Wednesday August 30 – First Day of Classes – How ought we think about science?

Friday September 1 – Defining terms … What is Authority?

Monday September 4 – No Class (Labor Day)

Wednesday September 6 – Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis

Friday September 8 – Falsification and What `Theory’ Means

Monday September 11 – Lookin’ up the truth (The Galileo Affair, Part I)

Wednesday September 13 – Lookin’ up the truth (The Galileo Affair, Part II)

Friday September 15 – Ambivalence Towards Authority – Franz Kafka (required) and Ambivalence Towards Authority – Richard Sennett (optional)

Monday September 18 – Modernity and Authority in the Work of Max Weber

Wednesday September 20 – Wherefrom Scientific Values in the Modern World? and Value Antimony, Pluralism, and Good Will

Friday September 22 – Diagnosis: Mercury: Money, Politics, and Poisson

Monday September 25 – An Enemy of the People

Wednesday September 27 – An Enemy of the People (continued)

Friday September 29 – An Enemy of the People (continued)

Monday October 2 – Defending Secondhand Smoke

Wednesday October 4 – Manufactured uncertainty and product defense, (optional) Climate Science and the Cold War, and (optional) Expertise and Dissembling

Friday October 6 – Smallpox: Inoculation, Vaccination, Eradication and (optional) The Humanities and the Plague

Monday October 9 – The Polio Vaccine: From Medical Miracle to Public Health Catastrophe

Wednesday October 11 – Class online and asynchronous. Three things before Fall break.

• One Bad apple?
• What Our Case Studies Reveal
• Get started on the assigned reading for Midterm Projects

October 12-15 Fall Break 

Monday October 16 – Discuss Midterm Project(s) – Reading and discussion of Making Sense of Science by Cornelia Dean

Wednesday October 18 – The Diagnostic Statistical Manual and Selling Sickness

Friday October 20 – 1. We the People. Leaders: Atari, Kenneth.

Monday October 23 – 2. The Research Enterprise. Leaders: Nate, Rachael, Shelby.

Wednesday October 25 – 3. Things Go Wrong. Leaders: Kyle, Ethan.

Friday October 27 – 4. What was the fact? Class online and asynchronous.

Monday October 30 – 5. The Universal Solvent. Leaders: Anya, Luciano.

Wednesday November 1 – Political Science. Leaders: Rian, Collin.

Friday November 3 – Conclusion and Appendix (Trustworthy, Untrustworthy, or Irrelevant)

Monday November 6 – The Burnout Society and (optional) Choice is not Freedom

Wednesday November 8 – Surveillance Capitalism

Friday November 10 – Data-ism: The Ideology of Big Data

Monday November 13 – Science and Ideology and (optional) This Dilemma Has No Technical Solution

Wednesday November 15 – Final Project Statement (brainstorm your project)

Friday November 17 – A Minor Episode in the Science Wars Class online and asynchronous.

Friday November 17 – Target date for project idea (400 words) and a list (3 or more) of references/resources to be engaged

Monday November 20 – Class will be online and asynchronous

November 22-26 Thanksgiving Holiday  

Monday November 27 – Why/How/When Trust Science? and What is Science? (redux)

Wednesday Novermber 29 – Two Books: Two Academic Cultures and Two Books: One World

Friday December 1 – Discussion

Monday December 4 – Discussion

Wednesday December 6 – Discussion

Friday December 8 – Last Day of Classes – Donuts and Adieu and (optional) Who Speaks for Science?

Tuesday December 12 – Target date for Final Project

Tuesday December 19 – Deadline for Final Project

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Further reading

Social Media and Political Polarization and Clinging to Views and Opinions

Racial Science: Human Genetic Diversity and “Genohype”

Gendered Science: Feminist Epistemology and Women in Neuroscience

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