New paper by Jennifer L. Gustetic et al in Space Policy: “In an increasingly connected and networked world, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) recognizes the value of the public as a strategic partner in addressing some of our most pressing challenges. The agency is working to more effectively harness the expertise, ingenuity, and creativity of individual members of the public by enabling, accelerating, and scaling the use of open innovation approaches including prizes, challenges, and crowdsourcing. As NASA’s use of open innovation tools to solve a variety of types of problems and advance of number of outcomes continues to grow, challenge design is also becoming more sophisticated as our expertise and capacity (personnel, platforms, and partners) grows and develops. NASA has recently pivoted from talking about the benefits of challenge-driven approaches, to the outcomes these types of activities yield. Challenge design should be informed by desired outcomes that align with NASA’s mission. This paper provides several case studies of NASA open innovation activities and maps the outcomes of those activities to a successful set of outcomes that challenges can help drive alongside traditional tools such as contracts, grants and partnerships….(More)”
Journal of Technology Science
“Technology Science is an open access forum for any original material dealing primarily with a social, political, personal, or organizational benefit or adverse consequence of technology. Studies that characterize a technology-society clash or present an approach to better harmonize technology and society are especially welcomed. Papers can come from anywhere in the world.
Technology Science is interested in reviews of research, experiments, surveys, tutorials, and analyses. Writings may propose solutions or describe unsolved problems. Technology Science may also publish letters, short communications, and relevant news items. All submissions are peer-reviewed.
The scientific study of technology-society clashes is a cross-disciplinary pursuit, so papers in Technology Science may come from any of many possible disciplinary traditions, including but not limited to social science, computer science, political science, law, economics, policy, or statistics.
The Data Privacy Lab at Harvard University publishes Technology Science and its affiliated subset of papers called the Journal of Technology Science and maintains them online at techscience.org and at jots.pub. Technology Science is available free of charge over the Internet. While it is possible that bound paper copies of Technology Science content may be produced for a fee, all content will continue to be offered online at no charge….(More)”
Science Isn’t Broken
Christie Aschwanden at FiveThirtyEight: “Yet even in the face of overwhelming evidence, it’s hard to let go of a cherished idea, especially one a scientist has built a career on developing. And so, as anyone who’s ever tried to correct a falsehood on the Internet knows, the truth doesn’t always win, at least not initially, because we process new evidence through the lens of what we already believe. Confirmation bias can blind us to the facts; we are quick to make up our minds and slow to change them in the face of new evidence.
A few years ago, Ioannidis and some colleagues searched the scientific literature for references to two well-known epidemiological studies suggesting that vitamin E supplements might protect against cardiovascular disease. These studies were followed by several large randomized clinical trials that showed no benefit from vitamin E and one meta-analysis finding that at high doses, vitamin E actually increased the risk of death.
Human fallibilities send the scientific process hurtling in fits, starts and misdirections instead of in a straight line from question to truth.
Despite the contradictory evidence from more rigorous trials, the first studies continued to be cited and defended in the literature. Shaky claims about beta carotene’s ability to reduce cancer risk and estrogen’s role in staving off dementia also persisted, even after they’d been overturned by more definitive studies. Once an idea becomes fixed, it’s difficult to remove from the conventional wisdom.
Sometimes scientific ideas persist beyond the evidence because the stories we tell about them feel true and confirm what we already believe. It’s natural to think about possible explanations for scientific results — this is how we put them in context and ascertain how plausible they are. The problem comes when we fall so in love with these explanations that we reject the evidence refuting them.
The media is often accused of hyping studies, but scientists are prone to overstating their results too.
Take, for instance, the breakfast study. Published in 2013, it examined whether breakfast eaters weigh less than those who skip the morning meal and if breakfast could protect against obesity. Obesity researcher Andrew Brown and his colleagues found that despite more than 90 mentions of this hypothesis in published media and journals, the evidence for breakfast’s effect on body weight was tenuous and circumstantial. Yet researchers in the field seemed blind to these shortcomings, overstating the evidence and using causative language to describe associations between breakfast and obesity. The human brain is primed to find causality even where it doesn’t exist, and scientists are not immune.
As a society, our stories about how science works are also prone to error. The standard way of thinking about the scientific method is: ask a question, do a study, get an answer. But this notion is vastly oversimplified. A more common path to truth looks like this: ask a question, do a study, get a partial or ambiguous answer, then do another study, and then do another to keep testing potential hypotheses and homing in on a more complete answer. Human fallibilities send the scientific process hurtling in fits, starts and misdirections instead of in a straight line from question to truth.
