1,625 research outputs found
What Makes Some People Think Astrology Is Scientific?
Get PDF Citizens in both North America and Europe are apt to read horoscope columns in newspapers and magazines. While some people read these casually and purely for entertainment, some believe that astrology has scientific status and can provide real insight into events and personality. Using data from a European survey, this article explores some of the reasons why some people think that astrology is scientific and how astrology is viewed in relation to other knowledge-producing practices. Three hypotheses in particular are tested. The first is that some Europeans lack the necessary scientific literacy to distinguish science from pseudoscience. The second is that people are confused about what astrology actually is. The third is derived from Adorno’s work on authoritarianism and the occult and postulates that those who adhere to authoritarian values are more likely to believe in astrological claims. Support is found for all three hypotheses. </jats:p
On the calculation of percentile-based bibliometric indicators
Get PDFA percentile-based bibliometric indicator is an indicator that values
publications based on their position within the citation distribution of their
field. The most straightforward percentile-based indicator is the proportion of
frequently cited publications, for instance the proportion of publications that
belong to the top 10% most frequently cited of their field. Recently, more
complex percentile-based indicators were proposed. A difficulty in the
calculation of percentile-based indicators is caused by the discrete nature of
citation distributions combined with the presence of many publications with the
same number of citations. We introduce an approach to calculating
percentile-based indicators that deals with this difficulty in a more
satisfactory way than earlier approaches suggested in the literature. We show
in a formal mathematical framework that our approach leads to indicators that
do not suffer from biases in favor of or against particular fields of science
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