In this response to Robert Hudson’s article, “Should We Strive to Make Science Bias-Free? A Philosophical Assessment of the Reproducibility Crisis,” we identify three ways in which he misrepresents our work: he conflates value-ladenness with bias; he describes our view as one in which values are the same as evidential factors; and he creates a false dichotomy between two ways that values could be considered in science for policy. We share Hudson’s concerns about promoting scientific reproducibility and (...) reducing bias in science, but we reject his view that the value-free ideal provides helpful guidance for addressing these issues. (shrink)

In the life sciences, there is an ongoing discussion about a perceived ‘reproducibility crisis’. However, it remains unclear to which extent the perceived lack of reproducibility is the consequence of issues that can be tackled and to which extent it may be the consequence of unrealistic expectations of the technical level of reproducibility. Large-scale, multi-institutional experimental replication studies are very cost- and time-intensive. This Perspective suggests an alternative, complementary approach: meta-research using sociological and philosophical methodologies to (...) examine researcher trust in data. An improved understanding of the criteria used by researchers to judge data reliability will provide crucial, initial evidence on the actual scale of the reproducibility crisis and on measures to tackle it. (shrink)

Defense of Scientific Hypothesis: From Reproducibility Crisis to Big Data sets out to explain and defend the scientific hypothesis. Alger's mission is to counteract the misinformation and misunderstanding about the hypothesis that even seasoned scientists have concerning its nature and place in modern science. Most biological scientists receive little or no formal training in scientific thinking. Further, the hypothesis is under attack by critics who claim that it is irrelevant to science. In order to appreciate and evaluate scientific (...) controversies like global climate change, vaccine safety, etc., the public first needs to understand the hypothesis. Defense of Scientific Hypothesis begins by describing and analyzing the scientific hypothesis in depth and examining its relationships to various kinds of science. Alger then guides readers through a review of the hypothesis in the context of the Reproducibility Crisis and presents survey data on how scientists perceive and employ hypotheses. He assesses cognitive factors that influence our ability to use the hypothesis and makes practical and policy recommendations for teaching and learning about it. Finally, Alger considers two possible futures of the hypothesis in science as the Big Data revolution looms: in one scenario, the hypothesis is displaced by the Big Data Mindset that forgoes understanding in favor of correlation and prediction. In the other, robotic science incorporates the hypotheses into mechanized laboratories guided by artificial intelligence. But in his illuminating epilogue, Alger envisions a third way, the Centaur Scientist, a symbiotic relationship between human scientists and computers. (shrink)

The overflow of scientific literature stimulates poor reading habits which can aggravate science's reproducibility crisis. Thus, solving the reproducibility crisis demands not only methodological changes, but also changes in our relationship with the scientific literature, especially our reading habits. Importantly, this does not mean reading more, it means reading better.

Most discussions of the reproducibility crisis focus on its epistemic aspect: the fact that the scientific community fails to follow some norms of scientific investigation, which leads to high rates of irreproducibility via a high rate of false positive findings. The purpose of this paper is to argue that there is a heretofore underappreciated and understudied dimension to the reproducibility crisis in experimental psychology and neuroscience that may prove to be at least as important as the (...) epistemic dimension. This is the communication dimension. The link between communication and reproducibility is immediate: independent investigators would not be able to recreate an experiment whose design or implementation were inadequately described. I exploit evidence of a replicability and reproducibility crisis in computational science, as well as research into quality of reporting to support the claim that a widespread failure to adhere to reporting standards, especially the norm of descriptive completeness, is an important contributing factor in the current reproducibility crisis in experimental psychology and neuroscience. (shrink)

Recently, many scientists have become concerned about an excessive number of failures to reproduce statistically significant effects. The situation has become dire enough that the situation has been named the ‘reproducibility crisis’. After reviewing the relevant literature to confirm the observation that scientists do indeed view replication as currently problematic, I explain in philosophical terms why the replication of empirical phenomena, such as statistically significant effects, is important for scientific progress. Following that explanation, I examine various diagnoses of (...) the reproducibility crisis, and argue that for the majority of scientists the crisis is due, at least in part, to a form of publication bias. This conclusion sets the stage for an assessment of the view that evidential relations in science are inherently value-laden, a view championed by Heather Douglas and Kevin Elliott. I argue, in response to Douglas and Elliott, and as motivated by the meta-scientific resistance scientists harbour to a publication bias, that if we advocate the value-ladenness of science the result would be a deepening of the reproducibility crisis. (shrink)

