INCHER Colloquium February 12, 2025: "Science and ideology: An agent-based exploration" by Patrick Mellacher

Lecture by Professor Dr. Patrick Mellacher, University of Graz, Graz Schumpeter Centre, School of Business, Economics and Social Sciences, Graz, Austria

Dr. Mellacher develops a simple evolutionary model of science. In the model, researchers evaluate new research ideas based on their perceived "objective truth" and their perceived ideological fit (i.e., their "subjective truth"), which are weighted according to the ideological bias of the scientist. Both perceptions are noisy, and the level of noise depends on the state of research methodology as well as on the ability of a researcher. Successful scientists reproduce by employing young researchers who are similar to them. He shows that an ideological bias may survive in science (or even become stronger), if the research methodology is sufficiently imprecise in allowing to evaluate the "objective truth". As a consequence, the share of objectively wrong publications rises and their ideological content becomes narrow.

Patrick Mellacher is an assistant professor at the Schumpeter Center of the University of Graz. He holds a PhD in economics and specializes in the use of agent-based modelling to study economic and social phenomena. He has received the EAEPE Herbert Simon Young Scholar Prize in 2021 for his COVID-Town model which captures economic and epidemiological dynamics of the Covid-19 pandemic. His most recent work focuses on political economy and inequality

The INCHER lectures in winter semester 2024 are hybrid events.
If you wish to participate via Zoom please register at koch[at]incher.uni-kassel[dot]de