Glossary
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Scientific Misconduct | Fabrication, falsification or plagiarism in proposing, performing, reviewing or reporting research. Public Trust |
| Scientific Model | A model that uses our knowledge of natural processes to predict outcomes, make hypotheses and explain phenomena. Models can be material (like the paper airplane), conceptual, or mathematical. A scientific model is often a computer program that attempts to simulate a particular system and to predict how the system would behave in the real world. See also "Model" and "Computerized simulation". Science General |
| Scientific Skepticism | Questioning claims and proportioning belief to the evidence, while remaining willing to accept conclusions once evidence is strong. Distinct from denial, which rejects evidence regardless of its strength. Antiscience |
| Sea Level Rise | The increase in ocean water levels at a specific location, taking into account both global sea level rise and local factors, such as local subsidence and uplift. Relative sea level rise is measured with respect to a specified vertical datum relative to the land, which may also be changing elevation over time. Climate Change Denial |
| Sealioning | A bad-faith trolling tactic where someone persistently pesters you with demands for evidence, sources, or explanations. Masked as a polite quest for "reasonable debate," its true goal is to exhaust your patience, derail the conversation, and make you appear unreasonable when you eventually refuse to engage. Antiscience |
| Selection Bias | Distortion caused when the people or data studied are not representative of the population the conclusions are applied to. Science General |
| Selective Reporting | Selective reporting happens when researchers or authors choose which study results, outcomes, or whole studies to share based on how positive, significant, or favorable the findings are. Public Trust |
| Self Checking | Some AI systems generate several answers and flag disagreements, or have a second pass verify claims against sources before the answer is shown. Artificial Intelligence |
| Self-Sealing Belief | A belief structured so that no evidence can count against it: contrary evidence is reinterpreted as part of the deception, and the absence of evidence is taken as proof of a cover-up. Antiscience |
| Serology | Measurement of antibodies and other immunological properties present in blood serum. Vaccines |