How public should science be?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Discussion Report by Edel, A., Kübler: “Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the question of what role science should play in political discourse has moved into the focus of public interest with unprecedented vehemence. In addition to governments directly consulting individual virologists or (epidemiological) research institutes, major scientific institutions such as the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina1 and the presidents of four non-university research organisations have actively participated in the discussion by providing recommendations. More than ever before, scientific problem descriptions, data and evaluations are influencing political measures. It seems as if the relationship between science, politics and the public is currently being reassessed.

The current crisis situation has not created a new phenomenon but has only reinforced the trend of mutual reliance between science, politics and the public, which has been observed for some time. Decision-makers in the political arena and in business were already looking for ways to better substantiate and legitimise their decisions through external scientific expertise when faced with major societal challenges, for example when trying to deal with increasing immigration, climate protection and when preparing for far-reaching reforms (e.g. of the labour market or the pension system) or in economic crises. Research is also held in high esteem within society. The special edition of the ‘Science Barometer’ was able to demonstrate in the surveys an increased trust in science in the case of the current COVID-19 pandemic. Conversely, scientists have always been and continue to be active in the public sphere. For some time now, research experts have frequently been guests on talk shows. Authors from the field of science often write opinion pieces and guest contributions in daily newspapers and magazines. However, this role of research is by no means un-controversial….(More)”.

Ten computer codes that transformed science

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Jeffrey M. Perkel at Nature: “From Fortran to arXiv.org, these advances in programming and platforms sent biology, climate science and physics into warp speed….In 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope team gave the world the first glimpse of what a black hole actually looks like. But the image of a glowing, ring-shaped object that the group unveiled wasn’t a conventional photograph. It was computed — a mathematical transformation of data captured by radio telescopes in the United States, Mexico, Chile, Spain and the South Pole1. The team released the programming code it used to accomplish that feat alongside the articles that documented its findings, so the scientific community could see — and build on — what it had done.

It’s an increasingly common pattern. From astronomy to zoology, behind every great scientific finding of the modern age, there is a computer. Michael Levitt, a computational biologist at Stanford University in California who won a share of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on computational strategies for modelling chemical structure, notes that today’s laptops have about 10,000 times the memory and clock speed that his lab-built computer had in 1967, when he began his prizewinning work. “We really do have quite phenomenal amounts of computing at our hands today,” he says. “Trouble is, it still requires thinking.”

Enter the scientist-coder. A powerful computer is useless without software capable of tackling research questions — and researchers who know how to write it and use it. “Research is now fundamentally connected to software,” says Neil Chue Hong, director of the Software Sustainability Institute, headquartered in Edinburgh, UK, an organization dedicated to improving the development and use of software in science. “It permeates every aspect of the conduct of research.”

Scientific discoveries rightly get top billing in the media. But Nature this week looks behind the scenes, at the key pieces of code that have transformed research over the past few decades.

Although no list like this can be definitive, we polled dozens of researchers over the past year to develop a diverse line-up of ten software tools that have had a big impact on the world of science. You can weigh in on our choices at the end of the story….(More)”.

Scholarly publishing needs regulation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Jean-Claude Burgelman: “The world of scientific communication has changed significantly over the past 12 months. Understandably, the amazing mobilisation of research and scholarly publishing in an effort to mitigate the effects of Covid-19 and find a vaccine has overshadowed everything else. But two other less-noticed events could also have profound implications for the industry and the researchers who rely on it.

On 10 January 2020, Taylor and Francis announced its acquisition of one of the most innovative small open-access publishers, F1000 Research. A year later, on 5 January 2021, another of the big commercial scholarly publishers, Wiley, paid nearly $300 million for Hindawi, a significant open-access publisher in London.

These acquisitions come alongside rapid change in publishers’ functions and business models. Scientific publishing is no longer only about publishing articles. It’s a knowledge industry—and it’s increasingly clear it needs to be regulated like one.

The two giant incumbents, Springer Nature and Elsevier, are already a long way down the road to open access, and have built up impressive in-house capacity. But Wiley, and Taylor and Francis, had not. That’s why they decided to buy young open-access publishers. Buying up a smaller, innovative competitor is a well-established way for an incumbent in any industry to expand its reach, gain the ability to do new things and reinvent its business model—it’s why Facebook bought WhatsApp and Instagram, for example.

