Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #ScienceFictions
Most recents (2)
Ok so last thread on #ScienceFictions by @StuartJRitchie covering the epilogue, the appendix, and my overall thoughts. To spoil the surprise I went in expecting to like this book and found I loved it. I’d put it up with Demon Haunted World and Bad Science as books to recommend. 
I also think Stuart deserves a hat tip for the public service he did writing this book. Immersing yourself in frauds, publication bias, and crappy studies for a few years is depressing. It would be hard not to become jaded. And I think it did take some toll.
Yet... Stuart remains a believer in, and advocate for, good science. And on this point he reiterates a consistent theme throughout the previous chapters that despite all the perverse incentives for science to improve it still requires *scientists* should do better.
Chapter 4 of #ScienceFictions by @StuartJRitchie is on Bias. This is a subject often discussed by academics but mainly in regards to other people’s research. Personally, I think it’s hard to overstate how important this topic is but let’s see what the chapter offers.
The chapter opens with a brief discussion of the 19th Century American scientist Samuel Merton and his efforts to demonstrate that the moral and mental faculties of different races could be traced to their skull size. Morton’s measurements were later harshly critiqued by Gould.
Gould highlighted how Merton’s measurements appeared to be strongly contaminated by his racial bias, causing systemic measurement. This is a topic returned to later in the chapter but here some details for how ideology could influence measurement are provided.
