Good science: Can it ever be gender free?

Researchers and theorists who attempt to generalize about sexuality and sexual orientation in both men and women simultaneously often take male experiences as the norm and ignore unique aspects of women's lives. The purpose of this issue is to focus attention on scientific research and theory about aspects of women's sexualities, with special emphasis on sexual orientation. A new paradigm is presented that recognizes the great diversity of women's erotic experiences and the many sociocultural factors that shape women's sexuality and sexual orientation across the lifespan. This introductory article highlights major themes and provides a brief summary of the articles in the issue. Four central topics are discussed: (1) the complexnature of women's sexualities and sexual orientations; (2) the importance of historical, social, and cultural contexts for adequately understanding women's sexualities; (3) the development of sexual orientation in women; and (4) implications for research and policy.

A satisfying solution to the problem of demarcation remains elusive, but, regardless, we shouldn't be content with dismissing any theory, study or method simply because it doesn't fulfil a particular definition. Empiricist attitudes towards the sciences emphasize both observations and certain forms of reasoning, but the basic empiricist picture could easily lead to confusion about how sciences work. Our experiences are not always reliable indicators of how things are. We should be wary of placing too much emphasis on how things appear. Biases in subjective experience can be overcome through improved experimental design. There might be very good reasons for ignoring certain data, but those reasons may not always be immediately apparent to those who lack relevant training and education. Certainty is not something sciences achieve, but absence of certainty is consistent with having lots of compelling evidence for given conclusions. We continue to learn about how past experiences can better predict future events. Scientific methods are themselves appropriate objects of criticism and refinement, and the introduction of new methods may be entirely justifiable. All theories confront anomalies, so anomalies alone can't be adequate reasons to dismiss a theory. Theories are pursued, in part, because they offer the most promise for purposes of furthering our understanding. Kuhn's suggestion that scientists work within something like a paradigm has historical plausibility, but this need not imply strong incommensurability between paradigms. Scientific progress is contingent, shaped in part by what problems scientists choose to engage, what technology becomes available, as well as broader socio-economic and political factors. Nevertheless, such contingencies are quite consistent with scientists achieving substantive results relative to the objectives they set. The arguments from underdetermination and discontinuity within the sciences are each reminders of scientific fallibility. Neither provides compelling reasons to deny particular scientific theories or conclusions that some people may find inconvenient or objectionable. Scientific communities may be a more appropriate object for explaining scientific authority. Sciences are not value free, but the role of values in sciences need not compromise scientific authority. It is appropriate to criticize scientific conclusions, methods and theories, but we should remember that some criticisms may be entirely misguided. Worthwhile criticisms are precise and well-supported.

Appeals to some thesis of underdetermination, to the idea that scientific theories and hypotheses are not entailed by the evidence that supports them, are common in feminist philosophy of science. These appeals seek to understand and explain how androcentrism and other problematic approaches to gender have found their way into good science, as well as the reverse – how feminist approaches to gender and science that are also value-laden, can contribute to good science. Focusing on W.V. Quine’s positions on holism and underdetermination, I argue that although Quine’s general thesis of holism does not entail his thesis of global underdetermination, his account of and arguments for moderate holism entail a localized and generalizable underdetermination, which I call moderate underdetermination. This moderate underdetermination is not transient or true of only some theories and hypotheses. Rather, it is a permanent state of affairs that characterizes all reasonably inclusive theories and hypotheses, however much evidence for them accumulates. I contend that Quine’s moderate holism entails the most robust and defensible argument for localized underdetermination, and that feminists would do well to appeal to it in arguing that values inform good science.

Although a rich tradition of feminist critiques of science exists, it is often difficult for feminists who are scientists to bridge these critiques with practical transformations in scientific knowledge production. In this paper, I go beyond the general bases of feminist critiques of science by using feminist theory in science to illustrate how a practical transformation in methodology can change molecular biology based research in the reproductive sciences.

