On September 14, 2015 at 09:50:45 UTC the two detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory simultaneously observed a transient gravitational-wave signal. The signal sweeps upwards in frequency from 35 to 250 Hz with a peak gravitational-wave strain of 1.0×10(-21). It matches the waveform predicted by general relativity for the inspiral and merger of a pair of black holes and the ringdown of the resulting single black hole. The signal was observed with a matched-filter signal-to-noise ratio of 24 and a false alarm rate estimated to be less than 1 event per 203,000 years, equivalent to a significance greater than 5.1σ. The source lies at a luminosity distance of 410(-180)(+160)  Mpc corresponding to a redshift z=0.09(-0.04)(+0.03). In the source frame, the initial black hole masses are 36(-4)(+5)M⊙ and 29(-4)(+4)M⊙, and the final black hole mass is 62(-4)(+4)M⊙, with 3.0(-0.5)(+0.5)M⊙c(2) radiated in gravitational waves. All uncertainties define 90% credible intervals. These observations demonstrate the existence of binary stellar-mass black hole systems. This is the first direct detection of gravitational waves and the first observation of a binary black hole merger.

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The Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger

Preface to the Second Edition Part 1: Philosophical Bearings 1. Aims and Strategy 2. The Underlabourer Conception of Philosophy 3. Philosophy and Science 4. The Philosopher's Concern with Language 5. Conceptual and Empirical Enquiries 6. The Pivotal Role of Epistemology in Philosophy 7. Epistemology and the Understanding of Society 8. Rules: Wittgenstein's Analysis 9. Some Misunderstandings of Wittgenstein Part 2: The Nature of Meaningful Behaviour 1. Philosophy and Sociology 2. Meaningful Behaviour 3. Activities and Precepts 4. Rules and Habits 5. Reflectiveness Part 3: The Social Studies as Science 1. J.S. Mill's 'Logic of the Moral Sciences' 2. Differences in Degree and Differences in Kind 3. Motives and Causes 4. Motives, Dispositions and Reasons 5. The Investigation of Regularities 6. Understanding Social Institutions 7. Prediction in the Social Studies Part 4: The Mind and Society 1. Pareto: Logical and Non-Logical Conduct 2. Pareto: Residues and Derivations 3. Max Weber: Verstehen and Causal Explanation 4. Max Weber: Meaningful Action and Social Action Part 5: Concepts and Actions 1. The Internality of Social Relations 2. Discursive and Non-Discursive 'Ideas' 3. The Social Sciences and History 4. Concluding Remark

The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy.

Merchants of Doubt. How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming

A Charter of Fundamental Rights for the European Union

The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change

This paper examines the role of complexity in descriptions of the aetiology of common psychiatric disorders. While scientists attest to the discovery of an underlying reality of complex inheritance — the so-called ‘witches’ brew’ of genetic and non-genetic factors — we argue that ‘complexity’ also performs rhetorical work. In our analysis of scientific review papers (1999—2008), we find a relatively stable genre of accountability in which descriptions of complexity appear to neutralize past failures by incorporating different and sometimes competing methodological perspectives. We identify two temporal strategies: retrospective accounting, which reconstructs a history of psychiatric genetics that deals with the recent failures, citing earlier twin studies as proof of the heritability of common psychiatric disorders; and prospective accounting, which engages in the careful reconstruction of expectations by balancing methodological limitations with moderated optimism. Together, these strategies produce a simple-to-complex narrative that belies the ambivalent nature of complexity. We show that the rhetorical construction of complexity in scientific review papers is oriented to bridging disciplinary boundaries, marshalling new resources and reconstructing expectations that justify delays in gene discovery and risk prediction.

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Complexity and accountability: the witches' brew of psychiatric genetics.