There are currently serious concerns that published scientific findings often fail to be reproducible, and that some solutions may be gleaned by attending the several methodological and sociological recommendations that could be found in the literature. However, researchers would also arrive at some answers by considering the advice of the philosophy of science, particularly semantics, about theses on truth related to scientific realism. Sometimes scientists understand the correspondence thesis of truth as asserting that the next unique empirical confirmation of a (...) hypothesis suffices to attribute truth to it provisionally. Such empiricist bias is not necessarily at the core of CTT, but Mario Bunge proposed the synthetic thesis of truth, based on CTT, to explicitly avoid the bias. STT requires considering a hypothesis corroborated, both by purely empirical confirmation and external consistency or compatibility with the bulk of existing background knowledge. While a capricious understanding of CTT could be rigged to recommend the “one shot game” in hypothesis testing, STT clearly demands the use of multiple approaches, empirical as well as theoretical, and it asserts that a scientific test is effective to the extent to which it is neither purely empirical, nor viewed in isolation. Pattern consistency together with an understanding of causal relations make confirmed hypotheses robust and more reliable. The militancy of the double mechanism of hypothesis control of STT can help mitigate the reproducibility crisis. Earl Werner’s research program in community ecology is an example of the use of STT criteria, which leads to the development of reliable, cross-checked, ecological results, with high predictive capacity. (shrink)

There are currently serious concerns that published scientific findings often fail to be reproducible, and that some solutions may be gleaned by attending the several methodological and sociological recommendations that could be found in the literature. However, researchers would also arrive at some answers by considering the advice of the philosophy of science, particularly semantics, about theses on truth related to scientific realism. Sometimes scientists understand the correspondence thesis of truth as asserting that the next unique empirical confirmation of a (...) hypothesis suffices to attribute truth to it provisionally. Such empiricist bias is not necessarily at the core of CTT, but Mario Bunge proposed the synthetic thesis of truth, based on CTT, to explicitly avoid the bias. STT requires considering a hypothesis corroborated, both by purely empirical confirmation and external consistency or compatibility with the bulk of existing background knowledge. While a capricious understanding of CTT could be rigged to recommend the “one shot game” in hypothesis testing, STT clearly demands the use of multiple approaches, empirical as well as theoretical, and it asserts that a scientific test is effective to the extent to which it is neither purely empirical, nor viewed in isolation. Pattern consistency together with an understanding of causal relations make confirmed hypotheses robust and more reliable. The militancy of the double mechanism of hypothesis control of STT can help mitigate the reproducibility crisis. Earl Werner’s research program in community ecology is an example of the use of STT criteria, which leads to the development of reliable, cross-checked, ecological results, with high predictive capacity. (shrink)

There are currently serious concerns that published scientific findings often fail to be reproducible, and that some solutions may be gleaned by attending the several methodological and sociological recommendations that could be found in the literature. However, researchers would also arrive at some answers by considering the advice of the philosophy of science, particularly semantics, about theses on truth related to scientific realism. Sometimes scientists understand the correspondence thesis of truth as asserting that the next unique empirical confirmation of a (...) hypothesis suffices to attribute truth to it provisionally. Such empiricist bias is not necessarily at the core of CTT, but Mario Bunge proposed the synthetic thesis of truth, based on CTT, to explicitly avoid the bias. STT requires considering a hypothesis corroborated, both by purely empirical confirmation and external consistency or compatibility with the bulk of existing background knowledge. While a capricious understanding of CTT could be rigged to recommend the “one shot game” in hypothesis testing, STT clearly demands the use of multiple approaches, empirical as well as theoretical, and it asserts that a scientific test is effective to the extent to which it is neither purely empirical, nor viewed in isolation. Pattern consistency together with an understanding of causal relations make confirmed hypotheses robust and more reliable. The militancy of the double mechanism of hypothesis control of STT can help mitigate the reproducibility crisis. Earl Werner’s research program in community ecology is an example of the use of STT criteria, which leads to the development of reliable, cross-checked, ecological results, with high predictive capacity. (shrink)

Graphical AbstractThe ACcess to Transparent Statistics (ACTS) call to action assembles four measures that are rapidly achievable by journals and funding agencies to enhance the quality of statistical reporting. The ACTS call to action is an appeal for concrete actions from institutions that should spearhead the battle for reproducibility.

