Join The Independent Science Society!
Are you interested in trying to test physical laws at home? Maybe you like chemistry but don't want to be in academia? Or you like looking at stuff through your microscope after a hard day's work? And maybe want to try and do some rigorous science at home?
You should join the Independent Science Society! We are a group that tries to figure out how good science can be done at home. We were awarded a grant from The Advanced Research and Invention Agency as part of their Innovator Circles Program. We meet in London quite often and discuss science in cafes or in seminars. You can join here, where there’s also a discord link.
So what is this thang?
I made a Youtube video last year on trying and failing to do science in my free time after my day job.
Then I wrote a long ass essay on why doing part time research can give you an edge over academia. These got quite popular, so I made a Discord group for people doing this. And learnt that a lot of people wanna do this.
I then realised that a society could be made from this. Why?
I realised that a lot of good science was done by people who started doing it in their free time. Like Alfred Loomis who initially was a utilities financier that used his money to start a radiation laboratory. There seems to be something about stuff motivated by curiosity that causes good work.
Also, there is a lot of science out there being discovered. AI is making it a lot easier to do science, which is a good thing! But the problem is that we need to check it. And we don't have enough people and science funding. There are so many different regimes to check physics that maybe a society like this is a good way to try to fix that problem.
There are also people who want to do science, are good, and don't have an in. But now there are less barriers to entry because no one don't know what it really means to do science anymore, given our advances in artificial intelligence - we have machines that can think!
But the main reason I made this society is that... its just fun... people like thinking about stuff and testing stuff and sharing it.
OK so what do we work on? One thing is finding problems that independent scientists can do. This means working at energy levels that are accessible from the kitchen, and stuff you can observe with a camera or microscope. We think there are plenty of unanswered questions. How far does a sneeze travel? Can you observe brownian motion with a microscope and when will the conditions break down?
We also try to figure out how to automate stuff and be super cheap so we can try to rival bigger labs.
In terms of rigour and replicability, we discuss methods on being our best empirical selves. What does it mean to run a valid experiment? How can we use formal methods to check our own math?
So far we've done a bunch of events in London!
If you like this sort of thing, join here to keep up to date with our events!