About science & Power
In the U.S. today, people tend to express one of two views about science: that it’s largely fake, or that it’s entirely objective.
science & Power is premised on the ‘radical’ third view that science is actually a human enterprise inseparable from personal, social, economic, and political forces. This is roughly the perspective voiced by such ‘fringe’ 20th-century figures as Carl Sagan, Dwight Eisenhower, and Albert Einstein. Here’s the basic argument:
Scientific endeavor is a human behavior. Human behavior is shaped by individual psychology. Individual psychology is shaped by society. Society is shaped by power.
Therefore, science is shaped by power, and can only be fully understood by understanding power.
What is science & Power?
I’m a big proponent and practitioner of small-s science. Big-S Science? Not so much.
Small-s science is the attempt to understand and explain all of sensory experience through a combination of logic and the smallest possible number of approximating rules. Big-S Science is the weaponization of scientific rhetoric—often accomplished through the exploitation of scientists—to advance the agenda of powerful institutions.
science & Power is a newsletter about the capitalization (and capitalization) of that ‘S’.
The purpose of science & Power is to both catalyze and normalize conversations about Big-S Science. To do that, I’ll be telling stories and sharing perspectives that demonstrate that nothing in the preceding paragraphs is all that radical or conspiratorial or new.
Who publishes science & Power?
Geoff Holtzman: Philosopher of science by training, subject to power by profession.
I’m a former cognitive scientist and bioethicist for Christopher Chabris, psychology professor at Franklin & Marshall College, psychometrician for Jonathan Haidt, sentencing disparities researcher for the Maryland Judiciary, and lead data scientist under Ibram X. Kendi. I was only asked to sign NDAs in exchange for severance at like half of those jobs.
My current book project is called B(u)y the Numbers: Profits, Politics, and the Power of Quantitative Propaganda.
I also have a PhD in philosophy, grew up near the Rocky steps, and am a former standup comic, German citizen by way of reparations, and probably in trouble. More on, from, for, by, and about me at https://www.geoffholtzman.com/.
Who is science & Power for?
science & Power is really space for three groups of people to come together.
The first includes current and former researchers who probably already talk to a handful of trusted colleagues in low tones about how Science really works in their field or their institution or their industry.
The second includes people who love finding new curtains behind which they can see how power and political economy and rent-seeking and monopoly and deregulation and the visa system and all that other fun stuff so often runs the show.
The third includes everyone else, because big-S Science loves a sloppy yet formal-looking taxonomy that dumps most people into an ‘Other’ bucket.
What’s with your grammar and punctuation?
What’s with you’re grammar and punctuation!