Media accounts of science tend to gloss over the nuance, and it’s easy to understand why. For one thing, reporters and editors who cover science don’t always have training on how to interpret studies. And headlines that read “weak, unreplicated study finds tenuous link between certain vegetables and cancer risk” don’t fly off the newsstands or bring in the clicks as fast as ones that scream “foods that fight cancer!”
People often joke about the herky-jerky nature of science and health headlines in the media — coffee is good for you one day, bad the next — but that back and forth embodies exactly what the scientific process is all about. It’s hard to measure the impact of diet on health, Nosek told me. “That variation [in results] occurs because science is hard.” Isolating how coffee affects health requires lots of studies and lots of evidence, and only over time and in the course of many, many studies does the evidence start to narrow to a conclusion that’s defensible. “The variation in findings should not be seen as a threat,” Nosek said. “It means that scientists are working on a hard problem.”
The scientific method is the most rigorous path to knowledge, but it’s also messy and tough. Science deserves respect exactly because it is difficult — not because it gets everything correct on the first try. The uncertainty inherent in science doesn’t mean that we can’t use it to make important policies or decisions. It just means that we should remain cautious and adopt a mindset that’s open to changing course if new data arises. We should make the best decisions we can with the current evidence and take care not to lose sight of its strength and degree of certainty. It’s no accident that every good paper includes the phrase “more study is needed” — there is always more to learn….(More)”
Open Data: A 21st Century Asset for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises
“The economic and social potential of open data is widely acknowledged. In particular, the business opportunities have received much attention. But for all the excitement, we still know very little about how and under what conditions open data really works.
To broaden our understanding of the use and impact of open data, the GovLab has a variety of initiatives and studies underway. Today, we share publicly our findings on how Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) are leveraging open data for a variety of purposes. Our paper “Open Data: A 21st Century Asset for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises” seeks to build a portrait of the lifecycle of open data—how it is collected, stored and used. It outlines some of the most important parameters of an open data business model for SMEs….
The paper analyzes ten aspects of open data and establishes ten principles for its effective use by SMEs. Taken together, these offer a roadmap for any SME considering greater use or adoption of open data in its business.
Among the key findings included in the paper:
- SMEs, which often lack access to data or sophisticated analytical tools to process large datasets, are likely to be one of the chief beneficiaries of open data.
- Government data is the main category of open data being used by SMEs. A number of SMEs are also using open scientific and shared corporate data.
- Open data is used primarily to serve the Business-to-Business (B2B) markets, followed by the Business-to-Consumer (B2C) markets. A number of the companies studied serve two or three market segments simultaneously.
- Open data is usually a free resource, but SMEs are monetizing their open-data-driven services to build viable businesses. The most common revenue models include subscription-based services, advertising, fees for products and services, freemium models, licensing fees, lead generation and philanthropic grants.
- The most significant challenges SMEs face in using open data include those concerning data quality and consistency, insufficient financial and human resources, and issues surrounding privacy.
This is just a sampling of findings and observations. The paper includes a number of additional observations concerning business and revenue models, product development, customer acquisition, and other subjects of relevance to any company considering an open data strategy.”
Content Volatility of Scientific Topics in Wikipedia: A Cautionary Tale
Paper by Wilson AM and Likens GE at PLOS: “Wikipedia has quickly become one of the most frequently accessed encyclopedic references, despite the ease with which content can be changed and the potential for ‘edit wars’ surrounding controversial topics. Little is known about how this potential for controversy affects the accuracy and stability of information on scientific topics, especially those with associated political controversy. Here we present an analysis of the Wikipedia edit histories for seven scientific articles and show that topics we consider politically but not scientifically “controversial” (such as evolution and global warming) experience more frequent edits with more words changed per day than pages we consider “noncontroversial” (such as the standard model in physics or heliocentrism). For example, over the period we analyzed, the global warming page was edited on average (geometric mean ±SD) 1.9±2.7 times resulting in 110.9±10.3 words changed per day, while the standard model in physics was only edited 0.2±1.4 times resulting in 9.4±5.0 words changed per day. The high rate of change observed in these pages makes it difficult for experts to monitor accuracy and contribute time-consuming corrections, to the possible detriment of scientific accuracy. As our society turns to Wikipedia as a primary source of scientific information, it is vital we read it critically and with the understanding that the content is dynamic and vulnerable to vandalism and other shenanigans….(More)”
e-Consultation Platforms: Generating or Just Recycling Ideas?