Since 2015, the ‘refugee crisis’ is possibly the most photographed humanitarian crisis in history. Photographs taken, for instance, in Lesvos, Greece, and Bodrum, Turkey, were instrumental in generating waves of public support for, and populist opposition to “welcoming refugees” in Europe. But photographs do not circulate in a vacuum; this book explores the visual economy of the ‘refugee crisis,’ showing how the reproduction of images is structured by, and secures hierarchies of gender, sexuality, and ‘race,’ essential to (...) the functioning of bordered nation-states. Taking photography not only as the object of research, but innovating the method of photographìa— the material trace of writing/grafì with light/phos—this book urges us to view images and their reproduction critically. Part theoretical text, part visual essay, "Reproducing Refugees" vividly shows how institutional violence underpins both the spectacularity and the banality of ‘crisis.’ This book goes about synthesising visual studies with queer, feminist, postcolonial, post-structuralist, and post-Marxist theories. "Reproducing Refugees: Photographìa of a Crisis" offers theoretical frameworks and methodological tools to critically analyse representations, both those circulated through hegemonic institutions, and those generated from ‘below’. It carves a space between logos and praxis, ways of knowing and ways of doing, by offering a new visual language that problematises reified categories such as that of the ‘refugee’ and makes possible disruptive, alternative, resistant perceptions. The book contributes to the fields of migration and border studies, critically engaging visual narratives drawn from migration movements to question dominant categories and frameworks, from a decolonial, no-borders, queer feminist perspective. (shrink)

Replicability and reproducibility of computational models has been somewhat understudied by “the replication movement.” In this paper, we draw on methodological studies into the replicability of psychological experiments and on the mechanistic account of explanation to analyze the functions of model replications and model reproductions in computational neuroscience. We contend that model replicability, or independent researchers' ability to obtain the same output using original code and data, and model reproducibility, or independent researchers' ability to recreate a model without (...) original code, serve different functions and fail for different reasons. This means that measures designed to improve model replicability may not enhance (and, in some cases, may actually damage) model reproducibility. We claim that although both are undesirable, low model reproducibility poses more of a threat to long-term scientific progress than low model replicability. In our opinion, low model reproducibility stems mostly from authors' omitting to provide crucial information in scientific papers and we stress that sharing all computer code and data is not a solution. Reports of computational studies should remain selective and include all and only relevant bits of code. (shrink)

Scientific claims are selected in part for their ability to survive. Scientists can pursue an r-strategy of broad, easy-to-spread ideas, or a K-strategy of stress-tested, bulletproof statements. The “generalizability crisis” is an exquisite mutation that allows dull, K-strategic methodology articles to spread nearly as quickly as the fast-breeding, r-strategic memes of pop-psychology.

Current fears of a “reproducibility crisis” have led researchers, sources of scientific funding, and the public to question both the efficacy and trustworthiness of science. Suggested policy changes have been focused on statistical problems, such as p-hacking, and issues of experimental design and execution. However, “reproducibility” is a broad concept that includes a number of issues. Furthermore, reproducibility failures occur even in fields such as mathematics or computer science that do not have statistical problems or issues (...) with experimental design. Most importantly, these proposed policy changes ignore a core feature of the process of scientific inquiry that occurs after reproducibility failures: the integration of conflicting observations and ideas into a coherent theory. (shrink)

Computational reproducibility possesses its own dynamics and narratives of crisis. Alongside the difficulties of computing as an ubiquitous yet complex scientific activity, computational reproducibility suffers from a naive expectancy of total reproducibility and a moral imperative to embrace the principles of free software as a non-negotiable epistemic virtue. We argue that the epistemic issues at stake in actual practices of computational reproducibility are best unveiled by focusing on software as a pivotal concept, one that is (...) surprisingly often overlooked in accounts of reproducibility issues. Software is not only about designing and coding but also about maintaining, supporting, distributing, licensing, and governance; it is not only about developers but also about users. We focus on openness debates among computational chemists involved in molecular modeling software packages as empirical grounding for our argument. We then identify and analyse four epistemic characteristics as key to the role of software in computational reproducibility. (shrink)

The replication (replicability, reproducibility) crisis in social psychology and clinical medicine arises from the fact that many apparently well-confirmed experimental results are subsequently overturned by studies that aim to replicate the original study. The culprit is widely held to be poor science: questionable research practices, failure to publish negative results, bad incentives, and even fraud. In this article I argue that the high rate of failed replications is consistent with high-quality science. We would expect this outcome if the (...) field of science in question produces a high proportion of false hypotheses prior to testing. If most of the hypotheses under test are false, then there will be many false hypotheses that are apparently supported by the outcomes of well conducted experiments and null hypothesis significance tests with a type-I error rate (α) of 5%. Failure to recognize this is to commit the fallacy of ignoring the base rate. I argue that this is a plausible diagnosis of the replication crisis and examine what lessons we thereby learn for the future conduct of science. (shrink)

