SCIENCE WORKS
Podcast of the Robert K. Merton Center for Science Studies
#22 SCIENCE WORKS/ Jour fixe:
Amelia Acker (University of Texas at Austin, United States)
Link for Episode: https://blogs.hu-berlin.de/scienceworks/2025/07/02/jour-fixe-platform-power-and-data-integration-services-in-scientific-infrastructure/
This talk examines how commercial cloud services and data integration platforms are shaping scientific knowledge infrastructure and institutional approaches to digital preservation and archival access. Drawing on findings from two collaborative research projects—a decadal analysis of data management plans from NSF funded scientists and the Palantir Files, a public interest archive documenting the firm’s data integration services—I explore how platforms are transforming traditional roles of information institutions in providing access to data. The presentation investigates three key developments: the increasing adoption of commercial cloud services (Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud) for storage in scientific data management, the rise of data integration platforms in research environments (GitHub and Figshare), and the implications for institutional autonomy in providing access to archives and publicly funded science. By examining the adoption of platform services in research data management and digital preservation, this work identifies key tensions between open access and commercial platform control. The conclusion will explore counter-archiving projects and institutional strategies that challenge platform dominance while reimagining archival access in a time of networked science.
Lecture from 28.05.2025
#21 SCIENCE WORKS / Jour fixe:
Martin Reinhart & Felicitas Hesselmann (RMZ, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany)
Link for Episode: https://blogs.hu-berlin.de/scienceworks/2025/06/18/21-science-works-jour-fixe-from-scandal-to-reform-approaches-to-research-integrity-at-a-turning-point/
This talk explores the historical evolution of scandals related to academic integrity and their implications for the relationship between science and politics. We argue that there are three distinctive waves of scandalization since the postwar era: The first wave, starting in the 1970s, led to governance measures addressing public trust issues in science funding. The 1980s and 1990s witnessed a second wave centered on research misconduct, prompting the establishment of boundary organizations such as the Office of Research Integrity. Since the 2010s, the third wave shifted focus to concerns such as Open Science and reproducibility, giving rise to a mainly intra-scientific moral entrepreneurship that unfolds not along one-time scandals anymore, but as part of a continuous crisis discourse. This current wave of reform movements is met with considerably less intra-scientific resistance than its predecessors and hence may inadvertently achieve regulatory goals surpassing previous political intentions.
Lecture from 11.06.2025
#20 SCIENCE WORKS / Jour fixe:
Björn Hammarfelt & Gustaf Nelhans (University of Borås, Sweden)
Link for Episode: https://blogs.hu-berlin.de/scienceworks/2025/06/04/20-science-works-jour-fixe-styles-of-valuation-disciplinary-differences-in-assessing-research/
Academic disciplines have distinctive ways of valuing research. These differences exist not only across fields but also between collegial and organisational evaluations. This presentation draws on recent empirical studies of assessment processes in Swedish academia. By analysing guidelines and peer review reports across four domains: humanities, social sciences, medicine, and natural sciences, we identify five key dimensions of publication assessment: (1) Work attribution, (2) Content quality, (3) Publication channel, (4) Impact, and (5) Volume. Our findings reveal contrasting evaluation styles at different organisational levels, which we call ‘disharmonic styles of valuation.’ Rather than focusing on the origins of these quality standards, we emphasise how they interact and coexist within academic assessments.
Catalina Quiroz-Niño, Margaret Meredith (York St John University, United Kingdom), Ana María Villafuerte (Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco)
Link for Episode: https://blogs.hu-berlin.de/scienceworks/2025/05/21/19-science-works-jour-fixe-hermeneutical-justice-in-international-projects/
International research collaborations can base their research focus, questions and interpretations of the issue on Western assumptions of knowledge. This can delegitimise the potential contributions of some project partners, such as those located in the global South, and silence their interpretations of the issue. International projects can therefore be spaces of what Fricker calls „hermeneutical injustice“. This presentation is based on Quijano´s work on Coloniality to identify enduring patterns of power that inform and shape frames of reference, culture and knowledge production in the colonised regions of the world. The presenters argue that research collaborations should be based upon the recognition, understanding, and exchange of knowledges and interpretations of concepts and realities in multiple directions and dimensions. In this presentation we will describe and explain the approaches we adopted in a collaborative Erasmus project in our aim to promote hermeneutical justice and to recognise all participants in their capacities as knowers and knowledge creators.