Chapter by Efthimios Tambouris, Anastasia Migotzidou, and Konstantinos Tarabanis in Electronic Participation: “A number of governments worldwide employ web-based e-consultation platforms to enable stakeholders commenting on draft legislation. Stakeholders’ input includes arguing in favour or against the proposed legislation as well as proposing alternative ideas. In this paper, we empirically investigate the relationship between the volume of contributions in these platforms and the amount of new ideas that are generated. This enables us to determine whether participants in such platforms keep generating new ideas or just recycle a finite number of ideas. We capitalised on argumentation models to code and analyse a large number of draft law consultations published inopengov.gr, the official e-consultation platform for draft legislation in Greece. Our results suggest that as the number of posts grows, the number of new ideas continues to increase. The results of this study improve our understanding of the dynamics of these consultations and enable us to design better platforms….(More)”
Policy makers’ perceptions on the transformational effect of Web 2.0 technologies on public services delivery
Paper by Manuel Pedro Rodríguez Bolívar at Electronic Commerce Research: “The growing participation in social networking sites is altering the nature of social relations and changing the nature of political and public dialogue. This paper contributes to the current debate on Web 2.0 technologies and their implications for local governance, identifying the perceptions of policy makers on the use of Web 2.0 in providing public services and on the changing roles that could arise from the resulting interaction between local governments and their stakeholders. The results obtained suggest that policy makers are willing to implement Web 2.0 technologies in providing public services, but preferably under the Bureaucratic model framework, thus retaining a leading role in this implementation. The learning curve of local governments in the use of Web 2.0 technologies is a factor that could influence policy makers’ perceptions. In this respect, many research gaps are identified and further study of the question is recommended….(More)”
One way traffic: The open data initiative project and the need for an effective demand side initiative in Ghana
What factors influence transparency in US local government?
Grichawat Lowatcharin and Charles Menifield at LSE Impact Blog: “The Internet has opened a new arena for interaction between governments and citizens, as it not only provides more efficient and cooperative ways of interacting, but also more efficient service delivery, and more efficient transaction activities. …But to what extent does increased Internet access lead to higher levels of government transparency? …While we found Internet access to be a significant predictor of Internet-enabled transparency in our simplest model, this finding did not hold true in our most extensive model. This does not negate that fact that the variable is an important factor in assessing transparency levels and Internet access. …. Our data shows that total land area, population density, percentage of minority, education attainment, and the council-manager form of government are statistically significant predictors of Internet-enabled transparency. These findings both confirm and negate the findings of previous researchers. For example, while the effect of education on transparency appears to be the most consistent finding in previous research, we also noted that the rural/urban (population density) dichotomy and the education variable are important factors in assessing transparency levels. Hence, as governments create strategic plans that include growth models, they should not only consider the budgetary ramifications of growth, but also the fact that educated residents want more web based interaction with government. This finding was reinforced by a recent Census Bureau report indicating that some of the cities and counties in Florida and California had population increases greater than ten thousand persons per month during the period 2013-2014.
This article is based on the paper ‘Determinants of Internet-enabled Transparency at the Local Level: A Study of Midwestern County Web Sites’, in State and Local Government Review. (More)”
New Privacy Research Has Implications for Design and Policy
Jedidiah Bracy at PrivacyTech: “Try visualizing the Internet’s basic architecture. Could you draw it? What would be your mental model for it?
Let’s be more specific: Say you just purchased shoes off a website using your mobile phone at work. How would you visualize that digital process? Would a deeper knowledge of this architecture make more apparent the myriad potential privacy risks in this transaction? Or to put it another way, what would your knowledge, or lack thereof, for these architectural underpinnings reveal about your understanding of privacy and security risks?
Whether you’re a Luddite or a tech wiz, creating these mental models of the Internet is not the easiest endeavor. Just try doing so yourself.
It is an exercise, however, that several individuals underwent for new research that has instructive implications for privacy and security pros.
“So everything I do on the Internet or that other people do on the Internet is basically asking the Internet for information, and the Internet is sending us to various places where the information is and then bringing us back.” – CO1
You’d think those who have a better understanding of how the Internet works would probably have a better understanding of the privacy and security risks, right? Most likely. Paradoxically, though, a better technological understanding may have very little influence on an individual’s response to potential privacy risks.
This is what a dedicated team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University worked to discover recently in their award-winning paper, “My Data Just Goes Everywhere”: User Mental Models of the Internet and Implications for Privacy and Security—a culmination of research from Ruogu Kang, Laura Dabbish, Nathaniel Fruchter and Sara Kiesler—all from CMU’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute and the Heinz College in Pittsburgh, PA.
“I try to browse through the terms and conditions but there’s so much there I really don’t retain it.” – T11
Presented at the CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory’s (CUPS) 11thSymposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS), their research demonstrated that even though savvy and non-savvy users of the Internet have much different perceptions of its architecture, such knowledge was not predictive of whether a user would take the necessary steps to protect their privacy online. Experience, rather, appears to play a more determinate role.
Kang, who led the team, said she was surprised by the results….(More)”