Seeds of Science is an organization dedicated to promoting creativity and diversity of thought in science. Founded in September, 2021 by Dr. Dario Krpan (the London School of Economics), Sergey Samsonau (formerly of New York University), and Roger's Bacon (pseudonymous blogger), our first project was an open-access journal specializing in speculative or exploratory research articles written in non-traditional formats or styles. Peer review was conducted through voting and commenting by our diverse community of reviewers, or “gardeners” as we called them.
The Seeds of Science journal was closed in February, 2025. We live on, however, as a Substack where we curate the best of science blogging from across the internet. One unique feature of our Substack is that we share our subscription revenue with the featured authors (see the announcement post to learn more about our subscription revenue sharing program).
Below you will find more information about the community-reviewed journal and links to the 30 articles we published.
What is a “Seed of Science”?
It is a speculative hypothesis, an proposal for an experiment, a novel observation, a thought-provoking commentary, or an unorthodox research study. Like a real seed, a seed of science is small and carefully crafted. A good seed includes some kind of justification for how the ideas or analysis could advance science (e.g. an argument or proposed experiment) and provides as much evidence and rationale as possible. Besides that, there are virtually no requirements on content or style — seeds can be from any scientific discipline (including metascience, science ethics, and education) and can be written in non-traditional styles or formats for scientific articles (e.g. a narrative, a dialogue, etc.).
2024
Trauma Exposure across the News Cycle and the Case for Biotypes of PTSD in War Journalists
A Controlled Experiment Testing the Effect of Unconditional 100% Exam Scores on Long-Term Retention
A Paradigm for AI Consciousness
Attitudes Toward Artificial General Intelligence: Results from American Adults in 2021 and 2023
2023
The Economics of Time Travel
Scientific Theories and Their Psychological Corollaries: The Ecological Crisis as a Case Study in the Need for Synthesis
Visualizing researchers’ scientific contributions with radar plot
Cilia Disorders in the Genomics Era: Historical Overview and Commentary on Ciliopathy Diagnostics
Taxonomies of Intelligence: A Comprehensive Guide to the Universe of Minds
Forager Facts
We See The Sacred From Afar, To See It The Same
Principles of Categorization: A Synthesis
Author: Davood Gozli
Perspective: Focused-Ultrasound Guided Neuropeptide Delivery as a Novel Therapeutic Approach in Psychiatry
How to Escape From the Simulation
Is a Qualitative Metric of Falsifiability Possible
The Muscle Readers, a Historical Sketch
Why Proposal Review Should Be More Like Meteorology
Will general antiviral protocols always be science fiction?
Notes on the Inexact Sciences
The Rise and Fall of the Dot-Probe Task: Opportunities for Metascientific Learning
What are the Red Flags for Neural Network Suffering?
Moral Weights of Animals, Considering Viewpoint Uncertainty
What does it mean to represent? Mental representations as falsifiable memory patterns
Authors: Eloy Parra-Barrero, Yulia Sandamirskaya
Text: PDF
The Cult Deficit: Analysis and Speculation
Market Failures in Science
Building a Brain: An Introduction to Narrative Complexity, a language & internal dialogue-based theory of human consciousness
On Scaling Academia
Author: Jan Hendrik Kirchner
Text: PDF
The Prospect of Extracting Brain-Region-Specific Exosomes in the Human Bloodstream
Copies and Random Decision: a proposal to peacefully the conflict around looted art
Author: Bruno S. Frey
Text: PDF