Nicholas Maxwell (UCL): Can Scientific Method Help Us Create a Wiser World? David Bosworth (Washington): Conscientious Thinking and the Transformation of the Modern Sciences. Mark B. Brown (CSU-Sacramento): Politicizing Science: Conceptions of Politics in Science and Technology Studies. Michael Strevens (NYU): Scientific Sharing: Communism and the Social Contract (“This paper investigates what Robert Merton called science’s “communist” norm, which mandates universal sharing of knowledge, and uses mathematical models of discovery to argue that a communist regime may be on the whole advantageous and fair to all parties, and so might be implemented by a social contract that all scientists would be willing to sign”). Russian science is amazing, so why hasn’t it taken over the world? Leon Neyfakh interviews Loren Graham on why we should all worry about a great power’s failure to convert on its knowledge. Lorraine Daston on wonder and the ends of inquiry. What scientists really do: Priyamvada Natarajan reviews Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything by Philip Ball and Ignorance: How It Drives Science by Stuart Firestein. How scientific inquiry works: Seamus O’Mahony reviews Are We all Scientific Experts Now? by Harry Collins. Carolyn Y. Johnson on how a glut of postdoc researchers stirs quiet crisis in science. Life outside the lab: Sometimes, the brightest stars in science decide to leave — Nature finds out where they go.
