What Universities Owe Democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Ronald J. Daniels with Grant Shreve and Phillip Spector: “Universities play an indispensable role within modern democracies. But this role is often overlooked or too narrowly conceived, even by universities themselves. In What Universities Owe Democracy, Ronald J. Daniels, the president of Johns Hopkins University, argues that—at a moment when liberal democracy is endangered and more countries are heading toward autocracy than at any time in generations—it is critical for today’s colleges and universities to reestablish their place in democracy.

Drawing upon fields as varied as political science, economics, history, and sociology, Daniels identifies four distinct functions of American higher education that are key to liberal democracy: social mobility, citizenship education, the stewardship of facts, and the cultivation of pluralistic, diverse communities. By examining these roles over time, Daniels explains where colleges and universities have faltered in their execution of these functions—and what they can do going forward.

Looking back on his decades of experience leading universities, Daniels offers bold prescriptions for how universities can act now to strengthen democracy. For those committed to democracy’s future prospects, this book is a vital resource…(More)”.

Slowed canonical progress in large fields of science

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Johan S. G. Chu and James A. Evans: “The size of scientific fields may impede the rise of new ideas. Examining 1.8 billion citations among 90 million papers across 241 subjects, we find a deluge of papers does not lead to turnover of central ideas in a field, but rather to ossification of canon. Scholars in fields where many papers are published annually face difficulty getting published, read, and cited unless their work references already widely cited articles. New papers containing potentially important contributions cannot garner field-wide attention through gradual processes of diffusion. These findings suggest fundamental progress may be stymied if quantitative growth of scientific endeavors—in number of scientists, institutes, and papers—is not balanced by structures fostering disruptive scholarship and focusing attention on novel ideas…(More)”.

Addressing bias in big data and AI for health care: A call for open science

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Natalia Norori et al: “Bias in the medical field can be dissected along with three directions: data-driven, algorithmic, and human. Bias in AI algorithms for health care can have catastrophic consequences by propagating deeply rooted societal biases. This can result in misdiagnosing certain patient groups, like gender and ethnic minorities, that have a history of being underrepresented in existing datasets, further amplifying inequalities.

Open science practices can assist in moving toward fairness in AI for health care. These include (1) participant-centered development of AI algorithms and participatory science; (2) responsible data sharing and inclusive data standards to support interoperability; and (3) code sharing, including sharing of AI algorithms that can synthesize underrepresented data to address bias. Future research needs to focus on developing standards for AI in health care that enable transparency and data sharing, while at the same time preserving patients’ privacy….(More)”.

Figure thumbnail gr1

Citizen Science Project Builder 2.0

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

About by Citizen Science Center Zurich: “The Citizen Science Project Builder allows the implementation of Citizen Science projects, specifically in the area of data analysis. In such projects volunteers (“citizens”) collaborate with researchers in different kinds of scientific endeavors, from labeling images of snakes to transcribing handwritten Swiss German dialect, or classifying insects and plants. The Project Builder facilitates the implementation of such projects, supporting the collaborative analysis of large sets of digital data, including images and texts (i.e. satellite pictures, social media posts, etc.), as well as videos, audios, and scanned documents.

What makes the tool so special?

The Citizen Science Project Builder features a web interface that requires limited technical knowledge, and ideally little or no coding skills. It is a simple modular “step-by-step” system where a project can be created in just a few clicks. Once the project is set up, many people can easily be involved and start contributing to the analysis of data as well as providing feedback that will help you to improve your project!

What is new?

The new release of the Citizen Science Project Builder allows the building of full-fledged questionnaires for media analysis (including conditions and multiple formats for questions). A brand new functionality allows the geolocation of content on Open Street Map (e.g. mark the location of the content of an image) and also the delimitation of an area of interest (e.g. delimitate green areas). The interface still includes an “expert path” for developers, so if you can code (vue.js) the sky is the limit!…(More)”

The Case For Exploratory Social Sciences

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Discussion Paper by Geoff Mulgan: “…Here I make the case for a new way of organising social science both in universities and beyond through creating sub-disciplines of ‘exploratory social science’ that would help to fill this gap. In the paper I show:
• how in the 18th and 19th centuries social sciences attempted to fuse interpretation and change
• how a series of trends – including quantification and abstraction – delivered advances but also squeezed out this capacity for radical design
• how these also encouraged some blind alleys for social science, including what I call ‘unrealistic realism’ and the futile search for eternal laws

I show some of the more useful counter-trends, including evolutionary thinking, systems models and complexity that create a more valid space for conscious design. I argue that now, at a time when we badly need better designs and strategies for the future, we face a paradoxical situation where the people with the deepest knowledge of fields are discouraged from systematic and creative exploration of the future, while those with the appetite and freedom to explore often lack the necessary knowledge…(More)”.

Algorithms Are Not Enough: Creating General Artificial Intelligence

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Herbert L. Roitblat: “Since the inception of artificial intelligence, we have been warned about the imminent arrival of computational systems that can replicate human thought processes. Before we know it, computers will become so intelligent that humans will be lucky to be kept as pets. And yet, although artificial intelligence has become increasingly sophisticated—with such achievements as driverless cars and humanless chess-playing—computer science has not yet created general artificial intelligence. In Algorithms Are Not Enough, Herbert Roitblat explains how artificial general intelligence may be possible and why a robopocalypse is neither imminent nor likely.

Existing artificial intelligence, Roitblat shows, has been limited to solving path problems, in which the entire problem consists of navigating a path of choices—finding specific solutions to well-structured problems. Human problem-solving, on the other hand, includes problems that consist of ill-structured situations, including the design of problem-solving paths themselves. These are insight problems, and insight is an essential part of intelligence that has not been addressed by computer science. Roitblat draws on cognitive science, including psychology, philosophy, and history, to identify the essential features of intelligence needed to achieve general artificial intelligence.