Lecture from 30.04.2025
Justo Serrano Zamora (Departamento de Filosofía, Universidad de Málaga)
In my talk, I explore two main responses to democracy’s current existential crisis and their mutual relation. On the one hand, many argue that we should address the phenomenon of post-truth and its negative effects on democratic politics by cultivating citizens’ capacity to build their own, autonomous, judgements. On the other hand, many defend the need of participatory initiatives as a way of bringing citizens to identify with their political institutions. I argue that participatory initiatives are often jeopardized by the epistemological assumptions that draw from the current liberal struggle against post-truth. Instead of promoting liberal epistemological orientations among citizens, we need to draw on socialist or cooperative epistemologies, which make sure that citizens cultivate the necessary (social) conditions to sustain and expand projects of political participation.
Lecture from 13.12.2023
Sarah Schönbauer (STS Department, Technische Universität München)
Link for Episode: https://blogs.hu-berlin.de/scienceworks/2025/04/30/17-science-works-jour-fixe-umwelt-engagement-meeresforschung-zwischen-wissenschaft-und-aktivismus/#blog
Der Klimawandel führt zu vielschichtigen und komplexen Veränderungen. Diese Veränderungen bringen unter anderem soziale, epistemische, ökonomische und politische Auswirkungen mit sich. In diesem Vortrag konzentriere ich mich insbesondere auf die Auswirkungen des Klimawandels auf die Wissenschaftswelt und die Positionierungsarbeit von Wissenschaftler*innen. Ich frage: wie nehmen Wissenschaftler*innen Umweltveränderungen wahr und was sind die sozialen und erkenntnistheoretischen Dimensionen dieser Wahrnehmung? In meiner Fallstudie, finanziert durch ein Erwin-Schrödinger Postdoc Stipendium (FWF Austria), beschäftige ich mich mit Meeresforscher*innen und ihren Umgang mit auf den Klimawandel zurückzuführenden Umweltveränderungen in Meeres- und Polarregionen.
Das Meer ist geprägt von rapiden und vielfältigsten Umweltveränderungen. Die Meereswissenschaftler*innen die ich porträtiere, sind meist tief berührt, wenn nicht sogar erschüttert von dem, was sie untersuchen. Diese emotionalen Erfahrungen fließen in ihre Forschungen sowie in die wissenschaftliche Öffentlichkeitsarbeit und in Protestaktionen ein. Meeresforscher*innen untersuchen Umweltveränderungen im Rahmen ihrer Feldforschung, publizieren ihre Ergebnisse in wissenschaftlichen Veröffentlichungen und teilen ihre Forschung als öffentliche Fürsprecher*innen. Darüber hinaus protestieren sie für die Einführung politischer Regulierungsmaßnahmen zur Bewältigung dieser Umweltveränderungen.
Meeresforscher*innen positionieren sich daher sowohl als traditionelle Wissenschaftler*innen als auch als Aktivist*innen. Ich konzeptualisiere die Erfahrungen und Handlungen der Forscher*innen als Umwelt-Engagement (engl. environmental engagement) und stelle entlang dieses Konzepts zwei Formen des Umwelt-Engagements vor, in der Forschung und in Protestaktivitäten. Ich zeige, dass Umwelt-Engagement sowohl kollektivierende Effekte haben und coping Mechanismen bedienen kann, dass es aber ebenso in eine wettbewerbsorientierte wissenschaftliche Arbeitsrealität eingebettet ist. Meine Studie liefert neue Erkenntnisse über die Beziehung zwischen Umweltveränderungen, wissenschaftlicher Arbeit und Protestaktivitäten in Zeiten des Klimawandels. Meine Ergebnisse werde ich als Blaupause für andere Disziplinen weiterdenken. Nicht nur die Meereswissenschaft, sondern auch die Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung muss sich fragen wie eine Positionierung in sich ständig wandelnden Klimawelten gelingen kann und welche Formen des Umwelt- Engagements es dafür braucht.