Some philosophers have recently argued that contrary to the traditional view, good scientific theories can in fact be logically inconsistent. The literature is now full of case-studies that are taken to support this claim. I will argue however that as of yet no-one has managed to articulate a philosophically interesting view about the role of logically inconsistent theories in science that genuinely goes against tradition, is plausibly true, and is supported by any of the case studies usually given.

Good Teaching is Good Science

This article presents the concept of "intersectionality" and argues for its usefulness for feminist research. The concept is used in recent international feminist debates in order to theorize how gender and other sociocultural power differentials such as ethnicity, race, sexual preference, age and nationality interact in the construction of subjectivity and material conditions of subjects. The first part of the article introduces the concept, a couple of key reference texts and political contexts. It is argued that thinking in terms of intersections between gender and other markers of sociocultural power differences is a much more integrated part of feminist thinking than a first glance at the actual use of the concept "intersectionality" reveils. The argument is based on references to feminist theoretical and political debates around the relationship between gender and class, gender and sexual preference, gender, race and ethnicity, gender and age - and discussions, started in the 1970s and early 1980s. Other related feminist theoretizations, transversalism (Yuval-Davis), nomadism (Braidotti), inappropriate/d otherness (Haraway), are also interpellated in order to sustain the argument that thinking in terms of intersections is an integrated dimension of much feminist thought. The second part of the article mobilizes key arguments for the usefulness of intersectionality as a theoretical and political tool in feminism and refers, moreover, to possible problems. Six principles are articulated on which feminist intersectionality analysis, according to the author, should be based. The main argument in favour of feminist intersectionality analysis is that this approach makes it possible to speakabout differencesand diversity in political collectives, as for exemple, women's movements, and to take into account different positionalities, without creating a slippery slope towards a discursive situation, where gendered power differentials can be "legitimately" ignored in favour of an exclusive focus on other diversity markers.

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.本文回顧總結了近幾年中國本土中醫現代化研究的基本狀況和學術焦點，認為邏輯實證只是中醫現代化研究的一個主流方面，中醫還需要證偽。去偽存真是不可分割的兩面。目前許多爭議與分歧源出民族文化的自尊和認知偏見，確立一種公正的文化比較觀和認知方法對於糾正中醫現代研究中的那些“唯科學主義”和民族偏見都是至關重要的。中醫現代化研究的重新定位是走向後現代的思維。Most contemporary research concerning modernizing traditional Chinese medicine is aimed at confirming the effectiveness of certain traditional doctrines, methods, and treatments through scientific experiments designed in terms of modern scientific theories and approaches. This paper argues that such research should also consider the issue of falsification. Not everything in traditional Chinese medicine can be confirmed. We need a complete mechanism through which to reject the false and maintain the true.By investigating several major academic journals in the field published in mainland China, we find that there have been several different types of research concerning modernizing traditional Chinese medicine. First, the modern Western pattern of clinical trial has been used to test the effectiveness of traditional Chinese drugs. Second, modern Western medical ways have been employed in administering traditional Chinese drugs to patients. Third, modern scientific experiments have been designed to analyze the chemical components of traditional Chinese drugs and disclose their functional mechanisms at the micro-level of the body. Fourth, efforts have been made to explain and reformulate traditional Chinese medical theories and clinical experience in terms of modern scientific and medical theories. Finally, modern medical methods and technologies have been chosen to test particular traditional Chinese clinical doctrines and principles. All of this research has been very helpful for us to understand traditional Chinese medicine in terms of modern science and technology.However, some scholars are worried that such research has abandoned the identity of traditional Chinese medicine as a peculiar medical system. They doubt that the diagnostic and therapeutic doctrines and approaches of traditional Chinese medicine can be subject to the investigation and test of modern scientific theories and methods without destroying their very characteristics. However, these scholars fail to see a crucial role played by the method of experimental research in selecting scientific hypotheses and theories. Traditional Chinese medicine, as a medical system, ought to be open to the test of experimental research to confirm its useful parts and falsify its false components. Only through this process of differentiation can traditional Chinese medicine become a real scientific system in the modern sense.DOWNLOAD HISTORY | This article has been downloaded 25 times in Digital Commons before migrating into this platform.