Roitblat describes current computational approaches to intelligence, including the Turing Test, machine learning, and neural networks. He identifies building blocks of natural intelligence, including perception, analogy, ambiguity, common sense, and creativity. General intelligence can create new representations to solve new problems, but current computational intelligence cannot. The human brain, like the computer, uses algorithms; but general intelligence, he argues, is more than algorithmic processes…(More)”.

Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Steven Pinker: “Can reading a book make you more rational? Can it help you understand why there is so much irrationality in the world? These are the goals of Rationality, Steven Pinker’s follow-up to Enlightenment Now. In the 21st century, humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding—and at the same time appears to be losing its mind. How can a species that developed vaccines for Covid-19 in less than a year produce so much fake news, medical quackery, and conspiracy theorizing? Pinker rejects the cynical cliché that humans are an irrational species — cavemen out of time saddled with biases, fallacies, and illusions. After all, we discovered the laws of nature, lengthened and enriched our lives, and discovered the benchmarks for rationality itself. Instead, he explains that we think in ways that are sensible in the low-tech contexts in which we spend most of our lives, but fail to take advantage of the powerful tools of reasoning our best thinkers have discovered over the millennia: logic, critical thinking, probability, correlation and causation, and optimal ways to update beliefs and commit to choices individually and with others. These tools are not a standard part of our educational curricula, and have never been presented clearly and entertainingly in a single book—until now. Rationality also explores its opposite: how the rational pursuit of self-interest, sectarian solidarity, and uplifting mythology by individuals can add up to crippling irrationality in a society. Collective rationality depends on norms that are explicitly designed to promote objectivity and truth. Rationality matters. It leads to better choices in our lives and in the public sphere, and is the ultimate driver of social justice and moral progress. Brimming with insight and humour, Rationality will enlighten, inspire, and empower….(More)”.

Who takes part in Citizen Science projects & why?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

CS Track: “Citizen Science in Europe, as elsewhere, continues to manifest itself in a variety of different ways. While attracting interest across multiple sectors of society, its definition remains unclear. The first CS Track White Paper on Themes, objectives and participants of citizen science activities has just been published and, along with the initial results of the first large scale survey into participation in citizen science, provides an important overview of who participates in citizen science projects and what motivates them. This short report focuses on one aspect that emerges in this white paper.

Citizen Science Participants – who are they? 

Participants and who they are, have a significant impact on the objectives and outcomes of citizen science projects. However, existing information on the demographics of participants in citizen science projects is very limited and most studies have focused on a single project or programme. Furthermore, certain groups, like young people, are underrepresented in the available data.

What our research team has gathered from the literature and the initial results of the CS Track large-scale survey is the following:

  • Well-educated, affluent participants outnumber less affluent participants,
  • More men than women take part in many of the programmes that have been analysed.
  • Citizen scientists seem to be white, middle-aged, scientifically literate or generally interested in science or scientific topics.
  • Scientists, academics, teachers, science students and people who have a passion for the outdoors are among the groups of people most likely to take part in citizen science.
  • In agricultural, biological and environmental science-based programmes, participants are often scientists themselves, science teachers or students, conservation group members, backpackers or hikers or other outdoor enthusiasts – in other words people who care about nature.
  • Community and youth citizen science projects are underrepresented in the available data….(More)“.

Aspiring to greater intellectual humility in science

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Rink Hoekstra and Simine Vazire: “The replication crisis in the social, behavioural, and life sciences has spurred a reform movement aimed at increasing the credibility of scientific studies. Many of these credibility-enhancing reforms focus, appropriately, on specific research and publication practices. A less often mentioned aspect of credibility is the need for intellectual humility, or being transparent about and owning the limitations of our work. Although intellectual humility is presented as a widely accepted scientific norm, we argue that current research practice does not incentivize intellectual humility. We provide a set of recommendations on how to increase intellectual humility in research articles and highlight the central role peer reviewers can play in incentivizing authors to foreground the flaws and uncertainty in their work, thus enabling full and transparent evaluation of the validity of research…

A recent editorial in Nature Human Behaviour laments the fact that academia prefers clear and polished stories over honest but less clear-cut ones, with “research projects [presented] as conclusive narratives that leave no room for ambiguity or for conflicting or inconclusive results” (p. 1). Although honesty and clarity are not mutually exclusive, the pressure resulting from this probably impacts the quality and validity of our scientific work. Most journals still seem to favor clear stories, despite an arguably larger risk of these having validity issues. This presents a real dilemma for authors – especially those who do not have the luxury of a tenured position – who would like to put intellectual humility front and center: In order to increase the odds of getting a publication, they are encouraged to present their stories as better than they actually are. Being more honest or humble likely has a negative effect on their CVs. In the following, we’ll present a constructive solution for this apparent stalemate, which reverses the reward structure in such a way that authors are encouraged to write papers that “tell it like it is”….(More)”.

Process Science: The Interdisciplinary Study of Continuous Change

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Jan vom Brocke et al: “The only constant in our world is change. Why is there not a field of science that explicitly studies continuous change? We propose the establishment of process science, a field that studies processes: coherent series of changes, both man-made and naturally occurring, that unfold over time and occur at various levels. Process science is concerned with understanding and influencing change. It entails discovering and understanding processes as well as designing interventions to shape them into desired directions. Process science is based on four key principles; it (1) puts processes at the center of attention, (2) investigates processes scientifically, (3) embraces perspectives of multiple disciplines, and (4) aims to create impact by actively shaping the unfolding of processes. The ubiquitous availability of digital trace data, combined with advanced data analytics capabilities, offer new and unprecedented opportunities to study processes through multiple data sources, which makes process science very timely….(More)”.