Lecture from 10.01.2024
Stefan Skupien (Berlin University Alliance, Germany)
Link for Episode: https://blogs.hu-berlin.de/scienceworks/2025/04/23/16-science-works-jour-fixe-defining-science-for-and-in-eastern-germany-in-right-wing-populism/
Defining Science for and in ‘Eastern Germany’ in right-wing populism “Eastern Germany”, as a socio-political and geographical region, hosts significant scientific infrastructure and innovation funding, yet it has also seen a marked rise in populist voting patterns. Parties such as the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and emerging movements like Bündnis Sarah Wagenknecht (BSW) position themselves as challengers to established societal frameworks. Within populist rhetoric, a recurring theme is the critique of scientific fields, framed within a broader opposition between “the virtuous people” and “the experts.” (u.a. Bellilo 2022, Mede et.al. 2020, Eslen-Ziya and Giorgi, Ed. 2022).
This study undertakes an explorative, science policy-oriented critical discourse analysis of AfD election programs and speeches at state parliaments, focusing on their vision for science and its role in society. By searching for recurring patterns and expressions, the study
aims to uncover how populist narratives seek to define and reshape science policy in “Eastern Germany” at the federal state level.
While this is an explorative study, it expects to identify further research questions at the intersection of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and science policy research. It aims to contribute to broader debates on how populist movements engage with science and how patterns of discrediting expertise diffuse between the globally connected right-wing movements. Recognizing the limitations of an explorative approach, this contribution provides a foundation for future, more comprehensive analyses of the science populism- dynamic.
Lecture from 16.04.2025
#15 SCIENCE WORKS / Jour fixe:
Many educational researchers conduct secondary data analysis using large-scale school assessment studies that usually include various variables based on representative samples. To access such data, researchers must often apply by submitting a research proposal. Our project aims to examine the reproducibility and robustness of secondary data analyses from a research data center that offers over 70 educational studies for secondary analyses. This approach provides us with a unique database of data usage applications. In these applications, researchers describe their central questions, hypotheses, and planned analytic approach. Between 2008 and 2020, around 600 data applications from over 900 researchers resulted in around 180 publications. Based on this data and an additional survey of applicants about their project results, we will examine which data applications result in publications. Second, we will reproduce the published results of a selected subsample of data applications by using the information given by researchers in the publication. This direct reproduction of study results might provide hints on improving transparent descriptions of the research process. Third, we will explore the heterogeneity in effect estimates introduced by different analytical strategies and datasets using robustness checks on a smaller subsample of publications. The talk will overview the project and present the first results.
Lecture from 07.02.2024
Stefanie Haustein
For decades, research assessment infrastructure has been shaped by closed, centralized systems that prioritize selectivity, reinforce hierarchies, and define what counts as scholarly impact. This talk traces the historical evolution of bibliometrics, from the first citation analysis in the early 20th century via the revolutionary development of the Science Citation Index to the dominance of commercial data analytics companies like Clarivate and Elsevier today. The talk will highlight how these infrastructures have perpetuated power imbalances—determining who gets to define impact, what types of knowledge are valued, and whose labor is made visible.
Currently research assessment and the underlying bibliometric infrastructure are undergoing a transformation. The increasing availability of open bibliographic sources (e.g., Crossref, OpenAlex, DataCite, DOAJ), metadata accessibility, and alternative models of research evaluation are challenging traditional hierarchies and enabling more inclusive and transparent assessment practices.
