A modern Rip Van Winkle, awaking from a century of scientific slumbers, would be dismayed to find so much emphasis on models and so little talk of scientific laws and facts. Although Rip's dyspeptic view of models now seems misguided, a call for caution is very much in order. Modelling tools have consequences both for science and for a larger public, taking in historical, sociological, and moral perspectives as well as technical, scientific ones.
Andrea Saltelli is based at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. His most recent papers have tackled sensitivity analysis and auditing, the ecological footprint, the future of statistics, the rationale of evidence-based policy, the crisis of science and the post-truth discussion. Andrea gives courses in sensitivity analysis, sensitivity auditing, science integrity, and the ethics of quantification. He has recently published on the role of science in processes of regulatory capture.
Monica Di Fiore is a researcher at the Institute for Cognitive Sciences and Technologies of the Italian National Research Council (CNR) of Rome. She has dealt with innovation and social acceptance of technologies.
Her most recent work focuses on open science and responsible research and innovation, the reproducibility crisis, science-based normative capture, and the sociology and ethics of quantification. She recently contributed to a manifesto published by Nature on the quality of mathematical models.