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   Another Angry Woman (stavvers@masto.ai)'s status on Monday, 11-Mar-2024 00:33:08 JST Another Angry Woman

   This is one of my favourite topics for me, not a physicist, to go off on one about after a few drinks, so it's nice to see a proper physicist actually saying it.

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     Another Angry Woman (stavvers@masto.ai)'s status on Monday, 11-Mar-2024 00:32:58 JST Another Angry Woman

     in reply to

     • BashStKid

     @BashStKid I cannot emphasise enough how doing a qualitative module helped me immeasurably in my own reasoning and practice as the methodology involves constant reflection on why you're asking the question, and how you might be influencing what you find, which is something *all* scientists should be doing

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     BashStKid (bashstkid@mastodon.online)'s status on Monday, 11-Mar-2024 00:33:00 JST BashStKid

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     @stavvers Let’s pick physicists, who at least in their first year are *so* excited with their new toolbox - what would you suggest to widen their epistemological outlook and be a bit less arrogant?

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     Another Angry Woman (stavvers@masto.ai)'s status on Monday, 11-Mar-2024 00:33:00 JST Another Angry Woman

     in reply to

     • BashStKid

     @BashStKid do a full qualitative methods module in another discipline, learn how to write a reflexivity log, and apply that, always, to their own research

     esmevane, sorry repeated this.
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     Another Angry Woman (stavvers@masto.ai)'s status on Monday, 11-Mar-2024 00:33:02 JST Another Angry Woman

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     Among many physicists - and others in the "harder" sciences - there's a weird perception that The Maths is objective, that The Observations are objective when basically it's as prone to error as any uni sociology questionnaires: it's just that the first year sociologist spent their entire year learning all about how even your own research question is informed by what you believe or want to find. Meanwhile the physicist, I understand, just goes "telescopes, yay".

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     Another Angry Woman (stavvers@masto.ai)'s status on Monday, 11-Mar-2024 00:33:03 JST Another Angry Woman

     in reply to

     And for every neutrino, inferred to make the maths work and eventually verified, there's an aether, an invisible unmeasurable medium which carries light through a vacuum.

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     Another Angry Woman (stavvers@masto.ai)'s status on Monday, 11-Mar-2024 00:33:04 JST Another Angry Woman

     in reply to

     Many years ago, I wrote this defence of geocentrism because truly, the science on geocentrism was pretty sound and the maths worked; believing the sun went round the earth was just Good Science https://anotherangrywoman.com/2016/10/17/in-defence-of-the-ptolemaic-model-sort-of/

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     Another Angry Woman (stavvers@masto.ai)'s status on Monday, 11-Mar-2024 00:33:05 JST Another Angry Woman

     in reply to

     Paper is here https://arxiv.org/html/2402.19459v1

     And a plain language summary here https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/mar/09/controversial-new-theory-of-gravity-rules-out-need-for-dark-matter

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     Another Angry Woman (stavvers@masto.ai)'s status on Monday, 11-Mar-2024 00:33:07 JST Another Angry Woman

     in reply to

     Like idk man, maybe it's the social sciences background in me but a variable that cannot be directly observed or measured that gets thrown in just to make the maths add up absolutely would not get published in any social sciences literature and would be critiqued as nonsense, so I've always been surprised that physicists can get away with it.