The scientific community consists of the total body of scientists, its relationships and interactions. It is normally divided into "sub-communities" each working on a particular field within science (for example there is a robotics community within the field of computer science). Objectivity is expected to be achieved by the scientific method. Peer review, through discussion and debate within journals and conferences, assists in this objectivity by maintaining the quality of research methodology and interpretation of results. This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Robotics is the science and technology of robots, their design, manufacture, and application. ... Computer science, or computing science, is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems. ... It is proposed that this article be deleted, because of the following concern: Limited information sources, article is object for nothing but original research If you can address this concern by improving, copyediting, sourcing, renaming or merging the page, please edit this page and do so. ... Scientific method is a body of techniques for investigating phenomena and acquiring new knowledge, as well as for correcting and integrating previous knowledge. ... Peer review (known as refereeing in some academic fields) is a scholarly process used in the publication of manuscripts and in the awarding of funding for research. ...

Membership, status and interactions

"Membership" of the community is generally, but not exclusively, a function of education, employment status, and institutional affiliation. Status within the community is largely a function of publication record. Sociologists who have studied scientific communities have often found that gender, race, and class can be strong factors for an accepted entrance into the community. Sociology of science is the subfield of sociology that deals with the practice of science. ... Gender in common usage refers to the sexual distinction between male and female. ... For other uses, see Race (disambiguation). ... Social class refers to the hierarchical distinctions between individuals or groups in societies or cultures. ...

Scientists are usually trained in academia through the university system. As such, degrees in the relevant scientific sub-discipline is often considered a prerequisite for membership in the relevant community. In particular, the PhD with its research requirements functions as a kind of entrance examination into the community, though continued membership is dependent on maintaining connections to other researchers through publication and conferences. After obtaining a PhD an academic scientist will continue through post-doctoral fellowships and onto professorships. Other scientists will find employment in industry, think tanks, or the government. Independent researchers tend to be regarded less-highly, though in principle scientists are judged on the caliber of their contributions. Academia is a collective term for the scientific and cultural community engaged in higher education and research, taken as a whole. ... Representation of a university class, 1350s. ... A B.A. issued as a certificate A degree is any of a wide range of status levels conferred by institutions of higher education, such as universities, normally as the result of successfully completing a program of study. ... PhD usually refers to the academic title Doctor of Philosophy PhD can also refer to the manga Phantasy Degree This is a disambiguation page — a list of pages that otherwise might share the same title. ... This article is about the thesis in dialectics and academia. ... An entrance examination is an examination that educational institutions use to determine whether prospective students are good enough to enter their institution. ... An academic conference is a conference for researchers (not always academics) to present and discuss their work. ... A postdoctoral (colloquially, post-doc) appointment is a usually temporary academic job held by a person who has completed his or her doctoral studies. ... The meaning of the word professor (Latin: one who claims publicly to be an expert) varies. ... This article is about the institution. ...

Members of the same community do not need to work together. Communication between the members is established by disseminating research work and hypotheses through articles in peer reviewed journals, or by attending conferences where new research is presented and ideas exchanged and discussed. There are also many informal methods of communication of scientific work and results as well. And many in a coherent community may actually not communicate all of their work with one another, for various professional reasons. Peer review (known as refereeing in some academic fields) is a scholarly process used in the publication of manuscripts and in the awarding of funding for research. ... In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. ... Jimmy Wales speaking at Wikimania conference. ...