Atheism as a Soviet Science Atko Remmel, UT Faculty of Theology The following questions will be addressesd in the talk: To which extent were Soviet anti-religion practices scientifically grounded? To which extent can one speak about atheism as a scientific discipline? Is it justifiable to regard Soviet science as „atheist“? On the one hand, atheism was a conceptual component of the prevailing ideology, but on the other hand it was a practical device used for enforcing this ideology. The main basis for regarding it as scientific was the dogmatic position that Marxism-Leninism was a scientific theory. Soviet science was therefore automatically considered atheist and atheism scientific, regardless of the scientific methods – or lack thereof – which were used for gathering data. When speaking of the scientific character of scientific atheism, it should be approached as a synthetic discipline which drew together the results of other disciplines with the aim of criticizing religion, its main conclusion being that religion was incompatible with Marxist ideology and natural sciences. However, when science is exploited for ideological reasons, it is inevitably biased and lacks some of the main attributes of scientific quality, despite its scientific mimicry. Moreover, since the contributions of atheists to the findings of natural sciences were mainly of ideological nature, the discipline attained an apologetic role and it can be considered a quasi-scientific rather than a scientific discipline. In Estonia the community of scientific atheists consisted barely of a handful of people who were mostly occupied at different establishments for higher education. „Estonian scientific atheism“ can be distinguished from Soviet scientific atheism only so far as their writings dealt with the local situation. The main fields of study were the history of religion and sociology; on the practical side the main focus was on the new Soviet rituals.

Traditional scientific theories typically abstract simplified variables from phenomena and enter them into mathematical expressions to test empirically. In behavior analysis, for example, behavioral and environmental phenomena are often reduced to simple rates of target responding and reinforcement, which are then entered into mathematical expressions such as the matching law. A modern version of theory development instead treats observable phenomena as the result of the operation of a complex system. The operation of the system is stated in the form of low-level rules, which constitute the theory. A system that follows the rules produces higher-level emergent outcomes that can be compared to data. One advantage of complex systems theory over traditional theory in science is that it naturally produces a wider range of phenomena, both steady state and dynamic, that can be compared with experimental findings. An example of a complex systems theory in behavior analysis is the evolutionary theory of behavior dynamics (ETBD), which is stated in the form of low-level Darwinian rules that can be used to animate artificial organisms (AOs). The behavior of the AOs is a form of artificial intelligence that can be studied empirically and compared to the behavior of live organisms. The ETBD has been shown to accurately describe the behavior of live organisms, both qualitatively and quantitatively, in a wide variety of environments. The theory has also been successfully applied to the study and treatment of clinically significant behavior problems.

The science education literature suggests that the public and students often hold narrow stereotypical views of scientists and science. Here we argue that it is important that students and the public understand the basis on which scientists make scientific claims. The inquiry sought to develop an understanding of the scientific mind, explored through Gauld’s (2005) notion of ‘habits of mind’. The vehicle used to explore these ideas consisted of an inquiry into how scientists rationalise conflicts between scientific theories and religious beliefs which are not in agreement with consensually‐accepted scientific theories. Twenty scientists from different scientific disciplines and levels of seniority were interviewed using as a basis an instrument containing a series of religious‐based item statements that a panel of scientific and religious experts considered were in agreement with a variety of religious doctrines yet in disagreement with current scientific thinking, or for which there is at present no supporting evidence from a variety of scientific disciplines. These statements acted as an interview protocol and formed the basis for interactive discourse, which was audio‐taped, transcribed verbatim and participant‐validated. These data provide a window into scientific thinking as practiced by modern scientists, and helps develop a picture of these scientists’ ‘habits of mind’. The findings suggest that these scientists, unlike their stereotype, hold idiosyncratic views of what constitutes good scientific evidence and sound, credible testimony.

