Scientific Method, Anti-Foundationalism, and Public Decision-making

An examination of the legitimacy of attacks on lay assessments of environmental or other technological Risk. The case is made that rational policy requires an epistemology in which what we believe about Risk is bootstrapped onto how we should act concerning Risk

Revising Geology Labs to Explicitly Use the Scientific Method

This article points out that many content- or skill-based labs can be revised to explicitly involve the scientific method by asking students to propose hypotheses before making observations. Labs in which this method has been successfully applied include skill-building labs such as topographic map labs, content-based labs involving experiments with models, and field labs. Because these labs force students to state their expectations before making observations, they allow students to test their own models for various processes, making the students feel more engaged in the observations. This type of exercise reinforces other discussions of the scientific method, and gives students a better understanding of how scientists think. It provides models for applying the scientific method that students can consider when they try to design tests for open-ended research questions in this or other courses. Educational levels: Graduate or professional

Studies on Utilizing the Three Famous International Index Systems to Evaluate Scientific Research Level of Higher Learning Institutions

Science Citation Index (SCI), The Engineering Index (EI) and Index to Scientific & Technical Proceeding (ISTP) are widely accepted and used to evaluate the scientific research level of higher learning institutions by many country's science and technology field currently. After research, we point out the blemishes in this method and put forward the problems that need to be noticed, and then, under current conditions, bring forward brand-new standard and method to estimate research level, efficiency, fund exploitation and so on. One shouldn't over-emphasize the total amount of papers collected in SCI, EI & ISTP when evaluating the scientific research level of higher learning institutions, whereas using ‘comprehensive factor’ analysis method can make it more scientific and efficient

How to Compare the Scientific Contributions between Research Groups

We present a method to analyse the scientific contributions between research groups. Given multiple research groups, we construct their journal/proceeding graphs and then compute the similarity/gap between them using network analysis. This analysis can be used for measuring similarity/gap of the topics/qualities between research groups' scientific contributions. We demonstrate the practicality of our method by comparing the scientific contributions by Korean researchers with those by the global researchers for information security in 2006 - 2008. The empirical analysis shows that the current security research in South Korea has been isolated from the global research trend