[lbhnact]

I've always wanted a good word for the 'science of studying science'.

Never really got past 'Scientology', and that probably won't stick.

What's a better term than the vapid 'Metascience', or the clunky 'scientometrics'.

How about 'Superscience'? That would be an awesome Doctorate to hang on the wall.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

There's always epistemology [1]. It's a branch of philosophy, but I don't think you can examine science on a theoretical basis without going there.

There's no reason why not to mix theoretical and practical (as in data-driven) tools.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology

[trentmb]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science

[Malarkey73]

"Epistemology" is probably the best word.

[lbhnact]

Yeah, maybe 'Quantitative Epistemology'. You'd probably be thrown right out of the Philosophy department though.

[johncolanduoni]

Not really, many people who do philosophy of science/math have science/math PhDs as opposed to philosophy or other humanities.

[fmoralesc]

Only the name, the idea not at all. Formal Epistemology is actually a blooming subfield, Bayesian epistemology being a prominent example.

[marcosdumay]

Isn't the goal exactly getting thrown out of every department?

[pYQAJ6Zm]

Noting that epistemology is concerned with the study of (the concept of) knowledge, and may (in principle) go beyond what’s involved in the purely scientific acquisition of such (if some non-scientific method for the acquisition of knowledge is to be accepted).

“Philosophy of science,” already mentioned, is probably a better fit. Once you go meta on science, after all, you are (arguably) not doing science anymore, so there is no harm in naming it a kind of philosophy.

[Retric]

Seems to fit under sociology quite well. Economics got it's own branch mostly for historical reasons.

[stdbrouw]

The sociology of scientific knowledge is a thing. Some crackpots, some very interesting work as well, e.g. "The Baby Factory" about dodgy science in psychology labs http://srd.sagepub.com/content/2/2378023115625071.abstract

[jylam]

Sociology is already the science of everything social (that is, people, human society).

[jsprogrammer]

Where does the 't' come from? Shouldn't it be sciology/scienceology/sciencology?