One thing that scientists and historians of science understand instinctively, but I think is underappreciated elsewhere, is that scientists’ assumptions shape not only how we interpret experimental results, but also how we design our experiments. The ways we think about things, what we understand our experimental subjects and variables to be, certain assumptions we make …
Continue reading “What can a 1700s Ship’s Surgeon tell us about assumptions in Science?”
Note: I’ve been spending the last week and a half neck-deep in research about eugenics in 19th and 20th Century Britain, so I thought I may as well put my reflections up here. Normal posts resume next week, or this weekend if I have time In a post-nazi world, eugenics is the dirty secret of …
Continue reading “Eugenics: good intentions and how to avoid them”
From: “Plasmodium vivax Malaria Viewed through the Lens of an Eradicated European Strain”, L. van Dorp, P. Gelabert, A. Riuex, M. de Manuel, T. de-Dios, S. Gopalakrishnan, C. Carøe, M. Sandoval-Velasco, R. Fregel, I. Olalde et al (2019), Molecular Biology and Evolution msz264 https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msz264 Malaria is, worldwide, a huge danger to human life. It is …
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