Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth by Stuart Ritchie

This book does a splendid job of describing and documenting the dysfunctional features of contemporary science mentioned in the book’s subtitle. Were I still teaching, I would have my students read this book as the basis for many productive class discussions. The margins of my copy overflow with notes, comments, and cues for further reading. The 80 pages of endnotes, for some 260 pages of text, are the best and most interesting documentation that I can recall ever finding in such a book. At any rate, I recommend this book wholeheartedly; I doubt that anyone interested in the nature of contemporary science will fail to be informed and to find stimulation for further thought and reading. The Preface already promises that this will be a page-turner. Many will be astonished and disheartened by the fully documented cases of outwardly distinguished academics whose work was largely or completely fraudulent, as with Diederik Stapel (pp. 4–5 and later). Ritchie quite appropriately sees replication as the essence of science (p. 5): “If it won’t replicate, then it’s hard to describe what you’ve done as scientific at all.” Note that this is an empirical statement, not the Popperian criterion that theories must be falsifiable in principle if they are to be regarded as scientific. If a claimed observable phenomenon cannot be repeated, then we cannot know that it was real, that it happened even once, when first claimed. That’s the continuing dilemma for parapsychology, cryptozoology, for anomalistics in general. Ritchie points out that the scientific community failed to handle appropriately the issue of replication in the case of Stapel, and also with Daryl Bem’s claimed evidence of precognition. Overall, peer review and journal publication practices have not saved science from “a dizzying array of incompetence, delusion, lies, and self-deception” (p. 7).

The Pearl in the Oyster

This chapter considers the phenomenon of posttraumatic growth (PTG) in the context of advanced cancer, drawing upon both theory and empirical research. The concept of PTG refers to improvements that have been postulated to occur in psychological, interpersonal, and spiritual domains as a result of successful coping with trauma. Various theoretical models of PTG are described and compared and the controversy as to whether PTG is a real, observable phenomenon is explored. The chapter specifically considers the unique emergence of PTG in advanced cancer, the measurement tools that have been used, and the methodological challenges of research examining this relationship. Finally, the potential of Managing Cancer and Living Meaningfully (CALM) to promote psychological growth in patients with advanced cancer is explored.

The Laws of Xenakis's Music Not Formulated by Xenakis Himself

Вокруг творчества Янниса Ксенакиса (1922-2001) сложилась богатая литература, тон которой задал сам композитор своим трактатом «Формализованная музыка», изобилующим математическими формулами и схемами, непонятными для большинства гуманитариев. Между тем чрезмерная опора на то, что писал о своей музыке сам Ксенакис, не всегда помогает в должной мере оценить некоторые немаловажные атрибуты его стиля. Принимая близкую Ксенакису точку зрения на композиторское «изделие» как на эмпирически наблюдаемый феномен с особым набором дифференциальных признаков, уникальным образом распределенных во времени и пространстве, мы приходим к следующему выводу: какие бы научные идеи и представления ни привлекались композитором для разъяснения своих концепций, глубинная структура его музыки, как правило, восходит к триаде универсальных законов, описывающих соотношения между параметрами массовых явлений. Эта триада изоморфна трем физическим законам, описывающим поведение фиксированной массы идеального газа, и музыкальный язык Ксенакиса приспособлен для того, чтобы следовать им достаточно строго. The oeuvre of Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) gave rise to a wealth of scholarly literature, the tone of which was set by Xenakis himself in his treatise Formalized Music, abounding in mathematical formulas and schemes that are incomprehensible for the absolute majority of scholars in the humanities. However, over-reliance on Xenakis's own comments on his music is not necessarily conductive to a better understanding of some important attributes of his style. Adopting Xenakis's perspective on a piece of musical composition as an empirically observable phenomenon with a special set of differentiae uniquely distributed in time and space, we come to the following conclusion: irrespective of which scientific ideas and notions were involved by Xenakis to explicate his concepts, the deep structure of his music, as a rule, is based on the triad of universal rules describing the relations between the parameters of mass events. The triad in question is isomorphous with the three physical laws describing the behaviour of a fixed mass of ideal gas, and Xenakis's musical idiom is adapted to follow these laws quite strictly.