Speaking for the scientific community

Unlike in previous centuries when the community of scholars were all members of learned societies and similar institutions, there are no singular bodies which can be said today to speak for all of science. In the United States the National Academy of Science sometimes acts as a surrogate when the opinions of the scientific community need to be ascertained by policy makers or the national government, but the statements of the National Academy are not binding on scientists nor do they necessarily reflect the opinions of every scientist in the community. Nevertheless, general scientific consensus is a concept which is often referred to when dealing with questions that can be subject to scientific methodology. While the consensus opinion of the community is not always easy to ascertain, generally the standards and utility of the scientific method have tended to ensure that scientists agree on a standard, mainstream corpus of fact explicated by scientific theory while rejecting ideas which run counter to this realization. Scientific consensus is of such importance to science pedagogy, the evaluation of new ideas, and research funding that critics of the consensus often bitterly complain that there is a closed shop bias within the scientific community toward new ideas (see articles on protoscience, fringe science, and pseudoscience). In response skeptical organizations have devoted considerable amount of time and money to debunking the claims of those who balk at scientific consensus. A learned society is a society that exists to promote an academic discipline or group of disciplines. ... President Harding and the National Academy of Sciences at the White House, Washington, DC, April 1921 The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine. ... Public policy is a course of action or inaction chosen by public authorities to address a problem. ... Scientific consensus is the collective judgment, position, and opinion of the community of scientists in a particular field of science at a particular time. ... Scientific method is a body of techniques for investigating phenomena and acquiring new knowledge, as well as for correcting and integrating previous knowledge. ... Scientific method is a body of techniques for investigating phenomena and acquiring new knowledge, as well as for correcting and integrating previous knowledge. ... Look up mainstream in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up fact in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... In mathematics, theory is used informally to refer to a body of knowledge about mathematics. ... A closed shop is a business or industrial establishment whose employees are required to be union members or to agree to join the union within a specified time after being hired. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Fringe science is a phrase used to describe scientific inquiry in an established field that departs significantly from mainstream or orthodox theories. ... Phrenology is regarded today as a classic example of pseudoscience. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... A debunker is a skeptic who pursues dispelling false and unscientific claims. ...

Philosophers of science argue over the epistemological limits of such a consensus and some, including Thomas Kuhn, have pointed to the existence of scientific revolutions in the history of science as being an important indication that scientific consensus can, at times, be wrong. Nevertheless, the sheer explanatory power of science in its ability to make accurate and precise predictions and aid in the design and engineering of new technology has ensconced "science" and, by proxy, the opinions of the scientific community as a highly respected form of knowledge both in the academy and in popular culture. Philosophy of science is the study of assumptions, foundations, and implications of science, especially in the natural sciences and social sciences. ... It has been suggested that Meta-epistemology be merged into this article or section. ... Thomas Samuel Kuhn (July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an American intellectual who wrote extensively on the history of science and developed several important notions in the philosophy of science. ... The event which most historians of science call the scientific revolution can be dated roughly as having begun in 1543, the year in which Nicolaus Copernicus published his De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) and Andreas Vesalius published his De humani corporis fabrica (On the... Science is a body of empirical and theoretical knowledge, produced by a global community of researchers, making use of specific techniques for the observation and explanation of real phenomena, this techne summed up under the banner of scientific method. ... In the fields of science, engineering, industry and statistics, accuracy is the degree of conformity of a measured or calculated quantity to its actual (true) value. ... In Wikipedia, precision has the following meanings: In engineering, science, industry and statistics, precision characterises the degree of mutual agreement among a series of individual measurements, values, or results - see accuracy and precision. ... Engineering is the design, analysis, and/or construction of works for practical purposes. ... By the mid 20th century humans had achieved a mastery of technology sufficient to leave the surface of the Earth for the first time and explore space. ... Personification of knowledge (Greek Επιστημη, Episteme) in Celsus Library in Ephesos, Turkey. ... Academia is a collective term for the scientific and cultural community engaged in higher education and research, taken as a whole. ... Popular culture, sometimes called pop culture, consists of widespread cultural elements in any given society. ...

