that senses deceive, and thus knowledge turns into infinite regress or circular logic. Thus Mersenne argues that this cannot be the case, since commonly agreed upon rules of thumb can be hypothesized and tested over time to ensure that they continue to hold. Furthermore, if everything can be doubted, the doubt can also be doubted, so on and so forth. Thus, according to Mersenne, something has to be true. Finally, Mersenne writes about all the mathematical, physical, and other scientific knowledge that is true by repeated testing, and has practical use value. Notably, Mersenne was one of the few philosophers who accepted Hobbes's radical ideology—he saw it as a new science of man. === Skepticism in the seventeenth century === ==== Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) ==== During his long stay in Paris, Thomas Hobbes was actively involved in the


id: philosophical-skepticism-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_skepticism-6.md
category: reference
title: Philosophical skepticism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_skepticism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:00.045187+00:00
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==== David Hume (1711–1776) ==== David Hume was among the most influential proponents of philosophical skepticism during the Age of Enlightenment and one of the most notable voices of the Scottish Enlightenment and British Empiricism. He especially espoused skepticism regarding inductive reasoning, and questioned what the foundation of morality was, creating the is–ought problem. His approach to skepticism is considered even more radical than that of Descartes. Hume argued that any coherent idea must be either a mental copy of an impression (a direct sensory perception) or copies of multiple impressions innovatively combined. Since certain human activities like religion, superstition, and metaphysics are not premised on any actual sense-impressions, their claims to knowledge are logically unjustified. Furthermore, Hume even demonstrates that science is merely a psychological phenomenon based on the association of ideas: often, specifically, an assumption of cause-and-effect relationships that is itself not grounded in any sense-impressions. Thus, even scientific knowledge is logically unjustified, being not actually objective or provable but, rather, mere conjecture flimsily based on our minds perceiving regular correlations between distinct events. Hume thus falls into extreme skepticism regarding the possibility of any certain knowledge. Ultimately, he offers that, at best, a science of human nature


id: philosophical-skepticism-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_skepticism-7.md
category: reference
title: Philosophical skepticism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_skepticism
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parent: philosophical-skepticism-20260505-0
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The historical Buddha asserted certain doctrines as true, such as the possibility of nirvana; however, he also upheld a form of skepticism with regards to certain questions which he left "un-expounded" (avyākata) and some he saw as "incomprehensible" (acinteyya). Because the Buddha saw these questions (which tend to be of metaphysical topics) as unhelpful on the path and merely leading to confusion and "a thicket of views", he promoted suspension of judgment towards them. This allowed him to carve out an epistemic middle way between what he saw as the extremes of claiming absolute objectivity (associated with the claims to omniscience of the Jain Mahavira) and extreme skepticism (associated with the Ajñana thinker Sanjaya Belatthiputta). Later Buddhist philosophy remained highly skeptical of Indian metaphysical arguments. The Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna in particular has been seen as the founder of the Madhyamaka school, which has been in turn compared with Greek Skepticism. Nagarjuna's statement that he has "no thesis" (pratijña) has parallels in the statements of Sextus Empiricus of having "no position". Nagarjuna famously opens his magnum opus, the Mulamadhyamakakarika, with the statement that the Buddha claimed that true happiness was found through dispelling 'vain thinking' (prapañca, also "conceptual proliferation"). According to


id: philosophical-skepticism-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_skepticism-8.md
category: reference
title: Philosophical skepticism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_skepticism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:00.045187+00:00
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=== Medieval Islamic philosophy === The Incoherence of the Philosophers, written by the scholar Al-Ghazali (1058–1111), marks a major turn in Islamic epistemology. His encounter with skepticism led Ghazali to embrace a form of theological occasionalism, or the belief that all causal events and interactions are not the product of material conjunctions but rather the immediate and present will of God. In the autobiography Ghazali wrote towards the end of his life, The Deliverance From Error (Al-munqidh min al-ḍalāl ), Ghazali recounts how, once a crisis of epistemological skepticism was resolved by "a light which God Most High cast into my breast...the key to most knowledge", he studied and mastered the arguments of Kalam, Islamic philosophy, and Ismailism. Though appreciating what was valid in the first two of these, at least, he determined that all three approaches were inadequate and found ultimate value only in the mystical experience and spiritual insight he attained as a result of following Sufi practices. William James, in Varieties of Religious Experience, considered the autobiography an important document for "the purely literary student who would like to become acquainted with the inwardness of religions other than the Christian", comparing it to recorded personal religious confessions


