Respon'sible, liable to be called to account or render satisfaction: answerable: capable of discharging duty: able to pay. The old Chambers's dictionary gives a behavioristic view of responsibility: in terms of action, not thought or belief. “Lust in the heart” is not equated to lust in flagrante. It is this view I shall explore in this essay, rather than the more subjective notion of moral responsibility, as in, “I feel moral responsibility for not doing anything to save the Tutsis [Hutus, (...) ethnic Albanians, etc.].” My presumption is that responsibility implies capability: you cannot be held responsible for something over which you have no control. There is obviously uncertainty in some cases—where control is less than total, where the degree of potential control depends on our own efforts, where we cannot know if we have control until we try to exert it, etc. The relation between responsibility and degree of control is a separate topic which I shall not treat here. (shrink)

Science is undergoing an identity crisis! A renown psychologist and biologist diagnoses our age of wishful, magical thinking and blasts out a clarion call for a return to reason and the search for objective knowledge and truth. Fans of Matt Ridley and Nicholas Wade will adore this trenchant meditation and call to action. Science is in trouble. Real questions in desperate need of answers—especially those surrounding ethnicity, gender, climate change, and almost anything related to ‘health and safety’—are swiftly buckling to (...) the fiery societal demands of what ought to be rather than what is. These foregone conclusions may be comforting, but each capitulation to modernity’s whims threatens the integrity of scientific inquiry. Can true, fact-based discovery be redeemed? In Science in the Age of Unreason, legendary professor of psychology and biology, John Staddon, unveils the identity crisis afflicting today’s scientific community, and provides an actionable path to recovery. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Staddon answers pressing questions, including: Is science, especially the science of evolution, a religion? Can ethics be derived from science at all? How sound is social science, particularly surrounding today’s most controversial topics? How can passions be separated from facts? Informed by decades of expertise, Science in the Age of Unreason is a clarion call to rebirth academia as a beacon of reason and truth in a society demanding its unconditional submission. (shrink)

Basic science -- Experiment -- Null hypothesis statistical testing -- Social science: psychology -- Social science: economics -- Behavioral economics -- "Efficient" markets -- Summing up.