Recent philosophical work has praised the reward structure of science, while recent empirical work has shown that many scientific results may not be reproducible. I argue that the reward structure of science incentivizes scientists to focus on speed and impact at the expense of the reproducibility of their work, thus contributing to the so-called reproducibility crisis. I use a rational choice model to identify a set of sufficient conditions for this problem to arise, and I argue that (...) these conditions plausibly apply to a wide range of research situations. Currently proposed solutions will not fully address this problem. Philosophical commentators should temper their optimism about the reward structure of science. (shrink)

The article addresses the production of reproducibility as a topic that has become acutely relevant in the recent discussions on the replication crisis in science. It brings the ethnomethodological stance on reproducibility into the discussions, claiming that reproducibility is necessarily produced locally, on the shop floor, with methodological guidelines serving as references to already established practices rather than their origins. The article refers to this argument empirically, analyzing how a group of novice neuroscientists performs a series (...) of measurements in a transcranial magnetic stimulation experiment. Based on ethnography and video analysis, the article traces a history of the local measurement procedure invented by the researchers in order to overcome the experimental uncertainty. The article aims to demonstrate how reproducibility of the local procedure is achieved in the shop floor work of the practitioners and how the procedure becomes normalized and questioned as incorrect in the course of experimental practice. It concludes that the difference between guidelines and practical actions is not problematic per se; what may be problematic is that researchers can be engaged in different working projects described by the same instruction. (shrink)

A heated debate surrounds the significance of reproducibility as an indicator for research quality and reliability, with many commentators linking a "crisis of reproducibility" to the rise of fraudulent, careless and unreliable practices of knowledge production. Through the analysis of discourse and practices across research fields, I point out that reproducibility is not only interpreted in different ways, but also serves a variety of epistemic functions depending on the research at hand. Given such variation, I argue (...) that the uncritical pursuit of reproducibility as an overarching epistemic value is misleading and potentially damaging to scientific advancement. Requirements for reproducibility, however they are interpreted, are one of many available means to secure reliable research outcomes. Furthermore, there are cases where the focus on enhancing reproducibility turns out not to foster high-quality research. Scientific communities and Open Science advocates should learn from inferential reasoning from irreproducible data, and promote incentives for all researchers to explicitly and publicly discuss their methodological commitments, the ways in which they learn from mistakes and problems in everyday practice, and the strategies they use to choose which research component of any project needs to be preserved in the long term, and how. (shrink)

Feminist scholars have been highly attentive to the ways that crises have become an everyday technique of global governance. They are particularly sensitive to the mechanisms through which ‘crisis management’ entrenches the power of particular economic orders and constrains the possibilities, and space, for contestation and critique. This paper seeks to contribute to but also to extend existing feminist research on financial crisis by arguing that, over the course of what has commonly been labelled the ‘global financial (...) class='Hi'>crisis’, the emergence of ‘crisis governance feminism’ has enabled existing structures and mechanisms of gendered privilege, such as the global financial industry, to suppress calls for their overhaul and to re-entrench their power in the global political economy. Adopting a discursive approach to gender and governance that situates gender centrally in understanding governance discourses and their reproduction of common sense (about what people do, how they labour, where they invest and so on), this paper argues that the governance of crisis in the contemporary era, in particular the various actors, institutions, policies and ideas that have sought to describe and ‘contain’ the global financial crisis, are gendered. Gender has become, in the contemporary global political economy, a technique of governance, and with deleterious effects. Despite inciting more discussion of ‘gender’ in economic systems than ever before (particularly in terms of discussions of ‘economic competitiveness’), this paper argues that the ‘global financial crisis’ has precipitated and continues to reproduce techniques of governance that trivialise feminist concerns while further embedding a masculinised, white and elitist culture of global financial privilege. (shrink)

The food regime concept is a key to unlock not only structured moments and transitions in the history of capitalist food relations, but also the history of capitalism itself. It is not about food per se, but about the relations within which food is produced, and through which capitalism is produced and reproduced. It provides, then, a fruitful perspective on the so-called ‘world food crisis’ of 2007–2008. This paper argues that the crisis stems from a long-term cycle of (...) fossil-fuel dependence of industrial capitalism, combined with the inflation-producing effects of current biofuel offsets and financial speculation, and the concentration and centralization of agribusiness capital stemming from the enabling conjunctural policies of the corporate food regime. Rising costs, related to peak oil and fuel crop substitutes, combine with monopoly pricing by agribusiness to inflate food prices, globally transmitted under the liberalized terms of finance and trade associated with neoliberal policies. (shrink)