id: plastic-fantastic-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_Fantastic-0.md
category: reference
title: Plastic Fantastic
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_Fantastic
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:01.187176+00:00
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parent: plastic-fantastic-20260505-0
summary:
Plastic Fantastic: How the Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific World is a 2009 book by U.S.-based science reporter Eugenie Samuel Reich. == Plot == In Plastic Fantastic, Reich investigates how Jan Hendrik Schön, a young physicist working in the field of advanced microelectronics at Bell Labs, was able to repeatedly fabricate scientific results to mislead his collaborators, journal editors, and the scientific community. The book is based on interviews with 126 scientists. The book carries ISBN 978-0-230-22467-4, and was initially published by Palgrave MacMillan. == See also == List of books about the politics of science The Great Betrayal: Fraud In Science Scientific misconduct == References ==


id: radical-psychology-network-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_Psychology_Network-0.md
category: reference
title: Radical Psychology Network
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_Psychology_Network
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:02.330731+00:00
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parent: radical-psychology-network-20260505-0
summary:
The Radical Psychology Network (RadPsyNet) is an organization with the goal of encouraging reform in the field of psychology. It began in Toronto in 1993 when two dozen people attended a discussion at the American Psychological Association convention entitled "Will Psychology Pay Attention to Its Own Radical Critics?" == Overview == The aim of the group is to change the status quo of psychology. Challenging psychology's traditional focus on minor reform, members emphasise enhancing human welfare by working for fundamental social change. They claim that psychology itself has too often oppressed people rather than liberated them and they work to redress this imbalance. In keeping with this aim, RadPsyNet co-founders Dennis Fox and Isaac Prilleltensky co-edited Critical Psychology: An Introduction in 1997, and many RadPsyNet members are active in academic critical psychology as well as in opposition to psychological abuses. Today the group has more than 500 members in over three dozen countries. Members include psychologists and others, academics and practitioners, faculty and students, psychotherapists and patients. It publishes the online Radical Psychology Journal (published for ten years until its final issue in 2011) and sponsors an active email discussion list. == See also == Critical psychology Psychopolitical validity, coined


id: replication-crisis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis-0.md
category: reference
title: Replication crisis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:03.756578+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: replication-crisis-20260505-0
summary:
The replication crisis, also known as the reproducibility or replicability crisis, refers to widespread failures to reproduce published scientific results. Because the reproducibility of empirical results is the cornerstone of the scientific method, such failures undermine the credibility of theories and challenge substantial parts of scientific knowledge. Psychology and medicine have been focal points for replication efforts, with researchers systematically reexamining classic studies to verify their reliability and, when failures emerge, to identify the underlying causes. Data strongly indicates that other natural and social sciences are also affected. The phrase "replication crisis" was coined in the early 2010s as part of a growing awareness of the problem. Considerations of causes and remedies have given rise to a new scientific discipline known as metascience, which uses methods of empirical research to examine empirical research practice. Researchers distinguish two forms of reproducibility. Reproducibility in a narrow sense refers to reexamining and validating the analysis of a set of data. The second category, replication, involves repeating an experiment or study with new, independent data to verify the original conclusions. == Background == === Replication === Replication has been called "the cornerstone of science". Environmental health scientist Stefan Schmidt began a 2009 review with


id: replication-crisis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis-1.md
category: reference
title: Replication crisis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:03.756578+00:00
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parent: replication-crisis-20260505-0
summary:
A null hypothesis test is a decision procedure which takes in some data, and outputs either H 0 {\displaystyle H_{0}} or H 1 {\displaystyle H_{1}} . If it outputs H 1 {\displaystyle H_{1}} , it is usually stated as "there is a statistically significant effect" or "the null hypothesis is rejected". Often, the statistical test is a (one-sided) threshold test, which is structured as follows: Gather data D {\displaystyle D} . Compute a test statistic t [ D ] {\displaystyle t[D]} for the data. Compare the test statistic against a critical value/threshold t threshold {\displaystyle t_{\text{threshold}}} . If t [ D ] > t threshold {\displaystyle t[D]>t_{\text{threshold}}} , then output H 1 {\displaystyle H_{1}} , else, output H 0 {\displaystyle H_{0}} . A two-sided threshold test is similar, but with two thresholds, such that it outputs H 1 {\displaystyle H_{1}} if either t [ D ] < t threshold − {\displaystyle t[D]<t_{\text{threshold}}^{-}} or t [ D ] > t threshold + {\displaystyle t[D]>t_{\text{threshold}}^{+}} There are 4 possible outcomes of a null hypothesis test: false negative, true negative, false positive, true positive. A false negative means that H 0 {\displaystyle H_{0}} is true, but the test outcome is H 1 {\displaystyle


