Abstract
Is social and cognitive diversity beneficial for scientific knowledge production? How do we promote diversity in science? Are there gender or racial gaps in productivity, quality, or citation in academic publications? What are the potential causes for such gaps, and how do we close them? In the past few years, a new subfield in philosophy of science has emerged, where researchers use scientific methods to study knowledge production in scientific communities, paying special attention to the roles of social and cognitive diversity. This work is often methodologically continuous with other disciplines such as economics, sociology, and biology. It is also topically continuous with traditional work in social and feminist epistemology as well as other disciplines that contribute to “the science of science.” More recently, several philosophers of science have also begun to apply similar methods to study diversity and inequity beyond academia. In this symposium, we bring together some of the newest work from multiple disciplines that employs a variety of scientific methods to study diversity in and outside of science.
