What is it about?
This work in five crisp bullets: 1. Science’s crisis is real. A resolution is not in sight, but a Reformation is not impossible 2. The mainstream interpretation of the root causes of the crisis (perverse incentive, too many papers) is insufficient 3. The crisis is due to a transformed role: from emancipation and betterment of mankind to instrument of profit and growth 4. Scientists cannot resolve the problem alone and have high stakes in the preservation of the status quo 5. Institutions are in denial pretending that current predicaments of science do not weaken its privileged role in governance
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Why is it important?
Because if we console ourselves with having understood this crisis as a simple phenomenon of bad practices and incentives we neglect: 1) How it came about that those distortions came to dominate the entire science production and quality control apparatus 2) The evident fact that is the crisis is structural the structures need to change.
Perspectives
This kind of reflections are all the more urgent as science-based institution are by large in denial of the crisis and pretend, just to make an example, that the use of science to formulate, monitor and appraise public policies is not affected by science own quality control crisis.
Professor Andrea Saltelli
University Pompeo Fabra, Barcelona School of Management
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: What is science’s crisis really about?, Futures, August 2017, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.futures.2017.05.010.
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Resources
Seminar at Technical University of Denmark - DTU, Lyngby Campus, Chemical Engineering, June 1 st 2017
Most recent episodes in the science's crisis saga. The fight against bad science surprisingly supported by private donors rather than by public one.
What is post-normal science and why do we need it today? Seminar with Silvio Funtowicz and Andrea Saltelli June 9, UAB Barcelona
Post normal science is not a new science in the sense of a new discipline – as if would be for example if Isac Asimov’s fantastic psychohistory were to be developed. Nor is it a claim to a new scientific method, though it has led to the development of PNS-inspired methodologies. PNS is foremost a set of practical insights meant to assist scientists and the recipients of their research to work together fruitfully in situation where the fact are uncertain, the values in dispute, the stakes high and decision necessary of even urgent. More often than not, PNS prescribes what ought not to be done, what pitfalls should be avoided, and what should make us suspicious in appraising scientific facts. Thus, PNS warns against the dangers of reductionism - the idea that every problem can be decomposed into a sum of simpler problems, or against arbitrary separations between facts and values, especially at the science-policy interface, or against science as a truth-machine. PNS is foremost concerned about the quality of the scientific process, seen as recursive and reflexive. In the present situation of crisis of science and of expertise, and of run-away innovation, PNS can provide useful diagnoses, if not always therapies. In the seminar, we shall discuss the genesis of PNS and how it can influence our way of doing science today.
This is a link to series of pieces written by silvio Funtowicz and Andrea Saltelli on The Conversation.
Evolving reflections about evolving crises, marches for science, scientific consensus and more.
Contributors
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