Using a data feminist lens, this talk will critically examine both the past and present of research assessment infrastructure, advocating for a shift that embraces pluralism, contextualizes metrics, and recognizes the diverse contributions that shape scholarly knowledge. By reflecting on historical lessons and current developments, we can envision a research assessment system that is more equitable, open, and reflective of the complexities of academic work.
Lecture from 19.03.2025
Cornelia Schendzielorz/ Martin Reinhart
Our contribution is dedicated to the topic of large research collaborations. We frame the issue of large research collaborations in the context of their long history in the study of science, which is closely related to the notion of Big Science (De Solla Price 1963). Beyond the quantitative growth of science in various aspects such as publications, journals, personnel, funding, etc., we focus our attention on the fact that considering the big picture of science implies taking into account the social order of science (Merton 1938, Barber 1953). From the beginnings of the sociology of science (Bernal 1939, Merton 1942, Polanyi, 1962, Pielke 2014, Wray 2023) to the present day, this question has been linked to the much broader question of how science is embedded in society and how it relates to politics (Jasanoff 1990, Pielke 2007, Kitcher 2011). Consequently, we argue that large research collaborations are a suitable object of study for an empirical theory of science because these two central questions of the social order of science and the relationship between science and society coincide in this object.
Against this background, our contribution aims to empirically investigate how the production of scientific knowledge is organised in concrete working contexts of large research collaborations. Our paper is structured as follows: First, we draw on the research literature to explain why the internal organisation and governance of large research collaborations is an increasingly controversial issue. (Hallonsten 2016, Cramer and Hallonsten 2020, Baneke 2020). We then elaborate on routinely identified points of contention in research collaborations, which also represent necessary transition points in the process of developing internal social order and governance. We do so by drawing on theoretical literature, empirical case studies from the literature (Rüland 2023, Galison et al 2023, Jerabkova et al 2023, 2024), and two examples from our own ongoing research. In particular, we will look at governance issues such as membership, distribution of power and recognition in the cases of the Next Generation Event Horizon Telescope (ngEHT) and the European Southern Observatory (ESO). Based on this cursory overview, we will explore the extent to which key challenges in the governance of large research collaborations recur to implicit or explicit normative presuppositions, and how these normative presuppositions relate to forms of political self-governance.
Lecture from 15.05.2024
Holger Straßheim (Fakultät für Soziologie, Universität Bielefeld)
Link for Episode: https://blogs.hu-berlin.de/scienceworks/2025/03/05/12-science-works-jour-fixe-politische-epistemologie/
Der Beitrag setzt sich mit Perspektiven der politischen Epistemologie auseinander, die sich mittlerweile zu einem soziologischen, politikwissenschaftlichen, philosophischen und historischen Brückenkonzept entwickelt hat. Trotz unterschiedlicher disziplinärer Zugänge lassen sich gemeinsame Kernelemente und ähnliche Theoriestrategien ausmachen: Immer geht es dabei um die Identifikation jener Mechanismen, die Erkenntnis und Ordnung, Expertise und Entscheiden miteinander vermitteln. Politische Epistemologien fragen nach den Praktiken bzw. Diskursen der Ko-Konstruktion von politischer und epistemischer Autorität. Sie vergleichen jene kulturellen und institutionellen Arrangements, in denen Expertise an Legitimität und Geltungsmacht gewinnt (oder verliert). Während ‚objektivistische Epistemologien‘ auf eine Rationalisierung der Politik durch die Wissenschaft hoffen, ist die politische Epistemologie skeptischer. Mit der globalen Ausweitung von Kommunikations- und Interaktionshorizonten verbinden sich vielmehr – so eine leitende Vermutung – sehr unterschiedliche, potentiell umstrittene Wege der wechselseitigen Durchdringung von Politik und Wissenschaft und damit auch konkurrierende Legitimitäts- und Rationalitätsvorstellungen. Der Beitrag skizziert zunächst Gemeinsamkeiten zwischen den verschiedenen Zugängen zur politischen Epistemologie und arbeitet Kernkonzepte und -erkenntnisse heraus. Ein zweiter Teil fokussiert dann anhand von Beispielen auf politisch-epistemische Mechanismen der Ko-Konstruktion. Der Vortrag schließt mit Überlegungen zu Konfliktdynamiken im Verhältnis von Wissenschaft und Politik unter den Bedingungen der Weltgesellschaft.
