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SHIFT HAPPENS:
unexpected outcomes
23 June 2020
Background Chat
Welcome to Shift Happens: Unexpected Outcomes
Thanks for joining us!
Please use this chat space to make comments, ask questions and make connections during the talk - we want to hear from you!
More about Zisis and Jockel's 'Ephemeral Transformations' can be found here: https://www.tickbirdandrhino.com/
From douglasclum : I’m interested in how the “File Drawer Problem” is being addressed in regard to CoVid research.
From Gail McAnena (TbR - London) : Thanks Douglas - we'll try get one of our panel to address that!
From douglasclum : Thank you. If it’s an appropriate question.
From Amy Randall : Fascinated by The Open Science Movement. What are the guardrails and who maintains them? And could the structure help in reimagining social networks?
From Gail McAnena (TbR - London) : would Bill like to jump in here about journals?!
From Stephen Picken : Paywall & availability is about accesability, but non- peer reviewed is impossible for the general public to judge appropriately
From Yask Kulshreshtha : I am wondering who is the target group of open science? Is it the scientists and researchers, or common people? Also, we talk about accessibility and relate it to freely available articles, but what about ease of understanding the articles?
From Gail McAnena (TbR - London) : great question!
From Adam Goren : should we also talk about human territoriality?
From Stephen Picken : what if it retracted and it is true?
From Dmitri Zaitsev : retractions are one problem, then there are papers that are wrong yet remain published
Mehrzad Karami : What are the panel speakers vision of scientific research 5 years from now? Do you see a radical change in the way we do science considering the rapid progress in technology, the rise of technocrats, the political and societal change, and the exponential growth of data (latest estimation is that by 2025 worldwide data creation will double every 12 hours)
From Stephen Picken : The public is very good at cherry picking the nice parts of a much more subtle context of an entire publication
From Dmitri Zaitsev : No radical change in science will happen by itself. Someone needs to push for it.
From Paulo : There's nothing stopping people from publishing anything, including nonsense. A "seal of approval" from an editor might help, but won't stop nonsensical publications through other channels. Everyone needs to learn how to distinguish nonsense from sense. Social media has made this skill more important then ever. Often budgets available to researchers used to be partially based on the amount of publications and the prestige of the journal. Quality of research probably isn't related to prestige of journals, budgets shouldn't be based on these kinds of criteria.
From b.helder : Curious if the development of a vaccine in 6- months will be the new normal, as opposed to multiple years. Is it safe and is it simply due to new technology?
From Dmitri Zaitsev : maybe budgets shouldn't be based as they are, but what should they be based on?
From Dmitri Zaitsev : funding infrastructures is unpopular among funders
From Dmitri Zaitsev : it is really funders who block this progress
From Adam Goren : interesting metaphor to consider between information territoriality, body immune system or cell defence against viruses?
From Dmitri Zaitsev : eu is giving funds to private companies
From Gail McAnena (TbR - London) : I LOVE IT
From Gail McAnena (TbR - London) : more big asks
From Dmitri Zaitsev : not open source platforms
From Stephen Picken : one traditional role of making science available is via science journalists
From Mehrzad Karami : This might seems a strange comparison, but we have been able to unify the standards in entertainment industry (music, movies, and almost everyone can just download a tool and start downloading movies and music of their choice instantly without even having to think about how it wroks), but we have not been able to achieve this in science even though the technology is there. Could it be that in scientific world peopel don't want to spend time on this standardization because the importance of it is not appealing?
From Stephen Picken : In that context there is high art versus popular art, similarly there is 'real' science versus 'popular'science. Having a platform doesn't help someone to appreciate the subleties
From Stephen Picken : Failed experiments are the best thing to have
From Stephen Picken : This famously retracted journal in The Lancet wasn''t retracted because it was wrong but for 'technical reasons' concerning the used datasets. In terms of the outcome it was in complete agreement with previous studies on the individual datasets. It was framed as if there was doubt about rejection of hydroxychlorquine.
From Joe Mirza : With academia historically prone to/rewarding fiefdoms, Industry built on IP/patents, standardisation and interoperability is a threat to these interests on many levels, and open science as a disruptive & democratising force .. it takes radical new business models, an appetite for risk and new models of governance/quality assurance to transition these industries to a new paradigm, I guess.
From sean (TbR - London) : https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/23/sexism-in-science-did-watson-and-crick-really-steal-rosalind-franklins-data
From sean (TbR - London) : https://www.ecu.ac.uk/equality-charters/athena-swan/
From Joe Mirza : Pls don’t overlook how badly musicians have done in the standardisation/digitisation shift! (not a sustainable economy)
From Stephen Picken : Data without context has no value, breakthrough science might involve data that doesn't fit the mold
From Mimo Caenepeel : Is there a model of scientific publication that’s more like software releases? So data and results are open to revision and improvement on an iterative basis. And what you would cite would be a specific ‘release’ rather than one fixed canonical version.
From Stephen Picken : Can tweak the data after the fact :)
From Joe Mirza : Blockchain-enabled?
From Mehrzad Karami : nice question Mimo, and yes Joe , that is a good option
From Gowri Gopalakrishna (Amsterdam, NL) : https://gh.bmj.com/content/5/7/e002922
From di0415@hotmail.com : Thank you - very interesting - food for thought.
And that wraps it up for tonight.
Thanks to everyone who attended our event!