id: replication-crisis-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis-2.md
category: reference
title: Replication crisis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:03.756578+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: replication-crisis-20260505-0
summary:
Social priming failures: In the early 2010s, two direct replication attempts failed to reproduce results from social psychologist John Bargh's much-cited "elderly-walking" study (originally published in 1996). This experiment was part of a series of three studies that had been widely cited throughout the years, was regularly taught in university courses, and had inspired many conceptual replications. These replication failures triggered intense disagreement between replication researchers and the original authors. Notably, many of the conceptual replications of the original studies also failed to replicate in subsequent direct replications. Experiments on extrasensory perception: Social psychologist Daryl Bem conducted a series of experiments supposedly providing evidence for the controversial phenomenon of extrasensory perception. Bem faced substantial criticism of his study's methodology. Reanalysis of his data found no evidence for extrasensory perception. The experiment also failed to replicate in subsequent direct replications. According to Romero, what the community found particularly upsetting was that many of the flawed procedures and statistical tools used in Bem's studies were part of common research practice in psychology. Biomedical replication failures: Scientists from biotech companies Amgen and Bayer Healthcare reported alarmingly low replication rates (11–20%) of landmark findings in preclinical oncological research. P-hacking studies and questionable research practices:


id: replication-crisis-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis-3.md
category: reference
title: Replication crisis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:03.756578+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: replication-crisis-20260505-0
summary:
=== In psychology === Several factors have combined to put psychology at the center of the conversation. Some areas of psychology once considered solid, such as social priming and ego depletion, have come under increased scrutiny due to failed replications. Much of the focus has been on social psychology, although other areas of psychology such as clinical psychology, developmental psychology, and educational research have also been implicated. In August 2015, the first open empirical study of reproducibility in psychology was published, called The Reproducibility Project: Psychology. Coordinated by psychologist Brian Nosek, researchers redid 100 studies in psychological science from three high-ranking psychology journals (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, and Psychological Science). Of 97 original studies with significant effects, 36% replicated successfully (p value below 0.05), with effect sizes averaging half the original magnitude. Among non-replications, 25% directly contradicted the original while 49% were inconclusive due to underpowered designs. The same paper examined the reproducibility rates and effect sizes by journal and discipline. Study replication rates were 23% for the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48% for Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, and 38% for Psychological Science. Studies


id: replication-crisis-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis-4.md
category: reference
title: Replication crisis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:03.756578+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: replication-crisis-20260505-0
summary:
=== Across fields === A 2016 survey by Nature on 1,576 researchers who took a brief online questionnaire on reproducibility found that more than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist's experiment results (including 87% of chemists, 77% of biologists, 69% of physicists and engineers, 67% of medical researchers, 64% of earth and environmental scientists, and 62% of all others), and more than half have failed to reproduce their own experiments. But fewer than 20% had been contacted by another researcher unable to reproduce their work. The survey found that fewer than 31% of researchers believe that failure to reproduce results means that the original result is probably wrong, although 52% agree that a significant replication crisis exists. Most researchers said they still trust the published literature. In 2010, Fanelli (2010) found that 91.5% of psychiatry/psychology studies confirmed the effects they were looking for, and concluded that the odds of this happening (a positive result) was around five times higher than in fields such as astronomy or geosciences. Fanelli argued that this is because researchers in "softer" sciences have fewer constraints to their conscious and unconscious biases. Early analysis of result-blind peer review, which is less