Lecture from 06.03.2024
Julia Baumann (Sozial- und Kulturanthropologie, Freie Universität Berlin)
„Die akademische Kultur ist eine Kultur, in der Gefühle abwesend sind – eine Kultur des ‚Nicht-Gefühls‘. […], aber Gefühle sind in der Wissenschaft reichlich vorhanden“ (Bloch, 2012: 140, übersetzt aus dem Englischen von JB), schließt Charlotte Bloch ihre ethnografische Studie Passion and Paranoia zu akademischen Emotionskulturen in Dänemark.
Auf der Grundlage meiner ethnographischen Feldforschung (2019-2022) werde ich darlegen, wie eben diese „academic cultures of no-feeling“ den Alltag von Forscher*innen beeinflussen und die Wissensproduktion auch hier in Deutschland prägen. Historisch gewachsen zu einem emotionsgebundenen Wertesystem, das Gefühle als das Gegenteil von Rationalität und Wissenschaftlichkeit versteht, wird die Fähigkeit Gefühle zu regulieren oder sogar gänzlich zu unterdrücken zu einer Form von Kapital (Bourdieu 1986). Innerhalb dieser akademischen Emotionsregime ist es Kennzeichen der academic cultures of no-feeling Emotionen als nicht-existent anzunehmen. Trotzdem prägen sie das durch diese Kulturen manövrierende Individuum und die Wissensproduktion in hohem Maße.
Im Jour fixe werde ich diese vermeintliche Diskrepanz, mein Promotionsprojekt, die Methoden der Datenerhebung, meine eigene Rolle im Feld und die Ergebnisse und Analysen vorstellen, reflektieren und diskutieren. Anhand meines empirischen Materials (Grounded Theory) werde ich individuelle Gefühlswelten und Umgänge mit dem „Nicht-Gefühl“ darstellen und darlegen, welche Emotionen und Affekte den akademischen Arbeitsalltag meiner Gesprächspartner*innen prägten und inwiefern Fühlen und affektive (Re)Aktionen als systemisch eingebettet betrachtet werden können. Anhand Mut, Angst, Verzweiflung, Wut und Liebe stelle ich dar, wie eine Gefühlsunterdrückung zwar als Basis akademischer Professionalität verstanden wird, Ethnograf*innen aber hierdurch ebenso in einer affective community miteinander verbinden sind; ich zeige gleichermaßen den Umgang akademischer Institutionen mit Emotionen in Bezug auf mentale Belastungen auf; erläutere wie Diskriminierungserfahrung und Machtmissbrauch zu einer stetigen moral injury sowie (emotionalen) Widerständigkeiten führen können und führe aus, wie agencies, Identitäten und belongings innerhalb dieser akademischen Emotionsregime ausgehandelt werden.
Reference: Bloch, C. (2012). Passion and Paranoia. Emotions and the Culture of Emotion in Academia, New York/London: Routledge.
