Join us for a conversation on how science works with professors Carl Bergstrom (UW Biology) and Kevin Gross (NCSU Statistics) - and you!

When our high school and college teachers talked about how science works, they usually focused on the so-called scientific method, stressing observation, data analysis, and hypothesis testing. What they didn’t talk about much is how science works as a social process. What are the norms and institutions that govern scientific activity? What incentives do they create for individual researchers? How do those incentives shape the questions that scientists ask and the approaches they take? How do scientists work collectively to develop ever-improving models of the physical world? What constitutes “good” science? What qualifies as expertise? How is scientific consensus formed—and what is it in the first place? By understanding how the science operates as a social process, we gain a deeper understanding of why science works and why scientific consensus is trustworthy. If that understanding were more widely shared, perhaps we would not be dealing with the all-out assault of science, medicine, and public health that we are facing today in the United States.