New regulatory approach

To understand why this dynamic demands a new regulatory approach in scientific publishing, we need to set such acquisitions alongside a broader perspective of the business’s transformation into a knowledge industry. 

Monopolies, cartels and oligopolies in any industry are a cause for concern. By reducing competition, they stifle innovation and push up prices. But for science, the implications of such a course are particularly worrying. 

Science is a common good. Its products—and especially its spillovers, the insights and applications that cannot be monopolised—are vital to our knowledge societies. This means that having four companies control the worldwide production of car tyres, as they do, has very different implications to an oligopoly in the distribution of scientific outputs. The latter situation would give the incumbents a tight grip on the supply of knowledge.

Scientific publishing is not yet a monopoly, but Europe at least is witnessing the emergence of an oligopoly, in the shape of Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley, and Taylor and Francis. The past year’s acquisitions have left only two significant independent players in open-access publishing—Frontiers and MDPI, both based in Switzerland….(More)”.

Enabling the future of academic research with the Twitter API

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Twitter Developer Blog: “When we introduced the next generation of the Twitter API in July 2020, we also shared our plans to invest in the success of the academic research community with tailored solutions that better serve their goals. Today, we’re excited to launch the Academic Research product track on the new Twitter API. 

Why we’re launching this & how we got here

Since the Twitter API was first introduced in 2006, academic researchers have used data from the public conversation to study topics as diverse as the conversation on Twitter itself – from state-backed efforts to disrupt the public conversation to floods and climate change, from attitudes and perceptions about COVID-19 to efforts to promote healthy conversation online. Today, academic researchers are one of the largest groups of people using the Twitter API. 

Our developer platform hasn’t always made it easy for researchers to access the data they need, and many have had to rely on their own resourcefulness to find the right information. Despite this, for over a decade, academic researchers have used Twitter data for discoveries and innovations that help make the world a better place.

Over the past couple of years, we’ve taken iterative steps to improve the experience for researchers, like when we launched a webpage dedicated to Academic Research, and updated our Twitter Developer Policy to make it easier to validate or reproduce others’ research using Twitter data.

We’ve also made improvements to help academic researchers use Twitter data to advance their disciplines, answer urgent questions during crises, and even help us improve Twitter. For example, in April 2020, we released the COVID-19 stream endpoint – the first free, topic-based stream built solely for researchers to use data from the global conversation for the public good. Researchers from around the world continue to use this endpoint for a number of projects.

Over two years ago, we started our own extensive research to better understand the needs, constraints and challenges that researchers have when studying the public conversation. In October 2020, we tested this product track in a private beta program where we gathered additional feedback. This gave us a glimpse into some of the important work that the free Academic Research product track we’re launching today can now enable….(More)”.

The Hidden Cost of Using Amazon Mechanical Turk for Research

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Antonios Saravanos: “This work shares unexpected findings obtained from the use of the Amazon Mechanical Turk platform as a source of participants for the study of technology adoption. Expressly, of the 564 participants from the United States, 126 (22.34%) failed at least one of three forms of attention check (logic, honesty, and time). We also examined whether characteristics such as gender, age, education, and income affected participant attention. Amongst all characteristics assessed, only prior experience with the technology being studied was found to be related to attentiveness. We conclude this work by reaffirming the need for multiple forms of attention checks to gauge participant attention. Furthermore, we propose that researchers adjust their budgets accordingly to account for the possibility of having to discard responses from participants determined not to be displaying adequate attention….(More)”.

The Problem with Science: The Reproducibility Crisis and What to do About It

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by R. Barker Bausell: “Recent events have vividly underscored the societal importance of science, yet the majority of the public are unaware that a large proportion of published scientific results are simply wrong. The Problem with Science is an exploration of the manifestations and causes of this scientific crisis, accompanied by a description of the very promising corrective initiatives largely developed over the past decade to stem the spate of irreproducible results that have come to characterize many of our sciences.