The Effect of Phi on the Perception of Attractiveness

The ratio Phi, equal to approximately 1.618, is an observable phenomenon that Greek mathematician Euclid defined this relationship as a line in two parts, in which the ratio of the longer part to the shorter part is equal to the ratio of the total length over the longer part. The ancient Greeks thought of Phi as a mathematical representation of physical beauty. Although many studies have shown a correlation between Phi and perceived attractiveness, other studies have displayed no/very weak, correlation. The question, “Does the expression of Phi play a significant role in the attractiveness of a face?” was investigated. It was hypothesized that if the features of a face closely fit the proportions of Phi, then survey respondents will give that face a higher attractiveness rating than a face whose features do not. Landmark localization data was calculated for images of 14 different faces. Individual and average facial ratios were calculated for each photograph, and a survey was conducted in which 100 participants were asked to rate the attractiveness of each face on a scale of 1-10. The average attractiveness rating of each face was then compared to the variance/distance of its average facial ratio away from the numerical value of Phi. Based on the analysis of the data, faces with features whose proportions closely fit the ratio of Phi are perceived as more attractive than faces with features that do not. Faces with average facial ratios closer to Phi received higher average attractiveness ratings.

Development of charge-transport and thermoelectric simulation methodology based on density functional theory and application to organic materials

Physics is constantly evolving. It is a field that attempts to create calculations and theories capable of completely describing an observable phenomenon. The ability of various materials to conduct heat and electricity can vary wildly. Insulators can be 20 orders of magnitude less conductive than the best conductors, with everything in between also possible. Conductivity is related to the creation of a material capable of providing free electrons for the transfer of a current through the material. However, the current theories for the calculation of these conductive capacity have proved insufficient in the face of novel compounds such as carbon nanostructures and organic semiconductors. Professor Hiroyuki Ishii of Faculty of Pure and Applied Physics, University of Tsukuba, Japan, is attempting to address this disparity with the support of a team of physicists based at the Faculty of Pure and Applied Physics, University of Tsukuba.

Practical trust

We begin our article by placing various forms of trust distinguished by the literature along a continuum according to the truster’s practical orientation toward the possibility of things not going as expected. We then present the ethnomethodological respecification of trust as an observable phenomenon of order involving continuous practical work, in situ and in real time. Conversation analysis provides tools for capturing how trust is accomplished as interlocutors rely on ordinary orders of practice to organize talk-in-interaction. Built on these bases, the term ‘practical trust’ points to the strong link between trust, the organization of courses of action and the production of their accountability. In conclusion, we suggest undertaking empirical research to identify the practices that make trust a specific phenomenon of interactional order.

Associations évoquées par le changement climatique chez des citoyens français et norvégiens

Communication related to climate change as well as to its consequences constitutes a major challenge; all the more so since climate is a non-observable phenomenon, in stark contrast to the weather. In this perspective, language plays a crucial role in the conceptualisation and the framing of climate change discourse. In this paper, French and Norwegian data stemming from representative surveys in the two countries are compared. The participants are asked to answer an open-ended question concerning their conceptions of the expression “climate change”. The French data are collected from a survey undertaken in 2016 by ELIPSS at the Sciences Po (Institut d'études politiques de Paris). The Norwegian data are generated from a survey undertaken in 2013 by the Norwegian Citizen Panel/DIGSSCORE, at the University of Bergen. The answers are first analysed through a semi-automated structural topic modeling (STM) and then assessed through an in-depth manual evaluation. Further linguistic and enunciative analyses are undertaken of a selection of the respondents’ answer provided by the surveys. Given the difference in the energy mix of the two countries, different associations are expected to appear from the French and the Norwegian participants. At the same time, with the common global dimension of climate change, it seems reasonable to expect some similar associations concerning the reality of the changes, the consequences and the measures of adaptation or mitigation proposed or undertaken by the two countries. These issues are discussed within the theoretical frame of enunciation, including perspectives related to concession in a polyphonic perspective and to deontic modality.

The Cosmic Microwave Background

The measurement of the acoustic modes of the cosmic microwave background have been perhaps the most exciting new astrophysical territory explored in the 21st century. This cosmological area includes the study of some of the earliest moments of the Universe, such as the significant change in state of going from a gas of ionized particles to one of atoms (called recombination), greatly reducing the opacity for photons, leading to the observable phenomenon of the microwave background today. This chapter builds up to a calculation of the sound horizon and hence the location of the first observed peak in the fluctuation spectrum.

Xenophobia

The current xenophobic cultural environment in the United States makes it imperative that psychologists understand the nature of xenophobia and recognize its consequences. This article explores sociological, social psychological, and multicultural research to examine the causes of negative attitudes toward immigrants. Xenophobia is presented as a concept descriptive of a socially observable phenomenon. Historical and contemporary expressions of xenophobia in the United States are examined and compared with cross-cultural scholarship on negative attitudes toward immigrants. Last, suggestions are provided for how counseling psychologists can integrate an understanding of xenophobia into their clinical practice, training, research, and public policy advocacy.