Political controversies

The high regard with which scientific opinion is held in Western society has caused a number of political controversies over scientific subjects to arise. A persistent conflict between religion and science has been often been cited as representative of a struggle between tradition and progress or faith and reason.^{[citation needed]} The combative relationship has been cited back to the beginnings of natural science when Galileo was tried before the Inquisition for preaching blasphemy regarding heliocentrism.^{[citation needed]} In more recent times, the creation-evolution controversy has resulted in many religious believers in a supernatural creation to attack the naturalistic explanation of origins provided by the sciences of evolutionary biology, geology, and astronomy. The politicization of science occurs when governments, businesses, and lobby groups use legal or economic pressure to influence the findings of scientific research, especially when this influence retards the progress of science. ... Religious and scientific modes of knowledge Generally speaking, religion and science use different methods in their effort to ascertain Truth. ... Faith and rationality are two modes of belief that are seen to exist in varying degrees of conflict or compatibility. ... The Michelson–Morley experiment was used to disprove that light propagated through a luminiferous aether. ... Galileo can refer to: Galileo Galilei, astronomer, philosopher, and physicist (1564 - 1642) the Galileo spacecraft, a NASA space probe that visited Jupiter and its moons the Galileo positioning system Life of Galileo, a play by Bertolt Brecht Galileo (1975) - screen adaptation of the play Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht... Inquisition (capitalized I) is broadly used, to refer to things related to judgment of heresy by the Roman Catholic Church. ... The creation-evolution controversy (also termed the creation vs. ... Creationism is the belief that humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe were created in their entirety by a deity or deities (typically God), whose existence is presupposed. ... Naturalism is any of several philosophical stances, typically those descended from materialism and pragmatism, that do not distinguish the supernatural (including strange entities like non-natural values, and universals as they are commonly conceived) from nature. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... This article includes a list of works cited but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations. ... A giant Hubble mosaic of the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant Astronomy (also frequently referred to as astrophysics) is the scientific study of celestial objects (such as stars, planets, comets, and galaxies) and phenomena that originate outside the Earths atmosphere (such as the cosmic background radiation). ...

In the decades following World War II, many in the scientific community were convinced that nuclear power would solve the pending energy crisis by providing "energy too cheap to meter". This advocacy led to the construction of many nuclear power plants, but was also accompanied by a global political movement opposed to nuclear power due to safety concerns and associations of the technology with nuclear weapons. Mass protests in the United States and Europe during the 1970s and 1980s along with the disasters of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island led to a decline in nuclear power plant construction, while the hubris of the scientific community was cited as a reason to distrust the eggheads.^{[citation needed]} Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... A nuclear power station. ... This article is about energy crises in general. ... A nuclear power plant (NPP) is a thermal power station in which the heat source is one or more nuclear reactors. ... The mushroom cloud of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, 1945, rose some 18 km (11 mi) above the epicenter. ... Chernobyl area. ... Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station consists of two nuclear reactors, each with its own containment building and cooling towers. ... Hubris or hybris (Greek ), according to its modern usage, is exaggerated self pride or self-confidence (overbearing pride), often resulting in fatal retribution. ...

In the last decades or so in the United States, both global warming and stem cells have placed the opinions of the scientific community in the forefront of political debate. There have been some who have labeled the Bush Administration as "anti-scientific",^{[citation needed]} and if the scientific community was seen as a part of the traditional establishment in the 1980s it has now been painted as being aligned with more liberal political elements.^{[citation needed]} The global warming controversy is a debate about the specific causes of the increase in global average air temperature since the mid-1800s, the prediction of additional warming, and the consequences of that warming. ... There is widespread controversy over stem cell research fue to techniques used in the creation and usage of embryonic stem cells. ... George W. Bush administration is the administration of the 43rd president of the United States of America, 2001-present George H. W. Bush administration is the administration of the 41st president of the United States of America, 1989-1993 This is a disambiguation page, a list of pages that otherwise...

See also

• Epistemology
• Objectivity (philosophy)
• Scientific consensus
• Cudos

It has been suggested that Meta-epistemology be merged into this article or section. ... It is proposed that this article be deleted, because of the following concern: Limited information sources, article is object for nothing but original research If you can address this concern by improving, copyediting, sourcing, renaming or merging the page, please edit this page and do so. ... Scientific consensus is the collective judgment, position, and opinion of the community of scientists in a particular field of science at a particular time. ... Cudos is an acronym used to denote principles that should guide good scientific research. ...

References and external articles

Sociologies of science

• Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, "Laboratory life: the social construction of scientific facts". Beverly Hills : Sage Publications, 1979.
• Sharon Traweek, "Beamtimes and lifetimes: the world of high energy physicists". Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988.
• Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the experimental life". Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985).
• Karin Knorr Cetina, Epistemic cultures. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

History and philosophy of science

• Thomas Kuhn, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions". Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.

Other articles

• Peter M. Haas. "Introduction: epistemic communities and international policy coordination". International Organization, v. 46, n. 1, winter 1992, pp. 1-35. (PDF)
• "Producing Communities’ as a Theoretical Challenge; Social order in scientific communities". TASA 2001 Conference, The University of Sydney, 13-15 December 2001. (PDF)