Lecture from 17.04. 2024
Marianne Noel und Lucile Ottolini (Université Gustave EiffeI, Frankreich)
The last twenty years of open science advocacy and the more recent proliferation of programs and funding have shown that open science has become a veritable mantra. In this communication we deliberately adopt a perspective of the sociology of work and of professions: rather than examining discourses on openness, we focus on the missions, experiences and profiles, as well as the practices, of professionals whose daily work is devoted to ‘opening up’ science. We propose to analyse the opening up of science as a vector of contemporary scientific credibility, implemented by professional communities which are invisible in their daily environment. Drawing on the cases of two groups studied in our respective theses, the one responsible for opening up their institution to society, and the other responsible for opening up publication, our proposal follows the hypothesis of the emergence of a professional category. In total, our empirical material consists of interviews (n=41), and analyses of institutional archives. The data covers a broad period of institutional intervention in France and Sweden (from the early 2000s to late in 2020).
The exercise of comparing the work of ‘opening up’ science involved two groups of professionals of different sizes and with different professional and institutional histories. The comparison has informed us about common competencies and work characteristics (professional profiles, previous professional experience, missions, extensive socialisation spaces, etc). It also highlights differences between the two groups, notably in the extensive use of quantification by open access publishing professionals. “Qualculatory” logics and methods are clearly vectors of credibility for the group of Open Access publishing professionals, but at the time of writing we do not observe the extension of qualculatory, or even commercial, logics in openness to society.
At the time of the survey, the work of opening up remained invisible in institutions. This invisibility allowed both professional groups to develop quietly and to benefit from a considerable autonomy of action within the institutions, therefore be a resource for the work of opening up. While this invisibility was at the service of their profession, in the medium term it nevertheless calls into question the means implemented to ensure the long-term survival of the opening up. Faced with the effects of professionalisation and managerialisation (growing workforce, younger and less experienced professionnals), openness professionals also run the risk of losing the motivation and meaning of their actions, especially when it comes to the ‘sewing’ work that is essential for linking up with the communities they serve. The work of opening up lies somewhere between management, critical analysis, and (measuring) performance, whether in terms of opening up the publication or opening up to society.
Lecture from 04.02.2025
Henning Laux (Leibniz Forschungszentrum Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft, Hannover)
Link for Episode: https://blogs.hu-berlin.de/scienceworks/2025/02/12/9-science-works-jour-fixe-dummheit-eine-soziologische-kartographie/
Der Vortrag stellt erste Überlegungen zu einer Soziologie der Dummheit vor. Dummheit wird dabei als systematisch vernachlässigte, aber konstitutive Außenseite der Wissensgesellschaft interpretiert. Im Vortrag sollen daher die Akteure, Arenen, Mechanismen und Funktionen bei der sozialen Zuschreibung von Dummheit genauer beleuchtet werden.
Link for Episode https://blogs.hu-berlin.de/scienceworks/2025/02/05/8-rmz-jour-fixe-china-als-neue-wissenschaftsmacht-soziologische-annaeherungen/
Zu den interessantesten Entwicklungen im gegenwärtigen globalen Wissenschaftsystem gehört der rasante Aufstieg der Volksrepublik China. Als kollektiver Akteur hat es das Land innerhalb von drei Jahrzehnten geschafft, in allen gängigen wissenschaftlichen Leistungs- und Reputations-Rankings Spitzenplätze einzunehmen. Internationale Reaktionen auf diese Entwicklung sind geprägt von Faszination und – zunehmend – Sorge und Ablehnung. Nicht zuletzt fordert das autoritäre Wissenschaftsmodel der VR China offensichtlich viele landläufige Annahmen und Normen in der OECD-Welt heraus. Auch aus wissenschaftlich-analytischer Perspektive ist der chinesische Fall deshalb äußerst spannend, aber dies hat sich bisher weder in der Sinologie noch in der Wissenschaftsforschung signifikant niedergeschlagen. Der Vortrag stellt die ersten Ergebnisse einer interdisziplinären Forschungsgruppe vor, die sich – inspiriert von relativ klassischen Ansätzen der Wissenschaftssoziologie – seit 2020 mit der Dynamik des chinesischen Wissenschaftssystems und seiner globalen Integration beschäftigt. Dies regt abschließend idealerweise eine gemeinsame Diskussion über die Potentiale und die Grenzen von Konzept- und Theoriebildung im komplexen Spannungsfeld von Isomorphismus und Variation (oder Divergenz) in einer derart interdisziplinären empirischen Wissenschaftsforschung an.
