Léo Varnet @leovarnet@qoto.org

Au passage, ce petit exemple souligne le fait que la séparation entre les langues accentuelles (dont le français) et les langues à tons est plus subtile qu'on pourrait le penser de prime abord : en français aussi la mélodie sur laquelle on prononce une phrase peut en changer radicalement le sens. #psycholinguistique #linguistique

A thread on ignorance in science.

It’s often claimed that science is about accumulating knowledge. But knowledge accumulation is only one side of the scientific coin. This thread contains 10 quotes from scientists, philosophers of science, sociologists, feminists, and statisticians who’ve highlighted the importance of *ignorance* in science, both as a precursor and a product. Enjoy!

#Science
#PhilosophyOfScience
#PhilSci
#SociologyofScience
#Statistics
#Feminism
#Knowledge
#Ignorance

1/11 🧵👉

"It seems astounding to me that the idea of correspondence between brain activity and ambient features has ever been taken seriously. To see a neuron as being responsible for a percept ... is straight vitalism or animism: It attributes to one component of a system all of the properties of a description..."

"...If a car undergoes a structural change because of bumping into a tree (the fender is twisted and the front tire scratched), we do not say that it remembers the accident by storing a memory, nor do we say that it learned from the event by changing its behavior via a representation of trees. These descriptions seem ludicrous because the car is so obviously a man-made artifact. Yet it seems that the same sort of mechanistic and operational description can be applied to highly plastic autonomous systems like the nervous system. Memory requires no record or storage, for it stands only for a history of structural coupling; learning requires no representation, for it stands for structural plasticity. Whatever the observer wants to see or needs to use in symbolic descriptions, such as storage, and representation as mapping, are not operational."

Francisco J. Varela
Principles of Biological Autonomy (1979)

#FranciscoJVarela #Memory #SymbolicRepresentation #biology #cognition #Cybernetics #philosophy @philosophy

P. 259

Popper on 'best theories'. As opposed to what people often think, Popper is clear theories often have 'ad hoc' assumptions introduced to 'fix' a theory when original predictions do not pan out. He just prefers ad hoc assumptions to be testable and as few as possible. If your preregistered analysis seems like a bad idea afterwards, you can ad hoc your analysis. It is better if you don't have to, and you should not do it to escape falsification. But it can be fine (and future tests will tell us).

Parmi ces recommandations, le colloque propose d'ailleurs que les agences adoptent les méthodologies employées par les revues systématiques de la littérature ou les méta-analyses.
En effet à la lecture des rapports de l'EFSA ou de l'EPA on est parfois assez surpris par la légèreté de la méthodologie.

Comme dans cet exemple, où une valeur est choisir parce qu'elle est « bien au milieu ».
https://factsory.org/2020/glyphosate-sous-estimation-aigue-de-notre-exposition-chronique/

12/

Je me demande s’il existe des listes d’institutions (notamment #GLAM, universités et centres de recherche) ayant migré vers #Mastodon… et curieux de savoir si certaines d’entre elles ont mis en place une instance (plutôt au niveau d’un réseau national/international, d’un ministère, d’une fédération quelconque etc.).
Pour l’ESR français, ça pourrait pas être un service de Renater par exemple ? 🤷🏻‍♂️

Just tried the magic that is https://anystyle.io/ and... it works! Paste any reference list and get a complete .bib file in return

To continue on the issue of #discrimination in selection committees, it seems to me that there are two levels on which to act. First, to reduce the influence of biases in the decision, for example by choosing the selection criteria before looking at the applications. However, this kind of tools is not enough: even if we manage to eliminate judgment biases, blindly basing the decision on merit is unfair for candidates facing discrimination or coming from countries where research is less developed, and who did not have the same opportunities as others. Complementary tools are therefore proposed, for example, considering the potential of candidates and not their achievements. I think this aspect is important, but more difficult to implement: Given that not all members of the jury are sensitive to the issue of discrimination, it can be tricky to argue that we want to put forward a candidate with a lesser CV because we think he or she has greater potential... assessing achievements is a bit like "counting points", whereas assessing potential seems more subjective. Do any of you have a concrete experience of how to deal with this in a jury? @academicchatter #AcademicMastodon #genderbias

@leovarnet Our committee put together a list of tips on this here (section "You are on a selection committee and want to avoid bias in your admission/hiring procedure"): https://equalityanddiversity.dec.ens.fr/en/am-i-biased-15020

@arth This is a great explanation of git commands and data flow. I've uploaded the image with an alt-text description.
#Alt4You