More importantly, Dr. R. Barker Bausell has designed it to provide guidance to practicing and aspiring scientists regarding how (a) to change the way in which science has come to be both conducted and reported in order to avoid producing false positive, irreproducible results in their own work and (b) to change those institutional practices (primarily but not exclusively involving the traditional journal publishing process and the academic reward system) that have unwittingly contributed to the present crisis. There is a need for change in the scientific culture itself. A culture which prioritizes conducting research correctly in order to get things right rather than simply getting it published….(More)”.

OECD Science, Technology and Innovation Outlook

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

OECD: “…the COVID-19 crisis has triggered an unprecedented mobilisation of the science and innovation community. Public research agencies and organisations, private foundations and charities, and the health industry have set up an array of newly funded research initiatives worth billions of dollars in record time. Science is the only exit strategy from COVID-19.

Science and innovation have played essential roles in providing a better understanding of the virus and its transmission, and in developing hundreds of candidate therapeutics and vaccines over a very short period. Digital technologies have enabled large parts of the economy and society to continue to function, mitigating the impact of COVID-19. The pandemic has underscored more than in other recent crises the importance of science and innovation to being both prepared and reactive to upcoming crises….

The world is still in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis and many uncertainties remain….At the same time, many governments view the pandemic as a stark reminder of the need to transition to more sustainable, equitable and resilient societies. This is highlighted in many countries’ recovery packages, which include expenditures for R&D. Science and innovation will be essential to promote and deliver such transitions, but the pandemic has exposed limits in research and innovation systems that, if not addressed, will prevent this potential from being realised.

There is therefore a need to re-set STI policies to better equip governments with the instruments and capabilities to direct innovation efforts towards the goals of sustainability, inclusivity and resiliency.

1. Policy needs to be able to guide innovation efforts to where they are most needed. This has implications for how governments support research and innovation in firms, which account for about 70% of R&D expenditures in the OECD. The business R&D support policy mix has shifted in recent decades towards a greater reliance on tax compared to direct support instruments such as contracts, grants or awards. While effective for incentivising businesses to innovate, R&D tax incentives are indirect, untargeted and tend to generate incremental innovations. Well-designed direct measures for R&D are potentially better suited to supporting longer-term, high-risk research, and targeting innovations that either generate public goods (e.g. in health) or have a high potential for knowledge spillovers. Governments need to revisit their policy portfolios to ensure an appropriate balance between direct and indirect measures.

2. The multifaceted nature of addressing complex problems like COVID-19 and sustainability transitions underscores the need for transdisciplinary research to which current science system norms and institutions are ill-adapted. Disciplinary and hierarchical structures need to be adjusted to enable and promote transdisciplinary research that engages different disciplines and sectors to address complex challenges.

3. Governments should link support for emerging technologies, such as engineering biology and robotics, to broader missions like health resilience that encapsulate responsible innovation principles. The responsible innovation approach seeks to anticipate problems in the course of innovation and steer technology to best outcomes. It also emphasises the inclusion of stakeholders early in the innovation process.

4. Reforming PhD and post-doctoral training to support a diversity of career paths is essential for improving the ability of societies to react to crises and to deal with future challenges like climate change that require science-based responses. Reforms could also help relieve the precarity of early-career researchers, many of whom are employed on short-term contracts with no clear prospect of a permanent academic position. The crisis has also highlighted the need for academia to train and embrace a new cohort of digitally skilled research support professionals and scientists.

5. Global challenges require global solutions that draw on international STI co-operation. The development of COVID-19 vaccines has benefited from nascent global R&D preparedness measures, including agile technology platforms that can be activated as new pathogens emerge. The pandemic has created momentum to establish effective and sustainable global mechanisms to support the range and scope of R&D necessary to confront a wider range of global challenges. However, governments need to build trust and define common values to ensure a level playing field for scientific co-operation and an equitable distribution of its benefits.

6. Governments need to renew their policy frameworks and capabilities to fulfil a more ambitious STI policy agenda. Increasing policy emphasis on building resilience, which calls for policy agility, highlights the need for governments to acquire dynamic capabilities to adapt and learn in the face of rapidly changing environments. Engaging stakeholders and citizens in these efforts will expose policymakers to diverse knowledge and values, which should contribute to policy resilience. Governments should also continue to invest in evidence about their STI support policies with a view to improving them….(More)”.

