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Chargement... On Fact and Fraud: Cautionary Tales from the Front Lines of Sciencepar David Goodstein
   Aucun Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre.  kukulaj | Apr 21, 2013 |  aucune critique | ajouter une critique
Fraud in science is not as easy to identify as one might think. When accusations of scientific misconduct occur, truth can often be elusive, and the cause of a scientist's ethical misstep isn't always clear. On Fact and Fraud looks at actual cases in which fraud was committed or alleged, explaining what constitutes scientific misconduct and what doesn't, and providing readers with the ethical foundations needed to discern and avoid fraud wherever it may arise. In David Goodstein's varied experience--as a physicist and educator, and as vice provost at Caltech, a job in which he was responsible for investigating all allegations of scientific misconduct--a deceptively simple question has come up time and again: what constitutes fraud in science? Here, Goodstein takes us on a tour of real controversies from the front lines of science and helps readers determine for themselves whether or not fraud occurred. Cases include, among others, those of Robert A. Millikan, whose historic measurement of the electron's charge has been maligned by accusations of fraud; Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons and their "discovery" of cold fusion; Victor Ninov and the supposed discovery of element 118; Jan Hendrik Sch©œn from Bell Labs and his work in semiconductors; and J. Georg Bednorz and Karl M©?ller's discovery of high-temperature superconductivity, a seemingly impossible accomplishment that turned out to be real. On Fact and Fraud provides a user's guide to identifying, avoiding, and preventing fraud in science, along the way offering valuable insights into how modern science is practiced. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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 Google Books — Chargement...GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)500Natural sciences and mathematics General Science General ScienceClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne: (3)
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This book is a quick read and rather superficial. It seems accurate enough as far as it goes, but it doesn't go very far. It's a bit hard to figure what a suitable audience might be. Perhaps it could be a supplementary text for an undergraduate class in history of science. It is just a little sip of philosophy of science.
Goodstein helped to draw up the process for handling allegations of research misconduct at CalTech. He tells some stories here out of his personal experience and some other related stories. Milliken's oil drop experiments, cold fusion, high temperature superconductors, those are the stories that didn't involve fraud. Goodstein mentions the David Baltimore case but doesn't give any details. He just points out that that case helped to show the inadequacies of some of the misconduct processes at that time.
This whole topic is actually of crucial importance. Look at that case of the British climate scientists who were filtering or massaging data. Was that really fraudulent? How scientists create the world they display, and how that more clear and precise world might somehow be truer than the ever-shifting turbulent world of direct experience, this is both deep and of huge impact. Goodstein's sketch here doesn't really even hint at the profundities that he glosses over. It's actually a typical sort of scientist's approach. Most scientists don't see the point of philosophy of science. Science, with its objective stance, takes interest purely in the world out there. It is actually a form of escapism! Strange but there is something pathological right at the heart of science. That dismissal of philosophy of science is not as casual as it might appear! Goodstein doesn't hint at the depths because he, as a scientist, is constitutionally committed to leaving then unacknowledged. (