id: replication-crisis-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis-5.md
category: reference
title: Replication crisis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:03.756578+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: replication-crisis-20260505-0
summary:
Academic "publish or perish" culture exacerbates publication bias. Intense pressure to publish in recognized journals, driven by hypercompetitive environments and bibliometric career evaluations, incentivizes researchers to prioritize publishable results over validity. According to Fanelli, this pushes scientists to employ a number of strategies aimed at making results "publishable". In the context of publication bias, this can mean adopting behaviors aimed at making results positive or statistically significant, often at the expense of their validity. According to Center for Open Science founder Brian Nosek and his colleagues, "publish or perish" culture created a situation whereby the goals and values of single scientists (e.g., publishability) are not aligned with the general goals of science (e.g., pursuing scientific truth). This is detrimental to the validity of published findings. Philosopher Brian D. Earp and psychologist Jim A. C. Everett argue that, although replication is in the best interests of academics and researchers as a group, features of academic psychological culture discourage replication by individual researchers. They argue that performing replications can be time-consuming, and take away resources from projects that reflect the researcher's original thinking. They are harder to publish, largely because they are unoriginal, and even when they can be published they are


id: replication-crisis-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis-6.md
category: reference
title: Replication crisis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:03.756578+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: replication-crisis-20260505-0
summary:
==== In medicine ==== Irreproducible medical studies commonly share these characteristics: investigators not being blinded to the experimental versus the control arms; failure to repeat experiments; lack of positive and negative controls; failing to report all the data; inappropriate use of statistical tests; and use of reagents that were not appropriately validated. ==== In AI research ==== In machine learning research, a range of questionable practices have emerged due to intense pressure to achieve state-of-the-art benchmark results. Common evaluation questionable practices include "benchmark overfitting" by repeatedly tuning hyperparameters on held-out test sets, selectively reporting the best of multiple random seeds or experimental runs, and "metric hacking" through unreported post hoc decisions such as choice of tokenization or evaluation scripts that inflate scores. Researchers also frequently cherry-pick tasks or datasets where their proposed model outperforms baselines, omit negative or lower-performing results, and obscure compute budgets to present energy-intensive methods as efficient. Such practices can give a misleading impression of model progress and hinder fair comparisons across methods. Moreover, many machine learning studies suffer from irreproducible research practices that impede replication and auditing. Key issues include incomplete disclosure of training details—such as dataset preprocessing, exact model hyperparameters, random seeds, and hardware configurations—and


id: replication-crisis-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis-7.md
category: reference
title: Replication crisis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:03.756578+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: replication-crisis-20260505-0
summary:
=== Statistical issues === ==== Low statistical power ==== Low statistical power hinders replication for three reasons: (1) low-power replications have reduced ability to detect true effects, (2) low-power original studies produce biased effect size estimates leading to undersized replications, and (3) low-power original studies yield results unlikely to reflect true effects. Mathematically, the probability of replicating a previous publication that rejected a null hypothesis H 0 {\displaystyle H_{0}} in favor of an alternative H 1 {\displaystyle H_{1}} is ( significance ) P r ( H 0 | publication ) + ( power ) P r ( H 1 | publication ) ≤ ( power ) {\displaystyle ({\text{significance}})Pr(H_{0}|{\text{publication}})+({\text{power}})Pr(H_{1}|{\text{publication}})\leq ({\text{power}})} assuming significance is less than power. Thus, low power implies low probability of replication, regardless of how the previous publication was designed, and regardless of which hypothesis is really true. Stanley and colleagues estimated the average statistical power of psychological literature by analyzing data from 200 meta-analyses. They found that on average, psychology studies have between 33.1% and 36.4% statistical power. These values are quite low compared to the 80% considered adequate statistical power for an experiment. Across the 200 meta-analyses, the median of studies with adequate statistical power was between


id: replication-crisis-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis-8.md
category: reference
title: Replication crisis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:03.756578+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: replication-crisis-20260505-0
summary:
Various statistical methods can be applied to make the p-value appear smaller than it really is. This need not be malicious, as moderately flexible data analysis, routine in research, can increase the false-positive rate to above 60%. For example, if one collects some data, applies several different significance tests to it, and publishes only the one that happens to have a p-value less than 0.05, then the total p-value for "at least one significance test reaches p < 0.05" can be much larger than 0.05, because even if the null hypothesis were true, the probability that one out of many significance tests is extreme is not itself extreme. Typically, a statistical study has multiple steps, with several choices at each step, such as during data collection, outlier rejection, choice of test statistic, choice of one-tailed or two-tailed test, etc. These choices in the "garden of forking paths" multiply, creating many "researcher degrees of freedom". The effect is similar to the file-drawer problem, as the paths not taken are not published. Consider a simple illustration. Suppose the null hypothesis is true, and we have 20 possible significance tests to apply to the dataset. Also suppose the outcomes to the significance tests


