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)”.

Nudgeability: Mapping Conditions of Susceptibility to Nudge Influence

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Denise de Ridder, Floor Kroese, and Laurens van Gestel: “Nudges are behavioral interventions to subtly steer citizens’ choices toward “desirable” options. An important topic of debate concerns the legitimacy of nudging as a policy instrument, and there is a focus on issues relating to nudge transparency, the role of preexisting preferences people may have, and the premise that nudges primarily affect people when they are in “irrational” modes of thinking. Empirical insights into how these factors affect the extent to which people are susceptible to nudge influence (i.e., “nudgeable”) are lacking in the debate. This article introduces the new concept of nudgeability and makes a first attempt to synthesize the evidence on when people are responsive to nudges. We find that nudge effects do not hinge on transparency or modes of thinking but that personal preferences moderate effects such that people cannot be nudged into something they do not want. We conclude that, in view of these findings, concerns about nudging legitimacy should be softened and that future research should attend to these and other conditions of nudgeability….(More)”.

World Bank Cancels Flagship ‘Doing Business’ Report After Investigation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Josh Zumbrun: “The World Bank canceled a prominent report rating the business environment of the world’s countries after an investigation concluded that senior bank management pressured staff to alter data affecting the ranking of China and other nations.

The leaders implicated include then World Bank Chief Executive Kristalina Georgieva, now managing director of the International Monetary Fund, and then World Bank President Jim Yong Kim.

The episode is a reputational hit for Ms. Georgieva, who disagreed with the investigators’ conclusions. As leader of the IMF, the lender of last resort to struggling countries around the world, she is in part responsible for managing political pressure from nations seeking to advance their own interests. It was also the latest example of the Chinese government seeking myriad ways to burnish its global standing.

The Doing Business report has been the subject of an external probe into the integrity of the report’s data. On Thursday, the bank released the results of that investigation, which concluded that senior bank leaders including Ms. Georgieva were involved in pressuring economists to improve China’s 2018 ranking. At the time, she and others were attempting to persuade China to support a boost in the bank’s funding….(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)”.

Public health and expert failure

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Roger Koppl: “In a modern democracy, a public health system includes mechanisms for the provision of expert scientific advice to elected officials. The decisions of elected officials generally will be degraded by expert failure, that is, the provision of bad advice. The theory of expert failure suggests that competition among experts generally is the best safeguard against expert failure. Monopoly power of experts increases the chance of expert failure. The risk of expert failure also is greater when scientific advice is provided by only one or a few disciplines. A national government can simulate a competitive market for expert advice by structuring the scientific advice it receives to ensure the production of multiple perspectives from multiple disciplines. I apply these general principles to the United Kingdom’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE)….(More)”.

Are emerging technologies helping win the fight against corruption? A review of the state of evidence

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Isabelle Adam and Mihály Fazekas: “Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is often thought of as a uniformly positive tool making governments more transparent, accountable, and less corrupt. However, the evidence on it is mixed and often misunderstood. Hence, this article carries out a systematic stocktaking of ICT tools’ impact on corruption, offering a nuanced and context-dependent assessment. The tools reviewed are digital public services, crowdsourcing platforms, whistleblowing tools, transparency portals, distributed ledger technology, and artificial intelligence. We scrutinise the evidence both on ICTs’ anticorruption effectiveness and misuse for corruption. Drawing on the commonalities across technologies, we find that ICT can support anti-corruption by impacting public scrutiny in numerous ways: enabling reporting on corruption, promoting transparency and accountability, facilitating citizen participation and government-citizen interactions. However, ICT can also provide new corruption opportunities through the dark web, cryptocurrencies, or the misuse of technologies such as centralised databases. The introduction of ICT tools does not automatically translate into anti-corruption outcomes; rather, impact hinges on the matching between ICT tools and the local context, including support for and skills in using technology….(More)”

Urban Future with a Purpose

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Deloitte Report: “The world is going through a transformative journey and so are cities. As centers of innovation and shared prosperity, cities are where the future happens first, hence envisioning the Future of Cities is anticipating the future of human living.

This report comprises 12 main trends that will affect our urban living in the upcoming future, its explanation, impact and key case studies where they are being implemented. Under this research project, Deloitte has listened to experts from all over the globe. These include Mayors of reference cities across the globe, international organizations leaders, urban policy institutions, as well as notorious urban planners, practitioners and researchers. Their views and insights offer further depth to our analysis.

Covering domains such as Mobility, Living & Health, Government & Education, Energy & Environment, Safety & Security and Economy, the purpose of our 360-degree comprehensive analysis is to create a constructive tool for everyone to use and practice what moves us day-by-day: foretell, design and build better cities….(More)”.

The Privatized State

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Chiara Cordelli: “Many governmental functions today—from the management of prisons and welfare offices to warfare and financial regulation—are outsourced to private entities. Education and health care are funded in part through private philanthropy rather than taxation. Can a privatized government rule legitimately? The Privatized State argues that it cannot.

In this boldly provocative book, Chiara Cordelli argues that privatization constitutes a regression to a precivil condition—what philosophers centuries ago called “a state of nature.” Developing a compelling case for the democratic state and its administrative apparatus, she shows how privatization reproduces the very same defects that Enlightenment thinkers attributed to the precivil condition, and which only properly constituted political institutions can overcome—defects such as provisional justice, undue dependence, and unfreedom. Cordelli advocates for constitutional limits on privatization and a more democratic system of public administration, and lays out the central responsibilities of private actors in contexts where governance is already extensively privatized. Charting a way forward, she presents a new conceptual account of political representation and novel philosophical theories of democratic authority and legitimate lawmaking.

The Privatized State shows how privatization undermines the very reason political institutions exist in the first place, and advocates for a new way of administering public affairs that is more democratic and just….(More)”.

Can Gamification be Used for Spatial Energy Data Collection?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Ernst Gebetsroither-Geringer et al regarding “Experiences Gained from the Development of the HotCity Game to Collect Urban Waste Heat Sources”: Availability of reliable data is one of the most important elements for fact-based decisions. Urban planning and spatial energy planning often suffers from a lack of availability of good, validated and up-to-date data sets. Furthermore, integrated spatial and energy planning needs to incorporate new spatially distributed energy sources and understand how these sources can be used in the future to meet climate protection targets. These new energy sources can be, for example, waste heat from industrial food production, local industrial/commercial enterprises, data centers, or urban infrastructure such as tunnels and metro stations. The utilization of such waste heat sources in heating networks has been demonstrated several times, however, their proper identification in an urban environment can be challenging, especially for smaller and unconventional sources (Schmidt, 2020).
Gamification as an innovative way to collect the needed data was investigated within a national funded research project called “HotCity”. Gamification builds on the use of game mechanics in contexts that are, by nature, unrelated to the game (Deterding, 2011). Within the project the HotCity-App was developed enabling users to spatially report and evaluate different sources of waste heat. The gamification of data collection was also intended to raise awareness of waste heat and energy use on the one hand, and to facilitate the collection of data from small energy sources on the other. For the first time, the game framework is secured using a blockchain and mapped by means of a token system. The HotCity-App was tested in the Austrian cities Vienna and Graz as a proof of concept to analyse if and how the gamification approach can deliver valid results….(More)”

Contemplating the COVID crisis: what kind of inquiry do we need to learn the right lessons?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Geoff Mulgan: “Boris Johnson has announced a UK inquiry into COVID-19 to start in 2022, a parallel one is being planned in Scotland, and many more will emerge all over the world. But how should such inquiries be designed and run? What kind of inquiry can do most to mitigate or address the harms caused by the pandemic?

We’re beginning to look at this question at IPPO (the International Public Policy Observatory), including a global scan with our partners, INGSA and the Blavatnik School of Government, on how inquiries are being developed around the world, plus engagement with governments and parliaments across the UK.

It’s highly likely that the most traditional models of inquiries will be adopted – just because that’s what people at the top are used to, or because they look politically expedient. But we think it would be good to look at the options and to encourage some creativity.

The pandemic has prompted extraordinary innovation; there is no reason why inquiries should be devoid of any. Moreover, the pandemic affected every sector of life – and was far more ‘systemic’ than the kinds of issue or event addressed by typical inquiries in the past. That should be reflected in how lessons are learned.

So here are some initial thoughts on what the defaults look like, why they are likely to be inadequate, and what some alternatives might be. This article proposes the idea of a ‘whole of society’ inquiry model which has a distributed rather than centralised structure, which focuses on learning more than blame, and which can connect the thousands of organisations that have had to make so many difficult decisions throughout the crisis, and also the lived experiences of public and frontline staff. We hope that it will prompt responses, including better ideas about what kinds of inquiry will serve us best…

There are many different options for inquiries, and this is a good moment to consider them. They range from ‘truth and reconciliation’ inquiries to no-fault compensation processes to the ways industries such as airlines deal with crashes, through to academic analyses of events like the 2007/08 financial crash. They can involve representative or random samples of the public (e.g. citizens’ assemblies and juries) or just experts and officials…

The idea of a distributed inquiry is not entirely new. Colombia, for example, attempted something along these lines as part of its peace process. Many health systems use methods such as ‘collaboratives’ to organise accelerated learning. Doubtless there is much to be learned from these and other examples. For the UK in particular, it is vital there are contextually appropriate designs for the four nations as well as individual cities and regions.

As already indicated, a key is to combine sensible inquiries focused on particular sectors (e.g. what did universities do, what worked…) and make connections between them. As IPPO’s work on COVID inequalities has highlighted, the patterns are very complex but involved a huge amount of harm – captured in our ‘inequalities matrix’, below.

So, while the inquiries need to dig deep on multiple fronts and to look more like a matrix than a single question, what might connect all the inquiries would be a commitment to some common elements which would be shared:

  • Facts: In each case, a precondition for learning is establishing the facts, as well as the evidence on what did or didn’t work well. This is a process closer to what evidence intermediary organisations – such as the UK’s What Works Network – do than a judicial process designed for binary judgments (guilty/not guilty). This would be helped by some systematic curation and organisation of the evidence in easily accessible forms, of the kind that IPPO is doing….(More)”