Currently, many scientific fields such as psychology or biomedicine face a methodological crisis concerning the reproducibility, replicability, and validity of their research. In neuroimaging, similar methodological concerns have taken hold of the field, and researchers are working frantically toward finding solutions for the methodological problems specific to neuroimaging. This article examines some ethical and legal implications of this methodological crisis in neuroimaging. With respect to ethical challenges, the article discusses the impact of flawed methods in neuroimaging research (...) in cognitive and clinical neuroscience, particularly with respect to faulty brain-based models of human cognition, behavior, and personality. Specifically examined is whether such faulty models, when they are applied to neurological or psychiatric diseases, could put patients at risk, and whether this places special obligations on researchers using neuroimaging. In the legal domain, the actual use of neuroimaging as evidence in United States courtrooms is surveyed, followed by an examination of ways that the methodological problems may create challenges for the criminal justice system. Finally, the article reviews and promotes some promising ideas and initiatives from within the neuroimaging community for addressing the methodological problems. (shrink)

Journalists’ and publics’ relationship with truth-telling is so messy because the term “truth” holds multitudes of competing senses that are rarely acknowledged in journalism discourse. People approach contested subjects from many, sometimes incommensurate, senses of truth. When journalists fail to identify the competing senses embedded in varying truth claims, they reproduce confusion as to the validity and verifiability of such claims and contribute to a rolling epistemic crisis in the public sphere. This essay explores six senses of truth – (...) logical, empirical, affective, ideological, authoritarian, and narrative – and discusses their interaction and problematic conflation. (shrink)

Discourse is central in promoting – or hindering – social change. This paper discusses the ethical-political dilemmas that academics face in developing progressive discourses on social welfare in the hegemonic crisis of neoliberalism. A central dilemma concerns the (implicit or explicit) target of their discourse. Speaking to elites reproduces dominant values and interests, reinforcing central elements of neoliberalism such as economisation and de-politicisation. Moreover, this approach remains technocratic (i.e. academics act as experts), thereby failing to address citizens’ distrust towards (...) ‘scientific evidence’ that characterises the hegemonic crisis of neoliberalism. A possible alternative is to work together with civil society and marginalised groups for promoting an oppositional discourse. In this way scholars may contribute to the democratisation of the public sphere but may fail to influence the content of policies, remaining trapped in marginal political positions. The paper illustrates this tension focusing on ‘social investment’. This discourse – which is today the most important framework for welfare reform among academics – emphasises the economic benefits of social policy for promoting alternatives to welfare retrenchment. Building on a research project aimed at re-thinking social investment from Sen's capability perspective, the paper discusses the conditions for developing a post-neoliberal discourse on social welfare. (shrink)

In July 2016, we participated in a conference in Lesvos (Greece) on borders, migration, and the refugee crisis. The Crossing Borders conference was framed in contrast with the ad-hoc humanitarianism that was being implemented, to the extent that it seemed to offer an opportunity to think about the refugee crisis, militarism, and austerity capitalism in systemic terms. This paper is based on an intervention we staged in the closing panel of the Crossing Borders conference, where we read a (...) statement we collectively wrote with fourteen other participants. The intervention was the outcome of frustration as we saw stereotypes and dynamics of knowledge production that reproduced the division between "us" and "them," further marginalising migrants and refugees, elevating international experts while silencing locally affected people. We use this incident and the text of this intervention as a starting point to analyse the growing academic industry in relation to what has been constructed as "Europe's refugee crisis." Our intervention sought to contest several kinds of borders—linguistic, epistemic, activist, methodological, political, historical, and internalised— which are uncritically reproduced in this academic industry. (shrink)

All migration politics are reproductive politics. The nation-state project of controlling migration secures the racialised demographics of the nation, understood as a reproducible fact of the social and human body, determining who is differentially included, who is excluded, and who is exalted. In this commentary, we put forward a provocation about methodological heteronormativity and its omnipresence in the discourse surrounding the so-called “refugee crisis.” By methodological heteronormativity, we refer to the ways states, supranational organisations, hegemonic ideologies, but also solidarity (...) movements and critical scholars construct the figure of the (un)deserving “refugee.”. (shrink)

Since the emergence of modernity, and in response to its myriad aspects and potentials, which are constantly unfolding, countless reactions have kept emerging in almost all quarters of the globe. A large variety of anti-modern reactions, the common core of which is perhaps the idea that modernity, in one way or another, is illegitimate, stand out among these responses. According to some of these anti-modern responses, modernity has usurped the characteristics and features of religion, which has been the soul as (...) well as the main shaping force of the pre-modern era and has reproduced it in a corrupted form. Two German-speaking philosophers, Karl Popper and Hans Blumenberg, are among the intellectuals who have defended modernity against the onslaught of anti-modern tendencies. In this paper, I briefly, though critically, compare and contrast the approaches as well as some of the arguments of these two thinkers in defence of modernity. (shrink)

