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Welcome to my webpage! I teach and research in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

I work on philosophy of science, social epistemology, and formal epistemology. I am particularly interested in the social epistemology of science: how does the social structure of science contribute to (or detract from) its success? See my research statement for more details. Preprints of my papers and a CV are also available. (Credit for the above photo: Sylvia Germes.)

Please feel free to email me at r (dot) heesen (at) lse (dot) ac (dot) uk. You can also follow me on PhilPeople or academia.edu, or view my ORCID record: orcid.org/0000-0003-3823-944X.

Some recent and not so recent events

On 14-16 December 2023, the University of Bielefeld (Germany) hosted the Forum on the Future of Evidence-Based Policy, which I co-organized. Some coverage of one of our findings was published in the Australian newspaper The Age.

From February to June 2023, I worked at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) at the University of Bielefeld (Germany), where I co-convened a research group on the theme “Epistemology of Evidence-Based Policy: How Philosophy can Facilitate the Science-Policy Interface.”

In August 2022, BJPS Short Reads published a short piece by Liam Kofi Bright and me introducing and summarizing our research on reforming peer review, entitled “The Perfect Time to Reform Peer Review.” You can read it as a blog post or listen to it as a short podcast (less than nine minutes).

In June 2022, Th&ma Hoger Onderwijs published a short article on the need to reform peer review by Liam Kofi Bright and me, entitled “Tijd voor een organischer model: Peerreview in de aandachtseconomie” (in Dutch).

From September 2021, I’ve been an occasionally recurring guest on Maarten van Doorn’s podcast On Thinking (Ongekend in Dutch). In episode 24, entitled “What ‘p-values’ and ‘statistical significance’ really mean” (in English), we discussed some key concepts of frequentist statistics. In episode 19, entitled “Science’s Replication Crisis 101” (in English), we discussed the role of statistical significance and p-hacking in the replication crisis. In episode 4, entitled “Is het meeste gepubliceerde onderzoek onwaar?” (in Dutch), we discussed causes of the replication crisis, peer review, and the role of philosophy of science in science education.

In December 2020, Brian L. Frye interviewed Liam Kofi Bright and me for episode 669 of the podcast Ipse Dixit. We discussed the role of peer review in science and how we might change it, based on our papers “Is Peer Review a Good Idea?” and “Jury Theorems for Peer Review.”

In November 2020, Liam Kofi Bright and I wrote a piece for Liam’s blog The Sooty Empiric on the (in our view unhelpful) distinction between economic and ethical approaches to the social epistemology of science, and the distinction between reason and passion more generally.

In March 2020 I gave a guest lecture introducing philosophy of science to students at the Christ Church Grammar School. (Photo credit: Ben Lim.)

In September 2019 The Philosopher’s Annual selected my paper “When Journal Editors Play Favorites” as one of the ten best philosophy articles published in 2018. You can read the editors’ summary.

In September 2019 Laura Molenaar (RU Nijmegen / ResearchNL) interviewed me on the topic of reimagining peer review.

In May 2019 Nick Zautra (IU Bloomington) interviewed me for an episode of his Sci Phi podcast. We discussed how I got into the field as well as my research. (As of November 2020, the podcast’s website appears to be down, but you can still listen to the interview.)

In February 2019, Jan-Willem Romeijn, Hendrik Siebe, and I wrote an opinion piece (in Dutch) on the prospects and dangers of opinion formation in groups.

In November 2017 I gave a talk at the London School of Economics, in their Choice Group seminar, entitled “Statistical Biases in Peer Review”. This talk was recorded on video, and can be watched below.

On May 13, 2016, I successfully defended my PhD dissertation at Carnegie Mellon University.

In January 2015 I gave a talk at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, entitled “Vindicating Methodological Triangulation”. This talk was recorded on video, and you can watch this video online.

In July 2014 Konstantin Genin and I gave an introductory discussion of the St. Petersburg Paradox and related issues in decision theory as part of an exhibition by the Swiss Institute in New York. This was recorded on video, and can be watched below.

In 2009 Tilburg University awarded me a prize for the best master’s thesis written at the university in the preceding academic year. This prize was awarded at the 82nd Dies Natalis of the university.

My research has been supported by: