New Science Library
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You and Your Research by Richard Hamming — A retired Bell Labs scientist gives a speech on the question, “Why do so few scientists make significant contributions and so many are forgotten in the long run?”
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Cargo Cult Science by Richard Feynman — The 1974 commencement address for Caltech, where Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman argues for what he calls a “first principle” in conducting research: “you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”
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How Do People Get New Ideas? by Isaac Asimov — An essay on creativity and how to make it happen.
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Atoms of Cognition: Metaphysics in the Royal Society by Neal Stephenson — Speculative Fiction author Neal Stephenson discusses metaphysics and why it is essential to scientific progress.
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What has happened down here is the winds have changed by Andrew Gelman — Statistician Andrew Gelman gives a brief history of the Replication crisis and how it burned through science in the years from 2011 to 2016. Social psychology may be ground zero, but the implications apply to anyone who uses inferential statistics.
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Beware The Man Of One Study by Scott Alexander — An essay about why you should expect to see evidence on both sides of most questions, and what to do about it.
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Abolish the PhD by DeviceRandom — A blogger with “almost two Ph.D.s” argues that “the Ph.D., as an institution, is worse than useless. It is damaging, and it should be abolished.”
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The Uncharity of College: The Big Business Nobody Understands by Conrad Bastable — A reframing of colleges as a form of big business.