Publications related to Scientific skepticism

Querying the Digital Archive of Science: Distant Reading, Semantic Modelling and Representation of Knowledge

The archive of science is a place where scientific practices are sedimented in the form of drafts, protocols of rejected hypotheses and failed experiments, obsolete instruments, outdated visualizations and other residues. Today, just as science goes more a ...

EPFL2024

Dynamic environmental flows using hydrodynamic-based solutions for sustainable hydropower

Giovanni De Cesare, Paolo Perona

Water diversions from rivers and torrents for anthropic uses of the resource alter the natural flow regime. As a measure, environmental flows have been prescribed and often are enforced by law to follow policies (e.g., minimal flow, proportional redistribu ...

CRC Press/Balkema2023

Science on the Summit: Exploring Scientific Tourism Through the Lens of Eighteenth Century Mountain Ascents

Jérôme Baudry, Simon François Dumas Primbault, Ion-Gabriel Mihailescu

This contribution argues that a particular scientific context made summits a place of interest for eighteenth-century travelers. This development is connected to two particular scientific practices. First, the challenges raised by making the barometer into ...

IGA-ASSOC DIFFUSION RECHERCHE ALPINE2022

First-person experience cannot rescue causal structure theories from the unfolding argument

Michael Herzog, Adrien Christophe Doerig, Aaron Schurger

We recently put forward an argument, the Unfolding Argument (UA), that integrated information theory (IIT) and other causal structure theories are either already falsified or unfalsifiable, which provoked significant criticism. It seems that we and the cri ...

Elsevier2022

Nothing New Under the Sun: Novelty Constructs and Measures in Social Studies

Davide Bavato

The concept of novelty is central to questions of creativity, innovation, and discovery. Despite the prominence in scientific inquiry and everyday discourse, there is a chronic ambiguity over its meaning and a surprising variety of empirical measures, whic ...

Emerald Publishing Limited2022

A systematic review of empirical studies using log data from open-ended learning environments to measure science and engineering practices

Engin Walter Bumbacher

Technology-based, open-ended learning environments (OELEs) can capture detailed information of students' interactions as they work through a task or solve a problem embedded in the environment. This information, in the form of log data, has the potential t ...

WILEY2023

Combating Online Scientific Misinformation

Panagiotis Smeros

The drastic shift towards digital communication in our mediasphere has caused a profound change in the production and consumption of information, which in turn has substantial implications on the social and political landscape. Misinformation, as a side ef ...

EPFL2022

Archiving the Leftovers of Science: Metadata and Histories of Scientific Institutions

Alina Volynskaya

In this article, I focus on digital scientific archives which are made up of the leftovers of science, such as drafts, obsolete instruments, photographs, documentation, etc. The artifacts exhibited in such collections were neither meant to be representatio ...

2021

SciClops: Detecting and Contextualizing Scientific Claims for Assisting Manual Fact-Checking

Karl Aberer, Panagiotis Smeros, Carlos Castillo

This paper describes SciClops, a method to help combat online scientific misinformation. Although automated fact-checking methods have gained significant attention recently, they require pre-existing ground-truth evidence, which, in the scientific context, ...

ACM2021

Centre National d'Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou: Monument National e Live Centre of Information. Cronache di idea, progetto e fabbricazione, 1968-1977

Boris Hamzeian

The Centre Beaubourg of Paris, now known as the Centre National d'Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou, conceived by Piano+Rogers Architects and Ove Arup & Partners, between 1971 and 1977, represents one of the rare synthesis of the architectural, constructi ...

EPFL2021

Effective stress for unsaturated active clays and in-situ effective stress estimation methodology

Angelica Tuttolomondo

The complexity of the mechanics of active clays and, more generally, of geomaterials with clay minerals, under saturated and unsaturated conditions, still provides relevant scientific challenges today. Equally relevant challenges are the understanding of t ...

EPFL2021

Functional Inverse Problems on Spheres: Theory, Algorithms and Applications

Matthieu Martin Jean-André Simeoni

Many scientific inquiries in natural sciences involve approximating a spherical field -namely a scalar quantity defined over a continuum of directions- from generalised samples of the latter (e.g. directional samples, local averages, etc). Such an approxim ...

EPFL2020

Recent Advances and Prospects in the Research of Nascent Adhesions

Aleksandra Radenovic, Ana-Suncana Smith

Nascent adhesions are submicron transient structures promoting the early adhesion of cells to the extracellular matrix. Nascent adhesions typically consist of several tens of integrins, and serve as platforms for the recruitment and activation of proteins ...

FRONTIERS MEDIA SA2020

Lieu hologrammatique, un concept et une méthodologie complexe de mesure de l'organisation spatiale des réalités sociales

Thibault Pierre Louis Romany

The urban is a complex phenomenon whose exploration remains a important scientific challenge. Choosing complex thought in order to renew our capacities for understanding and action on and with the urban is not trivial. The complex thought developed by Edga ...

EPFL2020

Surveying the environmental life-cycle performance assessments: Practice and context at early building design stages

Marilyne Andersen, Emmanuel Rey, Thomas Bernard Paul Jusselme

The international greenhouse gas agreements call for mitigations in the building industry. Thus, the number of scientific publications about life-cycle performance assessment (LCPA) follows an exponential trend since the 2000s. However, previous surveys hi ...

2020

Sparse Spline Approximation on the Hypersphere by Generalised Total Variation Basis Pursuit

Matthieu Martin Jean-André Simeoni

Many scientific inquiries in natural sciences involve approximating a spherical field –namely a scalar quantity defined over a continuum of directions– from generalised samples of the latter. Typically, a convex optimisation problem is formulated in terms ...

2019

Critical raw materials: A perspective from the materials science community

Heinrich Hofmann

Functional materials are crucial to meet today's societal challenges and needs, such as the transition towards low carbon energy production to reduce climate change, renewable energies and green economy, clean mobility and improved communication. In order ...

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV2018

Decoding urban development dynamics through actor-network methodological approach

Jean-Claude Bolay, Marija Cvetinovic

Due to growing social and physical transformations, contemporary cities reveal the profound necessity of proper scientific approaches that are adjusted to conditions of global complexity and dynamic patterns of development. Predominance of an overall marke ...

2017

Development of a methodology for extreme flood estimations in alpine catchments for the verification of dam safety

Fränz Zeimetz

In the context of dam safety, reliable safety flood estimation methods are necessary to guarantee a sufficiently designed spillway capacity. Todayâ s state of the art allows to approach this topic under different angles. Statistical extrapolations are com ...

EPFL2017

Air entrainment and pressure development in skimming flow on an abrupt slope change on stepped spillways

Anton Schleiss, Michael Pfister, José Pedro Gamito de Saldanha Calado Matos, Mohammad Javad Ostad Mirza

Numerous stepped spillways were built to date, namely on RCC gravity dams or on valley flanks besides embankment or rockfill dams, while some others are currently under design or construction. In some cases, slope changes may be required on stepped chutes, ...

2015