The deepening U.S. farm crisis has been accompanied by numerous benefit fund raisers, individual donations and volunteer programs—all an expression of cooperation and concern on the part of U.S. citizens, farmer and non-farmer alike. These responses have received wide media attention and much public praise. A sense of patriotism and self-reliance underlies their popularity. Nevertheless, such efforts work to undermine their own ultimate objective—that of improving the economic circumstances of the family farm and farm family.This irony, it is argued, (...) arises from the fact that these charitable responses typically depoliticize the nature of the U.S. farm crisis. First, they deflect public attention away from the larger economic context and the structural inequities within it. Second they revitalize agrarian-based myths which serve to rationalize and to reproduce the ‘independent’ behavior of small, commercial farmers. Finally, it is argued that the depoliticization of the farm crisis is itself a political strategy, one which supports and legitimizes ‘business as usual’ and is compatible with the interests of corporate agriculture. (shrink)

Este artigo apresenta a evolução e a consolidação da categoria de pessoas que se declaram sem religião nos recenseamentos brasileiros desde a década de 1960. Embora este grupo tenha sido apresentado como se fosse homogêneo, os resultados de nossa pesquisa revelaram um grupo claramente heterogêneo, composto por tipos diferenciados de indivíduos e atitudes: daqueles aparentemente secularizados àqueles que misturam diferentes modelos de religiosidade, reproduzindo algumas das principais tendências dos tempos atuais, movidos por uma intensa reflexividade que desafia os dogmas e (...) pela reivindicação da liberdade de fé e expressão. Além disso, a categoria dos sem religião marca a divisão entre as pessoas que se identificam co um grupo religioso daquelas que mantêm a distância das instituições religiosas tradicionais. Assim, aproximar-se ou afastar-se do transcendente torna-se uma questão de foro íntimo, cuja decisão cabe a cada individuo na sua intimidade, o que indica uma crise contemporânea da afiliação estimulada peã reavaliação dos laços tradicionais. Palavras-chave: Sem religião. Recenseamentos. Desinstitucionalização. Crise do Pertencimento. Destradicionalização.This article presents the evolution and the consolidation of the category of people that declare themselves “without religion” in Brazilian census since the 1960s. Although this group has been presented as it was homogeneous, the results of our survey revealed a visibly heterogeneous group, composed by different types of individuals and attitudes: from those groups apparently secularized to those who mix up several models of religiosity, reproducing some of the major tendencies of the present time, moved by an intense reflexivity that challenges dogmas and also moved by the claiming of liberty of faith and expression. Moreover, the category of people of without religion marks the division between people identified as a religious group from those that keep distance from the traditional institutions. Thus, getting closer or moving away from the transcendent becomes a matter of private choice, a decision of each individual in its intimacy which indicates a contemporary crisis of affiliation stimulated by the revaluation of the tradition ties. Key words : Without religion. Censuses. Deinstitutionalization. Detraditionalization. Crisis of belonging. (shrink)

This paper examines a looming reproducibility crisis in the core of the hard sciences. Namely, it concentrates on molecular modeling and simulation (MMS), a family of methods that predict properties of substances through computing interactions on a molecular level and that is widely popular in physics, chemistry, materials science, and engineering. The paper argues that in order to make quantitative predictions, sophisticated models are needed which have to be evaluated with complex simulation procedures that amalgamate theoretical, technological, and (...) social factors – leading to problems with reproducibility. Thus, for methodological reasons, the predictive success causes a reproducibility problem. (shrink)

The “reproducibility crisis” has been one of the most significant stories in science in the past 15 years and has led to significant policy changes across the research landscape. Yet, scandals, irreproducible studies, and cries of crisis have occurred for decades in science. This article seeks to explain why the reproducibility crisis has taken root and become a force in science policy in ways previous crises have not. In short, we argue that it was through (...) the scientific, institutional, and cultural efforts of a group of scientific activists we are calling metascientists. Metascience is a scientific social movement that seeks to use quantification and experimentation to diagnose problems in research practice and improve efficiency. It draws together data scientists, experimental and statistical methodologists, and open science activists into a project with both intellectual and policy dimensions. Metascientists have been remarkably successful at winning grants, motivating news coverage, and changing policies at science agencies, journals, and universities. The social movement lens is useful for understanding the popularization and impact of the reproducibility crisis narrative and suggests ways the institutions of science are adapting to meet a changing political and technological landscape. (shrink)

