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Spring 2021: Modelling the Spread of Good and Bad Science on a Social Network

Affiliations:
Project Leader: Sean Conte
SRConte@tamu.edu
Philosophy
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Kenneth Easwaran, Ph.D.
Meeting Times:
TBA
Team Size:
4
Open Spots: 0
Special Opportunities:
Ideally, the group will publish a co-authored paper and/or give conference presentations.
Team Needs:
Some members of the research team will need to design and write simulations. So far this has been with MATLAB and NetLogo, but knowing these in advance is not required. Some members will look up existing published papers in sociology, philosophy of science, communications, political science or other related fields. All members of the group should be interested in regular discussions about the social, political, and/or scientific implications of the findings.
Description:
We represent scientists as nodes in a network that send signals to each other. The basic version involves conducting studies, sharing them with their neighbors in the network, and updating on what they hear. Each model investigates some addition to the structure including propagandists, bias of scientists, incentive structures for scientists, different skill levels of the scientists, the structure of the network, the presence of a general public, as well as others. Some surveys of relevant research:

Zollman, “Network Epistemology” (2012) (http://www.kevinzollman.com/uploads/5/0/3/6/50361245/netepist.pdf) O’Connor & Weatherall, “Modeling How False Beliefs Spread” (2020) (http://cailinoconnor.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/A30-Modeling-How-False-Beliefs-Spread.pdf)

If you are interested, please fill out this form: https://forms.gle/CRGhhkhVwVXjvYCcA

 

Written by:
Elif Kilicarslan
Published on:
October 24, 2020

Categories: FullTags: Spring 2021

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