Everyone who is interested in popular science should study at least the basics of philosophy of science. It helps us understand the meaning and implications of

Everyone who is interested in popular science should study at least the basics of philosophy of science. It helps us understand the meaning and implications of a lot of concepts that we often use in our arguments, such as falsifiability, reproducibility, and "evidence-based". These concepts sound neat in theory but need to be interpreted a lot more carefully, with a healthy dose of subtlety, in the messy world of bleeding-edge scientific research. Especially if you're using them to try to discredit somebody else's work as "unscientific". If you're the type that gets impatient with philosophy, the broader field of science and technology studies (STS) is a lot more exciting and interdisciplinary. It's a loose collaboration among sociologists, anthropologists, historians, philosophers, and political scientists who share a common interest in the interaction between science and human society as a whole. If you're interested in STS, Sergio Sismondo's Introduction to Science and Technology Studies offers a high-level overview of the field, both philosophical and political, in a compact and accessible package. The bibliography section is also a gold mine of interesting books and case studies from every subfield of STS. (Disclaimer: Sergio was my Ph.D. supervisor.) Programmers in the age of social networking and IoT might also find actor-network theory particularly interesting. Callon and Latour were way ahead of their time, trying to view everyday objects as first-class citizens in the vast, distributed network of knowledge that makes up modern science. French sociologists are crazy, but sometimes they're prophetic as well.