Bioinformatics, the application of computer science to biological problems, is a central feature of post-genomic science which grew rapidly during the 1990s and 2000s. Post-genomic science is often high-throughput, involving the mass production of inscriptions [Latour and Woolgar (1986), Laboratory Life: the Construction of Scientific Facts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press]. In order to render these mass inscriptions comprehensible, bioinformatic techniques are employed, with bioinformaticians producing what we call secondary inscriptions. However, despite bioinformaticians being highly skilled and credentialed scientists, the field struggles to develop disciplinary coherence. This paper describes two tensions militating against disciplinary coherence. The first arises from the fact that bioinformaticians as producers of secondary inscriptions are often institutionally dependent, subordinate even, to biologists. With bioinformatics positioned as service, it cannot determine its own boundaries but has them imposed from the outside. The second tension is a result of the interdisciplinary origin of bioinformatics – computer science and biology are disciplines with very different cultures, values and products. The paper uses interview data from two different UK projects to describe and examine these tensions by commenting on Calvert's [(2010) “Systems Biology, Interdisciplinarity and Disciplinary Identity.” In Collaboration in the New Life Sciences, edited by J. N. Parker, N. Vermeulen and B. Penders, 201–219. Farnham: Ashgate] notion of individual and collaborative interdisciplinarity and McNally's [(2008) “Sociomics: CESAGen Multidisciplinary Workshop on the Transformation of Knowledge Production in the Biosciences, and its Consequences.” Proteomics 8: 222–224] distinction between “black box optimists” and “black box pessimists.”

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Inscribing a discipline: tensions in the field of bioinformatics

Bioinformatics – the so-called shotgun marriage between biology and computer science – is an interdiscipline. Despite interdisciplinarity being seen as a virtue, for having the capacity to solve complex problems and foster innovation, it has the potential to place projects and people in anomalous categories. For example, valorised ‘outputs’ in academia are often defined and rewarded by discipline. Bioinformatics, as an interdisciplinary bricolage, incorporates experts from various disciplinary cultures with their own distinct ways of working. Perceived problems of interdisciplinarity include difficulties of making explicit knowledge that is practical, theoretical, or cognitive. But successful interdisciplinary research also depends on an understanding of disciplinary cultures and value systems, often only tacitly understood by members of the communities in question. In bioinformatics, the ‘parent’ disciplines have different value systems; for example, what is considered worthwhile research by computer scientists can be thought of as trivial by biologists, and vice versa. This paper concentrates on the problems of reward and recognition described by scientists working in academic bioinformatics in the United Kingdom. We highlight problems that are a consequence of its cross-cultural make-up, recognising that the mismatches in knowledge in this borderland take place not just at the level of the practical, theoretical, or epistemological, but also at the cultural level too. The trend in big, interdisciplinary science is towards multiple authors on a single paper; in bioinformatics this has created hybrid or fractional scientists who find they are being positioned not just in-between established disciplines but also in-between as middle authors or, worse still, left off papers altogether.

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Hidden in the Middle: Culture, Value and Reward in Bioinformatics

We describe the Imitation Game, a new research method that collects both qualitative and quantitative data, and which can be used as a mixed methods procedure in many disciplines. Drawing on two projects, one investigating gender, the other sexuality, we show that the quantitative and qualitative aspects of the Game combine in four different ways, from more quantitative to more qualitative, involving increasing cultural understanding by the researchers. Crucially, deep cultural input is initially supplied by the players of the Game, who act as “proxy researchers,” enabling data to be gathered quickly and efficiently. The analysis has its roots in sociology of scientific knowledge and studies of expertise and experience, hence the emphasis on the cultural foundations of methods and the nature of expertise.

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The Imitation Game and the Nature of Mixed Methods

Bioinformatics, a specialism propelled into relevance by the Human Genome Project and the subsequent -omic turn in the life science, is an interdisciplinary field of research. Qualitative work on the disciplinary identities of bioinformaticians has revealed the tensions involved in work in this “borderland.” As part of our ongoing work on the emergence of bioinformatics, between 2010 and 2011, we conducted a survey of United Kingdom-based academic bioinformaticians. Building on insights drawn from our fieldwork over the past decade, we present results from this survey relevant to a discussion of disciplinary generation and stabilization. Not only is there evidence of an attitudinal divide between the different disciplinary cultures that make up bioinformatics, but there are distinctions between the forerunners, founders and the followers; as inter/disciplines mature, they face challenges that are both inter-disciplinary and inter-generational in nature.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14636778.2016.1184965

Andrew Bartlett

Papers

Complexity and accountability: the witches' brew of psychiatric genetics.

Inscribing a discipline: tensions in the field of bioinformatics

Hidden in the Middle: Culture, Value and Reward in Bioinformatics

The Imitation Game and the Nature of Mixed Methods

Generations of interdisciplinarity in bioinformatics