Starting from some regularities of the Boulogne s/mer fish market, the model proposed here shows that in many circumstances the collective behavior may be ‘reasonable’ whereas the individuals may not be so. The properties which are empirically clear at the aggregate level are not necessarily...

Public debates driven by incomplete scientific data where nobody can claim absolute certainty, due to the current state of scientific knowledge, are studied. The cases of evolution theory, global warming and H1N1 pandemic influenza are investigated. The first two are of controversial impact...

Some universal features are independent of both the social nature of the individuals making the decision and the nature of the decision itself. On this basis a simple magnet like model is built. Pair interactions are introduced to measure the degree of exchange among individuals while...

A modified version of a finite random field Ising ferromagnetic model in an external magnetic field at zero temperature is presented to describe group decision making. Fields may have a non-zero average. A postulate of minimum inter-individual conflicts is assumed. Interactions then produce a...

The origins of Sociophysics are discussed from a personal testimony. I trace back its history to the late 1970s. My 20 years of activities and research to establish and promote the field are reviewed. In particular, the conflicting nature of Sociophysics with the physics community is revealed...

We study the effect of inflexible agents on two state opinion dynamics. The model operates via repeated local updates of random grouping of agents. While floater agents do eventually flip their opinion to follow the local majority, inflexible agents keep their opinion always unchanged. It is a...

The September 11 attack on the US has revealed an unprecedented terrorism worldwide range of destruction. Recently, it has been related to the percolation of worldwide spread passive supporters. This scheme puts the suppression of the percolation effect as the major strategic issue in the fight...

The September 11 attack on the US has revealed an unprecedented terrorism with worldwide range of destruction. It is argued to result from the first worldwide percolation of passive supporters. They are people sympathetic to the terrorism cause but without being involved with it. They just do...

The combined effects of collective beliefs and individual inflexibility in the dynamics of a public debate are investigated using the Galam sequential probabilistic model of opinion dynamics. The study is focused on pair interactions for which the bias produced by collective beliefs is the...

A model for the dynamics of opinion forming in democratic public debate is presented. Using concepts and techniques from the physics of disorder the dynamics of social refusal spreading is studied within a perfect world, where the minority holds neither better arguments nor lobbying backing. The...