The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark is a 1995 book by the astronomer and science communicator Carl Sagan. In it, Sagan aims to explain the scientific method to laypeople and to encourage people to learn critical and skeptical thinking. He explains methods to help distinguish between ideas that are considered valid science and those that can be considered pseudoscience. Sagan states that when new ideas are offered for consideration, they should be tested by means of skeptical thinking and should stand up to rigorous questioning.
Carl Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit: Tools for Thinking Critically & Knowing Pseudoscience When You See It
Though he died too young, Carl Sagan left behind an impressively large body of work, including more than 600 scientific papers and more than 20 books.
Guest post: If you’re going to critique science, be scientific about it
Loren K. Mell Editor’s note: This post responds to a Feb. 13 article in The Atlantic, “The Scientific Literature Can’t Save Us Now,” written by Retraction Watch cofounders Adam Marcus and Ivan Oran…
Dark-Moneyed Denialists Are Running 'Fixing Science' Symposium of Doubt
The “Fixing Science” symposium, which is hosted by the National Association of Scholars and kicks off today in Oakland, California, includes credible speakers who want to improve some areas of science hurt by the use of poor statistical methods or making irreproducible claims. Unfortunately, they are outnumbered by people who have often cast doubt on mainstream climate, environmental, and health sciences. For […]
Spirits and the incompleteness of physics
Complexity, renormalization, and the spirits beyond the horizon of theory
Zechen Zhang on Twitter / X
1/ For nearly 350 years, science has communicated itself through one object: the paper. A linear narrative, frozen as a PDF, written for a human reader. We've come to treat that format as the medium of science itself.It doesn't have to be. It's a historical artifact. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/P5UUhceLkC— Zechen Zhang (@ZechenZhang5) April 30, 2026
Predictive processing frameworks for perception can explain recent drone sightings in the United States
We draw on the predictive processing theory of perception to explain why healthy, intelligent, honest, and psychologically normal people might easily misperceive lights in the sky as threatening or extraordinary objects, especially in the context of WEIRD (western, educated, industrial, rich, and democratic) societies. We argue that the uniquely sparse properties of skyborne and celestial stimuli make it difficult for an observer to update prior beliefs, which can be easily fit to observed lights. Moreover, we hypothesize that humans have likely evolved to perceive the sky and its perceived contents as deeply meaningful. Finally, we briefly discuss the possible role of generalized distrust in scientific institutions and ultimately argue for the importance of astronomy education for producing a society with prior beliefs that support veridical perception.
Michael Nielsen – How science actually progresses
The “Terrible Engine of Destruction” That Inspired Federal Science Funding
What can we learn about the relationship between science and the American public from the story of plagues of locusts in the 1870s?
Re-Engineering Wimsatt for Limited Beings
Science is the best way to produce facts about reality. The best, at least, that limited human beings have devised so far. Yet, not even scientists quite seem to understand how scientific knowledge is generated. This is not only a philosophical but also a practical problem, as our misunderstandings affect the quality of our research and limit the directions it can take. In light of this, it may be good if we reflected a bit more on how we do science — to become better researchers through philosophy. Here, I provide an accessible introduction to a philosophical approach that achieves precisely this: William Wimsatt’s multi-perspectival realism. It disabuses us of widespread but misleading myths and idealizations about science, such as the idea that everything in the world can be reduced to a fundamental level, or that we can approach a “view from nowhere” — complete and objectively detached knowledge of the world. Wismatt proposes an alternative view based on his thorough studies of actual research practice. It cuts deeply into the layered yet messy structure of reality, and the improvised but potent tools we have available, as limited and evolved beings, to explore it. Wimsatt reframes science as an irregular yet adaptive process rather than a cumulative repository of unalterable facts. His philosophy provides a workable and grounded middle way between radical skepticism and naïve belief in the objective truth of science. It explains how knowledge is conceptually constructed by humans, but still connects us to reality in a trustworthy way. We need such a new view of science, not only to improve our research practices and outcomes but, more generally, to gain a more realistic understanding of ourselves, the world, and our place and role within it.
The Night Masquerade (Binti, #3)
The concluding part of the highly-acclaimed science fic…
I am disappointed by the fact that so many seem tempted to share a "nonrigorous", unserious attempt at quantifying fraud in science because it passes some silly vibe check ("I asked others and they agree"). So in the name of good science, we're ready to produce bad science as a rhetorical tool.
I call this the dark matter theory of science. Blogs, social media, etc - a majority of what actually influences science is invisible to the system (esp in AI) Real systems change in science will only be possible when we recognize these sources of influence and intentionally design for them
Eugene Vinitsky 🍒
Kinda feel weird that a few blog posts I’ve written in a few hours will probably have more educational impact than any amount of teaching I’ll ever do