id: replication-crisis-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis-9.md
category: reference
title: Replication crisis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:03.756578+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: replication-crisis-20260505-0
summary:
==== Statistical heterogeneity ==== As also reported by Stanley and colleagues, a further reason studies might fail to replicate is high heterogeneity of the to-be-replicated effects. Heterogeneity (variance in research findings due to multiple true effect sizes rather than one) is measured by the I-squared statistic, which quantifies unexplained variation in effect sizes across studies. This variation can be due to differences in experimental methods, populations, cohorts, and statistical methods between replication studies. Heterogeneity poses a challenge to studies attempting to replicate previously found effect sizes. When heterogeneity is high, subsequent replications have a high probability of finding an effect size radically different than that of the original study. Importantly, significant levels of heterogeneity are also found in direct/exact replications of a study. Stanley and colleagues discuss this while reporting a study by quantitative behavioral scientist Richard Klein and colleagues, where the authors attempted to replicate 15 psychological effects across 36 different sites in Europe and the U.S. In the study, Klein and colleagues found significant amounts of heterogeneity in 8 out of 16 effects (I-squared = 23% to 91%). Importantly, while the replication sites intentionally differed on a variety of characteristics, such differences could account for very little heterogeneity


id: replication-crisis-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis-10.md
category: reference
title: Replication crisis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:03.756578+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: replication-crisis-20260505-0
summary:
and the probability of replicating the statistical study is P r ( replication | find H 1 ) = P r ( find H 1 | H 1 ) P r ( H 1 | find H 1 ) + P r ( find H 1 | H 0 ) P r ( H 0 | find H 1 ) {\displaystyle Pr({\text{replication}}|{\text{ find }}H_{1})=Pr({\text{find }}H_{1}|H_{1})Pr(H_{1}|{\text{ find }}H_{1})+Pr({\text{find }}H_{1}|H_{0})Pr(H_{0}|{\text{ find }}H_{1})} which is also different from P r ( H 1 | find H 1 ) {\displaystyle Pr(H_{1}|{\text{ find }}H_{1})} . In particular, for a fixed level of significance, the probability of replication increases with power, and prior probability for H 1 {\displaystyle H_{1}} . If the prior probability for H 1 {\displaystyle H_{1}} is small, then one would require a high power for replication. For example, if the prior probability of the null hypothesis is P r ( H 0 ) = 0.9 {\displaystyle Pr(H_{0})=0.9} , and the study found a positive result, then the posterior probability for H 1 {\displaystyle H_{1}} is P r ( H 1 | find H 1 ) = 0.50 {\displaystyle Pr(H_{1}|{\text{ find }}H_{1})=0.50} , and the replication probability is P r ( replication |


id: replication-crisis-20260505-11
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis-11.md
category: reference
title: Replication crisis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:03.756578+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: replication-crisis-20260505-0
summary:
== Consequences == When effects are wrongly stated as relevant in the literature, failure to detect this by replication will lead to the canonization of such false facts. A 2021 study found that papers in leading general interest, psychology and economics journals with findings that could not be replicated tend to be cited more over time than reproducible research papers, likely because these results are surprising or interesting. The trend is not affected by publication of failed reproductions, after which only 12% of papers that cite the original research will mention the failed replication. Further, experts are able to predict which studies will be replicable, leading the authors of the 2021 study, Marta Serra-Garcia and Uri Gneezy, to conclude that experts apply lower standards to interesting results when deciding whether to publish them. === Public awareness and perceptions === Concerns have been expressed within the scientific community that the general public may consider science less credible due to failed replications. Research supporting this concern is sparse, but a nationally representative survey in Germany showed that more than 75% of Germans have not heard of replication failures in science. The study also found that most Germans have positive perceptions of replication