The replication or reproducibility crisis in psychological science has renewed attention to philosophical aspects of its methodology. I provide herein a new, functional account of the role of replication in a scientific discipline: to undercut the underdetermination of scientific hypotheses from data, typically by hypotheses that connect data with phenomena. These include hypotheses that concern sampling error, experimental control, and operationalization. How a scientific hypothesis could be underdetermined in one of these ways depends on a scientific discipline’s epistemic (...) goals, theoretical development, material constraints, institutional context, and their interconnections. I illustrate how these apply to the case of psychological science. I then contrast this “bottom-up” account with “top-down” accounts, which assume that the role of replication in a particular science, such as psychology, must follow from a uniform role that it plays in science generally. Aside from avoiding unaddressed problems with top-down accounts, my bottom-up account also better explains the variability of importance of replication of various types across different scientific disciplines. (shrink)

In this commentary, I propose a framework for thinking about data quality in the context of scientific research. I start by analyzing conceptualizations of quality as a property of information, evidence and data and reviewing research in the philosophy of information, the philosophy of science and the philosophy of biomedicine. I identify a push for purpose dependency as one of the main results of this review. On this basis, I present a contextual approach to data quality in scientific research, whereby (...) the quality of a dataset is dependent on the context of use of the dataset as much as the dataset itself. I exemplify the approach by discussing current critiques and debates of scientific quality, thus showcasing how data quality can be approached contextually. (shrink)

Tobacco mosaic virus has served as a model organism for pathbreaking work in plant pathology, virology, biochemistry and applied genetics for more than a century. We were intrigued by a photograph published in Phytopathology in 1934 showing that Tabasco pepper plants responded to TMV infection with localized necrotic lesions, followed by abscission of the inoculated leaves. This dramatic outcome of a biological response to infection observed by Francis O. Holmes, a virologist at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, was used (...) to score plants for resistance to TMV infection. Our objective was to gain a better understanding of early to mid-twentieth century ideas of genetic resistance to viruses in crop plants. We investigated Holmes’ observation as a practical exercise in reworking an experiment, having been inspired by Pamela Smith’s innovative Making and Knowing Project. We had a great deal of difficulty replicating Holmes’ experiment, finding that biological materials and experimental customs change over time, in ways that ideas do not. Using complementary tools plus careful study and interpretation of the original text and figures, we were able to rework, yet only partially replicate, this experiment. Reading peer-reviewed manuscripts that cited Holmes’ 1934 report provided an additional level of insight into the interpretation and replication of this work in the decades that followed. From this, we touch on how experimental reworking can inform our strategies to address the reproducibility “crisis” in twenty-first century science. (shrink)

In “Should We Strive to Make Science Bias‑Free? A Philosophical Assessment of the Reproducibility Crisis”, I argue that the problem of bias in science, a key factor in the current reproducibility crisis, is worsened if we follow Heather Douglas and Kevin C. Elliott’s advice and introduce non-epistemic values into the evidential assessment of scientific hypotheses. In their response to my paper, Douglas and Elliott complain that I misrepresent their views and fall victim to various confusions. In (...) this rebuttal I argue, by means of an examination of their published views, that my initial interpretation of their work is accurate and that, in their hands, science is generally prone to deviations from truth. (shrink)

The replication crisis has caused researchers to distinguish between exact replications, which duplicate all aspects of a study that could potentially affect the results, and direct replications, which duplicate only those aspects of the study that are thought to be theoretically essential to reproduce the original effect. The replication crisis has also prompted researchers to think more carefully about the possibility of making Type I errors when rejecting null hypotheses. In this context, the present article considers the utility (...) of two types of Type I error probability: the Neyman–Pearson long run Type I error rate and the Fisherian sample-specific Type I error probability. It is argued that the Neyman–Pearson Type I error rate is inapplicable in social science because it refers to a long run of exact replications, and social science deals with irreversible units that make exact replications impossible. Instead, the Fisherian sample-specific Type I error probability is recommended as a more meaningful way to conceptualize false positive results in social science because it can be applied to each sample-specific decision about rejecting the same substantive null hypothesis in a series of direct replications. It is concluded that the replication crisis may be partly due to researchers’ unrealistic expectations about replicability based on their consideration of the Neyman–Pearson Type I error rate across a long run of exact replications. (shrink)

Irreplicability is framed as crisis, blamed on sloppy science motivated by perverse stimuli in research. Structural changes to the organization of science, targeting sloppy science (e.g., open data, pre‐registration), are proposed to prevent irreplicability. While there is an unquestionable link between sloppy science and failures to replicate/reproduce scientific studies, they are currently conflated. This position can be understood as a result of the erosion of the role of theory in science. The history, sociology, and philosophy of science reveal alternative (...) explanations for irreplicability to show it is part of proper, informative and valuable science. Irreplicability need not equate research waste. Sloppy science is the problem, also when results do replicate. Hence, the solution should focus on opposing sloppy research. (shrink)