Lecture from 22.01.2025
Dimity Stephen (DZHW) und Meta Cramer (RMZ, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin)
The recent shift in evaluation systems to more diverse quality criteria has increased the visibility of lower quality research, incurring a moral panic about the effects of predatory publishing practices (PPP) on the science system. However, this concern currently lacks empirical substantiation and ignores the complex geopolitical relations, researchers’ motivations, and centre-periphery narrative inherent in the predatory publishing debate. Thus, we propose a mixed-methods approach to answering three questions: i) how have (P)PP in different national settings emerged, ii) how do academic communities define and react to PPPs, and iii) how do evaluation systems influence (P)PPs? Our aim is to elucidate the relationship between evaluation systems and (P)PPs, accounting for the contextual processes of labelling practices as questionable. Our approach combines systematic review, quantitative and bibliometric methods to identify (changing) publishing practices associated with evaluation systems, together with qualitative methods to understand the motivations for these practices in six national systems: Germany, Poland, Portugal, Nigeria, India, and Brazil. In this session, we will present the aims of this project, which began in September 2024, and the methodologies to be used in it.
Lecture from 08.01.2025
#5 SCIENCE WORKS/ Jour fixe:
Marta Wróblewska (SWPS University Warsaw)
The talk will offer a comparative review of policy-making in the area of research impact evaluation in UK (REF), Poland (EJDD) and Norway (Humeval and Sameval). Poland and Norway have used an ex-post, expert-review system modeled on the British REF. There are several analogies between the studied impact evaluation systems, including similar definitions of impact, the use of case studies as the basis for evaluation, the structuring of the impact template and English as the language of evaluation. There are also several differences: the mode of introduction of the exercise (gradual vs. shift), whether the exercise is tied to funding, and the level of transparency of the policy-making and evaluation process. The text will present an overview of the three approaches on impact evaluation and attempt to answer the following question: 1) How does the articulation of research impact change depending on the goals of the exercise and the broader academic and social context into which the exercise is introduced; 2) Consequently, how do the effects of the exercise differ from one national context to another?
After longer comparative part of the talk (based on an article submitted for review to Research Evaluation), I will attempt an interpretation of the ongoing process of policy-borrowing in the area of impact evaluation in terms of centre-periphery dynamics (as described by Immanuel Wallerstein) and/or Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony. The goal of the talk will be to test out theoretical theoretical perspectives on the data collected. I welcome any remarks and recommendations from the audience.
Georgia Samaras (Technische Universität München)
The talk explores the epistemic dynamics catalysed by researchers advocating for the clinical relevance of environmental epigenetics in psychiatry. I do so based on an in-depth literature analysis of peer-reviewed research articles and interviews with researchers who conduct epigenetic research in psychiatry. In demonstrating how relevance builds a crucial yet ambivalent bridge between basic research and clinical application, I explore tensions arising in relation to the acceptable level of uncertainty for epigenetic knowledge to be considered relevant. I further trace how epigeneticists aim to counteract emerging problems to their claims about the clinical relevance of epigenetics through performing interdisciplinary, big-data research. Finally, I show that, nonetheless, certain epistemic problems persist and discuss both their roots in the specific epistemic history of psychiatric epigenetics as well as in the systemic pressures to promote relevance early on in emergent research fields. With this talk, I contribute to STS scholarship that explores how modes of relevance feature in different scientific domains. At the same time, my talk contributes to a better understanding of how environmental epigenetics is adopted and adapted in different research fields within biomedicine and how field-specific norms, infrastructures, and societal expectations affect its uptake, articulation, and epistemic development.
