I enjoy his podcasts. I have his book in my Nook, ready to read next.

[10:05] “So those are two really interesting cases where the falsification criterion couldn’t possibly be applied to both cases.  And it shows very nicely why falsification doesn’t work… do we have an alternative? [with a breath of released tension]”

:bug:  So he’s falsified falsification theory.  Okay…

Bayesian Theory?

I do love to read Pigliucci’s articles.  :)

I do love to read Pigliucci’s articles.  :)

Me too! although I don’t always agree with him. I am waiting for an hour when nothing can interrupt me, to enjoy the podcast!

I like the rationally speaking blog and its associated podcast
http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/
http://www.rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/

One thing they do is provide more WWW links for listeners/readers to follow up on—we could do that here as well.

Going to get the Nonsense on Stilts as an early Thanksgiving/Xmas present to read at the relatives…..
I’m a 1974 graduate of Caltech and one of my favorite discussion of this is Feynman’s well-known commencement address on “Cargo-Cult Science”
http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm
The main take-away is that we need to try very hard not to fool ourselves.

From the perspective of hindsight, Feynman was very critical of science errors but he did not take on religion a la Dawkins.  Don’t know why.

I agree with a comment above that it was interesting to hear Pigliucci’s comments on definition of science and how it really works.  I have seen many discussions of the strong inference model (Platt 1964 Science) and Pigliucci’s explanation of a flaw in it is “reasonably” convincing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_inference
http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~markhill/science64_strong_inference.pdf
http://pelagicos.net/NSCI6110_spring2010/Readings/O’Donohue_Buchanan_2001.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2048741/

@Jackson
thanks for those references; they say whay I intuited in the suggestions thread only so much better!
http://www.centerforinquiry.net/forums/viewthread/8098/P15/

Science is a thought process.

EVERYBODY has to be a scientist.

Kids need to be encouraged to think in grade school not told what to think.

psik

It’s not clear to me what Pigliucci’s suggested Bayesian approach to the demarcation problem is.  He says something to the effect that those who adjust their probabilities in accordance to the evidence are doing science, and those who don’t aren’t.  But that leaves open the question of what counts as evidence and whose evidence counts, and may entail that some scientists aren’t doing science and some pseudoscientists are.

The philosopher Philip Kitcher, in his book _The Advancement of Science_, proposed that the science/pseudoscience distinction bestreduces to a scientist/pseudoscientist distinction, in that scientists are those who participate in the community of scientists and do work recognized as science by scientists, while pseudoscientists don’t.  Pigliucci’s view, on one possible interpretation, seems similar.

http://nycskeptics.org/events/rationally-speaking-live-how-to-tell-science-from-bunk.html

Live episode talking about the booki Jan 29 2011

{of course the superbowl will be outdoors at Giants Stadium around this time in one of the coming years…. }

I was thinking of downloading from aubilble for Xmas plane ride…