The National Science Foundation and philosophy of science's withdrawal from social concerns.

At some point during the 1950s, mainstream American philosophy of science began increasingly to avoid questions about the role of non-cognitive values in science and, accordingly, increasingly to avoid active engagement with social, political and moral concerns. Such questions and engagement eventually ceased to be part of the mainstream. Here we show that the eventual dominance of 'value-free' philosophy of science can be attributed, at least in part, to the policies of the U.S. National Science Foundation's "History and Philosophy of Science" sub-program. In turn, the sub-program's policies were set by logical empiricists who espoused value-free philosophy of science; these philosophers' actions, we also point out, fit a broad pattern, one in which analytic philosophers used institutional control to marginalize rival approaches to philosophy. We go on to draw on existing knowledge of this pattern to suggest two further, similar, contributors to the withdrawal from value-laden philosophy of science, namely decisions by the editors of Philosophy of Science and by the editors of The Journal of Philosophy. Political climate was, we argue, at most an indirect contributor to the withdrawal and was neither a factor that decided whether it occurred nor one that was sufficient to bring it about. Moreover, we argue that the actions at the National Science Foundation went beyond what was required by its senior administrators and are better viewed as part of what drove, rather than as what was being driven by, the adoption of logical empiricism by the philosophy of science community.

How much would each researcher receive if competitive government research funding were distributed equally among researchers?

Scientists are increasingly dissatisfied with funding systems that rely on peer assessment and, accordingly, have suggested several proposals for reform. One of these proposals is to distribute available funds equally among all qualified researchers, with no interference from peer review. Despite its numerous benefits, such egalitarian sharing faces the objection, among others, that it would lead to an unacceptable dilution of resources. The aim of the present paper is to assess this particular objection. We estimate (for the Netherlands, the U.S. and the U.K.) how much researchers would receive were they to get an equal share of the government budgets that are currently allocated through competitive peer assessment. For the Netherlands, we furthermore estimate what researchers would receive were we to differentiate between researchers working in low-cost, intermediate-cost and high-cost disciplines. Given these estimates, we then determine what researchers could afford in terms of PhD students, Postdocs, travel and equipment. According to our results, researchers could, on average, maintain current PhD student and Postdoc employment levels, and still have at their disposal a moderate (the U.K.) to considerable (the Netherlands, U.S.) budget for travel and equipment. This suggests that the worry that egalitarian sharing leads to unacceptable dilution of resources is unjustified. Indeed, our results strongly suggest that there is room for far more egalitarian distribution of funds than happens in the highly competitive funding schemes so prevalent today.

Lessons on Climate Sensitivity From Past Climate Changes.

Over the last decade, our understanding of climate sensitivity has improved considerably. The climate system shows variability on many timescales, is subject to non-stationary forcing and it is most likely out of equilibrium with the changes in the radiative forcing. Slow and fast feedbacks complicate the interpretation of geological records as feedback strengths vary over time. In the geological past, the forcing timescales were different than at present, suggesting that the response may have behaved differently. Do these insights constrain the climate sensitivity relevant for the present day? In this paper, we review the progress made in theoretical understanding of climate sensitivity and on the estimation of climate sensitivity from proxy records. Particular focus lies on the background state dependence of feedback processes and on the impact of tipping points on the climate system. We suggest how to further use palaeo data to advance our understanding of the currently ongoing climate change.