Planning research-understood as research aiming to improve the body of knowledge on which spatial planning is based-includes issues rooted both in the social sciences, natural science and the humanities. Spatial planners need knowledge about the likely consequences of different alternatives of action, as well as understanding of the role of plans and planning processes in the development of society. This is reflected in the two-fold focus of planning research on both substantive and procedural issues. Whereas research on the role of plans and planning processes takes place mainly within a non-positivist social science paradigm, the research aiming to provide planners with the knowledge needed in order to make good plans is often situated in the battlefield between opposing positions within theory of science. Because planning research has both society and the physical as its subject of inquiry, a reflective opinion about the interaction between the physical environment and human actions is crucial. Traditionally, many spatial planners have conceived of this in a quite näive way, assuming that human behaviour can to a high extent be shaped or controlled by manipulating the physical environment. During recent decades, this view has been sharply criticized by anti-positivist scholars, and some theorists point out the great uncertainty, close to impossibility, in predicting human actions, even at an aggregate scale. The latter position has dramatic implications to spatial planning, as it would then be impossible to assess whether a certain physical solution is likely to have positive or negative social and related environmental consequences, e.g. in terms of travelling distances and modal split. Our own position is that the physical environment, along with a number of individual and non-physical structural factors, influences human activities and quality of life. To some extent, this influence can be predicted at an aggregate scale, but not for a particular individual (except those actions rendered impossible by the laws of physics). How strong influence the physical environment exerts, is a question requiring empirical research in order to be answered.

This paper reviews applications in computer science that decision theorists have addressed for years, discusses the requirements posed by these applications that place great strain on decision theory/social science methods, and explores applications in the social and decision sciences of newer decision-theoretic methods developed with computer science applications in mind. The paper deals with the relation between computer science and decision-theoretic methods of consensus, with the relation between computer science and game theory and decisions, and with “algorithmic decision theory.”

This article analyses the role of science and scientific research in the modern world, highlighting the importance of scientific research methodology in the development of modern science. Science, along with education, is considered to be two of the most crucial spheres in society's future. Throughout history, mankind has employed knowledge to study and organize the world. The Renaissance period is recognized as a pivotal phase in the development of science, laying the groundwork for classical natural science and serving as the basis for the emergence of social sciences, known as "humanities." In the XVIII and XIX centuries, the philosophy of science emerged, focusing on the analysis of scientific activity and the scientific process itself. Theoretical and methodological principles of science were developed, scientific theory was examined, and distinctions were made between gnoseology, logic, and the methodology of science. Within the field of science studies, it is emphasized that professional scientists adhere to specific methodological principles in their research, particularly the dialectic interaction between empirical and theoretical knowledge. Fundamental and applied research represent different levels of the scientific pursuit of truth, employing diverse methodologies consisting of rules, principles, and research methods. Modern science encompasses a multilevel concept of scientific knowledge methodology, encompassing philosophical, general scientific, and partial research methods. These methods possess unique characteristics across different disciplines and hold varying significance for their respective development. Philosophical methods are universal and abstract in nature, while general scientific methods aid in the analysis of existing practices and the current state of theory development. Commonly recognized general research methods and techniques include analysis, synthesis, induction and deduction, abstraction and generalization, modelling, statistical methods, and analogy. Moreover, the interconnectedness of various scientific disciplines in contemporary times has led to the increased utilization of approaches and methods from one field in another, giving rise to intra- and interdisciplinary methods.

In this article I consider the field of HIV treatment and prevention in light of poststructural feminist critiques of the self-evidence of matter. Both HIV and poststructural feminist theory are viewed in relation to the current state of HIV scientific research of which it has been said: ‘ much remains left to the imagination’ (McCune, 2001, emphasis added). Importantly, it is in the absence of ‘real’ knowledge of bodily matter and virus, that imagination is presumed by science as a fall back. Paradoxically, recent debate within feminist theory provides an almost perverse counter to this way of characterizing the struggle against HIV. Rather than considering imagination as something outside or external to the ‘real’, there is now substantial argument suggesting that imagination is always already present and inherent to the ‘real’. In the course of this paper, these differing positions of science and feminist theory are used to challenge and extend each other. The empirical matter of HIV medical science is shown as evidence of matter beyond the normative insistence of (human) language. On this basis, a theory of performativity - devised by Judith Butler and extended by Karen Barad - is argued as grounds for a methodologically expanded science.