The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Son of Seven Sexes: The Social Destruction of a Physical Phenomenon
Abstract
Working from within the relativist perspective, this paper documents the demise of credibility of claims for the existence of high fluxes of gravitational radiation. The study is based on interview fieldwork conducted in 1975 and builds upon earlier work reported in 1975. Criticisms of the positive claims are presented schematically and shown to be permeable to alternative interpretations. The actions of one of the major critics are examined in detail and it is suggested that his contribution to the debate is best seen as a - successful - attempt to render alternative interpretations less credible. What was seen by many as a minimal technical contribution was thus made into a decisive experimental account. The case is discussed in terms of the metaphor of 'interpretative charity'.
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Citations
Cited by
Chinn, C. A., & Brewer, W. F. (1993) · Review of Educational Research · doi:10.3102/00346543063001001 · Cited by 1,393
Here and Everywhere: Sociology of Scientific Knowledge
Shapin, S. (1995) · Annual Review of Sociology · doi:10.1146/annurev.so.21.080195.001445 · Cited by 482
Replication, falsification, and the crisis of confidence in social psychology
Earp, B. D., & Trafimow, D. (2015) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00621 · Cited by 472
Woodward, J. (1989) · Synthese · doi:10.1007/bf00869282 · Cited by 253
Metadata
- Authors
- Collins, H. M.
- Venue
- Social Studies of Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 1981-02
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 33-62
- ISSN
- 0036-8539 (ISSN-L)
- 0306-3127
- 1460-3659
- OpenAlex
- W2149171514
- Cited by
- 181
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 24.39
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Son of Seven Sexes: The Social Destruction of a Physical Phenomenon. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1177/030631278101100103
- The paper
- Collins, H. M. (1981). Son of Seven Sexes: The Social Destruction of a Physical Phenomenon. Social Studies of Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/030631278101100103
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