#3 SCIENCE WORKS/ Jour fixe:
Nicole Nelson (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Recent scholarship has described the “reproducibility crisis” and its associated reform movement as a social movement or a scientific-intellectual movement. This talk will argue for an alternative framing of these events which de-emphasizes high-status intellectual actors and their agendas for change, and emphasizes instead structural aspects and how they shape which reforms come to be seen as possible and desirable.
Taking this alternative lens, we could see the reproducibility movement not as a successful network of methodologists stitched together by Twitter and investment from private foundations, but as one instantiation of a broader diffusion of a “regulatory ethos” from highly regulated contexts into academic settings. Together with Lara Keuck, we describe the regulatory ethos as a specific type of scientific ethos (following Merton) that relies on documentation practices and favors plans over situated actions, uniformity over heterogeneity, and validation over external validity.
Through a detailed history of the emergence of the reproducibility crisis in American biomedicine, I will show how pharmaceutical drug development and clinical medicine – two highly regulated spheres of practice – were key to providing the evidence and solutions that first generated support from key figures at the National Institutes of Health for reproducibility reform. From this I argue that this reform movement should be understood analytically as not merely an expression of the open science ideals of its most charismatic leaders, but as part of ongoing efforts to ensure the interoperability of experimental systems across distributed research spaces.
Lecture from 10.07.2024
#2 SCIENCE WOKRS/ Jour fixe:
Sven Arend Ulpts (Aarhus University, Denmark)
Link for Episode: https://blogs.hu-berlin.de/scienceworks/2024/12/05/2-science-works-jour-fixe-from-the-researcher-to-the-integrity-of-knowledge-production/
Research guidelines and the scientific literature in general are full of ideas and recommendations of how proper science should look like. However, it remains an open question how the actual reality of research in the sciences relates to notions of proper or responsible science in, for instance, European research integrity guidelines? To answer this question, I conducted an ethnography of cognitive sciences in five cognitive science labs in Germany, the Netherlands and the UK. The aim is to understand how and under what conditions knowledge is produced and whether ideas of proper conduct that can be found in guidelines and the literature actually have a place in research reality. Hence, it is about capturing the perspectives of the researchers who are supposed to live in compliance with such guidelines and recommendations. To this end I further inquired what researchers think about how and whether current recommendations for the improvement of science fit into their everyday lives as researchers by conducting semi-structured interviews. Put shortly, I observed a complex mixture of alignment and mismatch between notions of good science and the research realities.
Lecture from 13.11.2024
#1 SCIENCE WORKS/ Jour fixe:
Thomas Wahl (Mälardalens Universitet, Sweden)
Link for Episode: https://blogs.hu-berlin.de/scienceworks/2024/10/29/1-thomas-wahl-maelardalens-universitet-sweden-2/#blog
In the case of artificial intelligence, hyperbolic predictions of the emergence of intelligent machines, even ‘super intelligences’, consist of both dystopian fears of human suppression and extinction, and utopian hopes of human flourishing through freedom from labor and illness as well as unparalleled economic growth and prosperity. At the heart of the controversies between these two, we argue, are emergent and conflicting assumptions about what it means to be human, or rather, what defines humanness.
To address this topic, of how the understanding of humanness is constructed in relation to AI and how the (future) agency of AI and Humans are imagined, we turn to the genre of popular science and the imaginaries of the possibilities and effects of a future in which intelligent machines have bypassed many human capacities. Popular science as a genre is interesting in its ambition to translate inter-academic knowledge production about AI development while at the same time dramatizing it and making it relevant for business, politics, and the public.
First, the chapter deconstructs the imaginaries of a future shaped by super intelligent AIs and discusses how this imagined future builds on particular and narrow definitions of humanness - as essentially biological cognitive processors, but also as distinguishable as creative/non-creative and neuro-typical and neuro-diverse/passive and active. Secondly, we turn to the construction of AI as a “floating signifier” an object, a thing, that is devoid of meaning.
Lecture from 16.10.2024