id: replication-crisis-20260505-12
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis-12.md
category: reference
title: Replication crisis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:03.756578+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: replication-crisis-20260505-0
summary:
In response to concerns in psychology about publication bias and data dredging, more than 140 psychology journals have adopted result-blind peer review. In this approach, studies are accepted not on the basis of their findings and after the studies are completed, but before they are conducted and on the basis of the methodological rigor of their experimental designs, and the theoretical justifications for their statistical analysis techniques before data collection or analysis is done. Early analysis of this procedure has estimated that 61% of result-blind studies have led to null results, in contrast to an estimated 5% to 20% in earlier research. In addition, large-scale collaborations between researchers working in multiple labs in different countries that regularly make their data openly available for different researchers to assess have become much more common in psychology. ==== Pre-registration of studies ==== Scientific publishing has begun using pre-registration reports to address the replication crisis. The registered report format requires authors to submit a description of the study methods and analyses prior to data collection. Once the method and analysis plan is vetted through peer-review, publication of the findings is provisionally guaranteed, based on whether the authors follow the proposed protocol. One goal of


id: replication-crisis-20260505-13
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis-13.md
category: reference
title: Replication crisis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:03.756578+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: replication-crisis-20260505-0
summary:
==== Cross-validation ==== One common statistical problem is overfitting, that is, when researchers fit a regression model over a large number of variables but a small number of data points. For example, a typical fMRI study of emotion, personality, and social cognition has fewer than 100 subjects, but each subject has 10,000 voxels. The study would fit a sparse linear regression model that uses the voxels to predict a variable of interest, such as self-reported stress. But the study would then report on the p-value of the model on the same data it was fitted to. The standard approach in statistics, where data is split into a training and a validation set, is resisted because test subjects are expensive to acquire. One possible solution is cross-validation, which allows model validation while also allowing the whole dataset to be used for model-fitting. === Replication efforts === ==== Funding ==== In July 2016, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research made €3 million available for replication studies. The funding is for replication based on reanalysis of existing data and replication by collecting and analysing new data. Funding is available in the areas of social sciences, health research and healthcare innovation. In 2013, the


id: replication-crisis-20260505-14
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis-14.md
category: reference
title: Replication crisis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:03.756578+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: replication-crisis-20260505-0
summary:
The dominant scientific and statistical model of causation is the linear model. The linear model assumes that mental variables are stable properties which are independent of each other. In other words, these variables are not expected to influence each other. Instead, the model assumes that the variables will have an independent, linear effect on observable outcomes. Social scientists Sebastian Wallot and Damian Kelty-Stephen argue that the linear model is not always appropriate. An alternative is the complex system model which assumes that mental variables are interdependent. These variables are not assumed to be stable, rather they will interact and adapt to each specific context. They argue that the complex system model is often more appropriate in psychology, and that the use of the linear model when the complex system model is more appropriate will result in failed replications. ...psychology may be hoping for replications in the very measurements and under the very conditions where a growing body of psychological evidence explicitly discourages predicting replication. Failures to replicate may be plainly baked into the potentially incomplete, but broadly sweeping failure of human behavior to conform to the standard of independen[ce] ... ==== Replication should seek to revise theories ==== Replication is


id: viktor-schauberger-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Schauberger-0.md
category: reference
title: Viktor Schauberger
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Schauberger
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:04.950282+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: viktor-schauberger-20260505-0
summary:
Viktor Schauberger (Austrian German: [ˈʃaʊbɛrɡɐ]; 30 June 1885 – 25 September 1958) was an Austrian forest caretaker, naturalist, philosopher, pseudoscientist, and inventor. == Early life == Schauberger was born in Holzschlag, Upper Austria on 30 June 1885. His parents were Leopold Schauberger and Josefa, née Klimitsch. From 1891 to 1897, he attended the elementary school in Aigen, then until 1900 the state grammar school in Linz. Until 1904, he went to the forestry school in Aggsbach in the Kartause Aggsbach, where he passed the exam as a forester. From 1904 to 1906, he was a forest clerk in Groß-Schweinbarth in Lower Austria. == Technology == Nick Cook visited the PKS bio-technical institute, Pythagoras-Kepler System, in the Salzkammergut Mountains. Viktor's grandson Joerg gave Nick access to the family archives, which included Viktor's books, letters, diary, and patent applications. Besides inventing a log flume, Viktor worked on bio-technical machinery. In 1939, Viktor filed a patent with the Reich Patent Office for a "multistage centrifuge with concentrically juxtaposed pressure chambers," a means of propelling machines through air or water, water purification, or electricity generation. In 1940, Viktor contracted Kaempfer in Berlin to build the machine, then in February 1941, switched to the Kertl