How data analysis can enrich the liberal arts

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

The Economist: “…The arts can indeed seem as if they are under threat. Australia’s education ministry is doubling fees for history and philosophy while cutting those for stem subjects. Since 2017 America’s Republican Party has tried to close down the National Endowment for the Humanities (neh), a federal agency, only to be thwarted in Congress. In Britain, Dominic Cummings—who until November 2020 worked as the chief adviser to Boris Johnson, the prime minister—advocates for greater numeracy while decrying the prominence of bluffing “Oxbridge humanities graduates”. (Both men studied arts subjects at Oxford.)

However, little evidence yet exists that the burgeoning field of digital humanities is bankrupting the world of ink-stained books. Since the neh set up an office for the discipline in 2008, it has received just $60m of its $1.6bn kitty. Indeed, reuniting the humanities with sciences might protect their future. Dame Marina Warner, president of the Royal Society of Literature in London, points out that part of the problem is that “we’ve driven a great barrier” between the arts and stem subjects. This separation risks portraying the humanities as a trivial pursuit, rather than a necessary complement to scientific learning.

Until comparatively recently, no such division existed. Omar Khayyam wrote verse and cubic equations, Ada Lovelace believed science was poetical and Bertrand Russell won the Nobel prize for literature. In that tradition, Dame Marina proposes that all undergraduates take at least one course in both humanities and sciences, ideally with a language and computing. Introducing such a system in Britain would be “a cause for optimism”, she thinks. Most American universities already offer that breadth, which may explain why quantitative literary criticism thrived there. The sciences could benefit, too. Studies of junior doctors in America have found that those who engage with the arts score higher on tests of empathy.

Ms McGillivray says she has witnessed a “generational shift” since she was an undergraduate in the late 1990s. Mixing her love of mathematics and classics was not an option, so she spent seven years getting degrees in both. Now she sees lots of humanities students “who are really keen to learn about programming and statistics”. A recent paper she co-wrote suggested that British arts courses could offer basic coding lessons. One day, she reckons, “It’s going to happen…(More)”.

Is a racially-biased algorithm delaying health care for one million Black people?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Jyoti Madhusoodanan at Nature: “One million Black adults in the United States might be treated earlier for kidney disease if doctors were to remove a controversial ‘race-based correction factor’ from an algorithm they use to diagnose people and decide whether to administer medication, a comprehensive analysis finds.

Critics of the factor question its medical validity and say it potentially perpetuates racial bias — and that the latest study, published on 2 December in JAMA1, strengthens growing calls to discontinue its use.

“A population that is marginalized and much less likely to have necessary resources and support is the last group we want to put in a situation where they’re going to have delays in diagnosis and treatment,” says nephrologist Keith Norris at the University of California, Los Angeles, who argues for retiring the correction until there’s clear evidence that it’s necessary.

On the flip side, others say that the correction is based on scientific data that can’t be ignored, although they, too, agree that its basis on race is a problem….(More)”.

Wikipedia @ 20

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Stories of an Incomplete Revolution edited by Joseph Reagle and Jackie Koerner (Open Access): “We have been looking things up in Wikipedia for twenty years. What began almost by accident—a wiki attached to a nascent online encyclopedia—has become the world’s most popular reference work. Regarded at first as the scholarly equivalent of a Big Mac, Wikipedia is now known for its reliable sourcing and as a bastion of (mostly) reasoned interaction. How has Wikipedia, built on a model of radical collaboration, remained true to its original mission of “free access to the sum of all human knowledge” when other tech phenomena have devolved into advertising platforms? In this book, scholars, activists, and volunteers reflect on Wikipedia’s first twenty years, revealing connections across disciplines and borders, languages and data, the professional and personal.

The contributors consider Wikipedia’s history, the richness of the connections that underpin it, and its founding vision. Their essays look at, among other things, the shift from bewilderment to respect in press coverage of Wikipedia; Wikipedia as “the most important laboratory for social scientific and computing research in history”; and the acknowledgment that “free access” includes not just access to the material but freedom to contribute—that the summation of all human knowledge is biased by who documents it….(More)”