id: science-in-a-free-society-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_a_Free_Society-0.md
category: reference
title: Science in a Free Society
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_a_Free_Society
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:06.201511+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: science-in-a-free-society-20260505-0
summary:
Science in a Free Society is the 2nd full length book by the Austrian philosopher of science, Paul Feyerabend. It was published in 1978 by Schocken Books and later reprinted by Verso Books. While Feyerabend never published a second edition, Verso pressed four copies in 1982, 1983, 1985, and 1987. Parts of the book were reprinted in later editions of Against Method. The book largely develops arguments from the first edition of Against Method and spells out their political implications. The book also contains a collection of previously published material in which he responds to some of his critics of Against Method. In 1979, Feyerabend also published, in German, Erkenntnis für freie Menschen (Knowledge for Free People), which contains roughly two-thirds of the material from Science in a Society while expanding on some sections and diminishing others. == Content == The book is divided into three sections: "Reason and Practice" expounds Feyerabend's theory of rationality as something embedded in, rather than separate from, traditions. "Science in a Free Society" develops Feyerabend's views about the place of science in democratic societies. "Conversations with Illiterates" provides responses to criticisms of Against Method. === Reason and Practice === The first section develops a


id: science-wars-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_wars-0.md
category: reference
title: Science wars
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_wars
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:07.536969+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: science-wars-20260505-0
summary:
In the philosophy of science, the science wars were a series of scholarly and public discussions in the 1990s over the social place of science in making authoritative claims about the world. Encyclopedia.com, citing the Encyclopedia of Science and Religion, describes the science wars as the "complex of discussions about the way the sciences are related to or incarnated in culture, history, and practice. [...] [which] came to be called a 'war' in the mid 1990s because of a strong polarization over questions of legitimacy and authority. One side [...] is concerned with defending the authority of science as rooted in objective evidence and rational procedures. The other side argues that it is legitimate and fruitful to study the sciences as institutions and social-technical networks whose development is influenced by linguistics, economics, politics, and other factors surrounding formally rational procedures and isolated established facts." The science wars took place principally in the United States in the 1990s in the academic and mainstream press. Scientific realists (such as Norman Levitt, Paul R. Gross, Jean Bricmont and Alan Sokal) accused many writers, whom they described as 'postmodernist', of having effectively rejected scientific objectivity, the scientific method, empiricism, and scientific knowledge. Though much


id: science-wars-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_wars-1.md
category: reference
title: Science wars
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_wars
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:07.536969+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: science-wars-20260505-0
summary:
A number of different philosophical and historical schools, often grouped together as "postmodernism", began reinterpreting scientific achievements of the past through the lens of the practitioners, often positing the influence of politics and economics in the development of scientific theories in addition to scientific observations. Rather than being presented as working entirely from positivistic observations, many scientists of the past were scrutinized for their connection to issues of gender, sexual orientation, race, and class. Some more radical philosophers, such as Paul Feyerabend, argued that scientific theories were themselves incoherent and that other forms of knowledge production (such as those used in religion) served the material and spiritual needs of their practitioners with equal validity as did scientific explanations. Imre Lakatos advanced a midway view between the "postmodernist" and "realist" camps. For Lakatos, scientific knowledge is progressive; however, it progresses not by a strict linear path where every new element builds upon and incorporates every other, but by an approach where a "core" of a "research program" is established by auxiliary theories which can themselves be falsified or replaced without compromising the core. Social conditions and attitudes affect how strongly one attempts to resist falsification for the core of a program,


id: science-wars-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_wars-2.md
category: reference
title: Science wars
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_wars
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:07.536969+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: science-wars-20260505-0
summary:
=== Continued conflict === In the first few years after the 'Science Wars' edition of Social Text, the seriousness and volume of discussion increased significantly, much of it focused on reconciling the 'warring' camps of postmodernists and scientists. One significant event was the 'Science and Its Critics' conference in early 1997; it brought together scientists and scholars who study science and featured Alan Sokal and Steve Fuller as keynote speakers. The conference generated the final wave of substantial press coverage (in both news media and scientific journals), though by no means resolved the fundamental issues of social construction and objectivity in science. Other attempts have been made to reconcile the two camps. Mike Nauenberg, a physicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, organized a small conference in May 1997 that was attended by scientists and sociologists of science alike, among them Alan Sokal, N. David Mermin and Harry Collins. In the same year, Collins organized the Southampton Peace Workshop, which again brought together a broad range of scientists and sociologists. The Peace Workshop gave rise to the idea of a book that intended to map out some of the arguments between the disputing parties. The One Culture?: A Conversation


id: scientism-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism-0.md
category: reference
title: Scientism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:08.742517+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: scientism-20260505-0
summary:
Scientism is the belief that science and the scientific method are the best or only way to render truth about the world and reality. While the term was defined originally to mean "methods and attitudes typical of or attributed to natural scientists", some scholars, as well as political and religious leaders, have also adopted it as a pejorative term with the meaning "an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science applied to all areas of investigation (as in philosophy, the social sciences, and the humanities)". == Overview == Francis Bacon has been viewed by some scholars as an early proponent of scientism, but this is a modern assertion as Bacon was a devout Anglican, writing in his Essays, "a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion." With respect to the philosophy of science, the term scientism frequently implies a critique of the more extreme expressions of logical positivism and has been used by social scientists such as Friedrich Hayek, philosophers of science such as Karl Popper, and philosophers such as Mary Midgley, the later Hilary Putnam, and Tzvetan Todorov to describe (for example) the dogmatic endorsement


id: scientism-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism-1.md
category: reference
title: Scientism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:08.742517+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: scientism-20260505-0
summary:
It is used to criticize a totalizing opinion of science as if it were capable of describing all reality and knowledge, or as if it were the only true method to acquire knowledge about reality and the nature of things; It is used, often pejoratively, to denote violations by which the theories and methods of one (scientific) discipline are applied inappropriately to another (scientific or non-scientific) discipline and its domain. An example of this second usage is to term as scientism any attempt to claim science as the only or primary source of human values (a traditional domain of ethics) or as the source of meaning and purpose (a traditional domain of religion and related worldviews). The term scientism was popularized by F. A. Hayek, who defined it in 1942 as the "slavish imitation of the method and language of Science". Mathematician Alexander Grothendieck, in his 1971 essay "The New Universal Church", characterized scientism as a religion-like ideology that advocates scientific reductionism, scientific authoritarianism, political technocracy and technological salvation, while denying the epistemological validity of feelings and experiences such as love, emotion, beauty and fulfillment. He predicted that "in coming years, the chief political dividing line will fall less and


id: scientism-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism-2.md
category: reference
title: Scientism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:08.742517+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: scientism-20260505-0
summary:
== Relevance to debates about science and religion == Both religious and non-religious scholars have applied the term scientism to individuals associated with New Atheism. Theologian John Haught argued that philosopher Daniel Dennett and other New Atheists subscribe to a belief system of scientific naturalism, which includes the dogma that "only nature, including humans and our creations, is real: that God does not exist; and that science alone can give us complete and reliable knowledge of reality." Haught argued that this belief system is self-refuting since it requires its adherents to assent to beliefs that violate its own stated requirements for knowledge. Christian philosopher Peter Williams argued in 2013 that it is only by conflating science with scientism that New Atheists feel qualified to "pontificate on metaphysical issues". Daniel Dennett responded to religious criticism of his 2006 book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by saying that accusations of scientism "[are] an all-purpose, wild-card smear ... When someone puts forward a scientific theory that [religious critics] really don't like, they just try to discredit it as 'scientism'. But when it comes to facts, and explanations of facts, science is the only game in town". Non-religious scholars have also


id: scientism-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism-3.md
category: reference
title: Scientism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:37:08.742517+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: scientism-20260505-0
summary:
Thomas M. Lessl argued that religious themes persist in what he terms scientism, the public rhetoric of science. There are two methods of describing this idea of scientism: the epistemological method (the assumption that the scientific method trumps other ways of knowing) and the ontological method (that the rational mind represents the world and both operate in knowable ways). According to Lessl, the ontological method is an attempt to "resolve the conflict between rationalism and skepticism". Lessl also argued that without scientism, there would not be a scientific culture. == Rationalization and modernity == In the introduction to his collected works on the sociology of religion, Max Weber asked why "the scientific, the artistic, the political, or the economic development [elsewhere] ... did not enter upon that path of rationalization which is peculiar to the Occident?" According to the German social theorist Jürgen Habermas, "For Weber, the intrinsic (that is, not merely contingent) relationship between modernity and what he called 'Occidental rationalism' was still self-evident." Weber described a process of rationalisation, disenchantment and the "disintegration of religious world views" that resulted in modern secular societies and capitalism. "Modernization" was introduced as a technical term only in the 1950s. It is