The article describes causes and nature of the global anthropological crisis. Positive and negative factor of the development of science and scientific-technical progress were obtained in becoming of the anthropological crisis and ways to overcome it. The main reasons include: the constant increase of population on the planet; unlimited growth of material consumption in the developed world, when there are food-deficit in poor countries; the depletion of natural resources; the overproduction of industrial waste and the increasing environmental pollution. (...) Two groups of human degradation factors were grounded: the economic risks as the result of macroeconomic imbalances and biological ones that is associated with using of substandard products. The article states that a special significance in achieving a sustainable future, as a fundamental survival of installation strategy has the affirmation of bioantropologic interpretation, that has the task to change the attitude of mankind to nature. In this regard, coevolutionary processes were disclosed within the boundaries of intra- or inter-system phenomena's interactions of inanimate, living, social and technical nature, that have invariant character. The invariance is as a mechanism to linking in the integrity elements of the aforementioned systems. Coevolution reproduces the activity of separate systems as an ontological necessity and total natural laws. It saves and modifies their nature and relationship, creates the integrity of self-developing nature. Noospheric safety is realized through the formation of human qualities, that are aimed to the conservation, preservation and development of life and conditions of its existence. (shrink)

The crisis of confidence in the social sciences has many corollaries which impact our research practices. One of these is a push towards maximal and mechanical objectivity in quantitative research. This stance is reinforced by major journals and academic institutions that subtly yet certainly link objectivity with integrity and rigor. The converse implication of this may be an association between subjectivity and low quality. Subjectivity is one of qualitative methodology’s best assets, however. In qualitative methodology, that subjectivity is often (...) given voice through reflexivity. It is used to better understand our own role within the research process, and is a means through which the researcher may oversee how they influence their research. Given that the actions of researchers have led to the poor reproducibility characterising the crisis of confidence, it is worthwhile to consider whether reflexivity can help improve the validity of research findings in quantitative psychology. In this report, we describe a combination approach of research: the data of a series of interviews helps us elucidate the link between reflexive practice and quality of research, through the eyes of practicing academics. Through our exploration of the position of the researcher in their research, we shed light on how the reflections of the researcher can impact the quality of their research findings, in the context of the current crisis of confidence. The validity of these findings is tempered, however, by limitations to the sample, and we advise caution on the part of our audience in their reading of our conclusions. (shrink)

There is a growing crisis in scientific research characterized by failures to reproduce experimental results, fraud, lack of innovation, and burn-out. In Science and Christian Ethics, Paul Scherz traces these problems to the drive by governments and business to make scientists into competitive entrepreneurs who use their research results to stimulate economic growth. The result is a competitive environment aimed at commodifying the world. In order to confront this problem of character, Scherz examines the alternative Aristotelian and Stoic models (...) of reforming character, found in the works of Alasdair MacIntyre and Michel Foucault. Against many prominent virtue ethicists, he argues that what individual scientists need is a regime of spiritual exercises, such as those found in Stoicism as it was adopted by Christianity, in order to refocus on the good of truth in the face of institutional pressure. His book illuminates pressing issues in research ethics, moral education, and anthropology. (shrink)

The relevance of the research topic. After the World War II the leaders and intellectuals of the world were forced to look for new principles and methods of management. New theories for analysis of complex systems appeared. The D. Meadows’ group from the Club of Rome and other analysts discovered the fact of the deepening humanity in an irreversible and deadly crisis. Up to now, economists and politicians have not offered a way to guarantee rescue. However, there is a (...) consensus that hopes can be linked to the development of education and science in the world. The phrase “internationalization of higher education ” is used more and more often, and the number of scientific works is growing rapidly. However, in our opinion, the phenomenon of IHE is perceived superficially because of inattention to the latest scientific achievements, which are not followed by humanities scholars. This caused our interest and stimulated the desire to prove that global process of IHE started in accordance with the laws of the evolution of industrial production. The purpose of our study is to apply the theory of analysis of very large systems to the phenomena of kinds and variants internationalization to obtain the most probable scenarios for human progress. The task of the study is seen in the critical analysis of the trend we noted in the process of training the PhD-level professional in space and time and transforming the figure of a young worker from a national to an international “product” of the systems of education and training. The methodology of the research was dictated by the chosen goal and tasks under the pressure of the grandiose object – a complex of educational systems in a globalized planet environment. This is due to the use of the means of many sciences, theories of systemic research and a multidisciplinary approach in the conditions of global evolutionism. The results of the study in their essence, are still based on historical methods, in conjunction with the achievements of young sciences – synergetics, theories of complex systems, and others. An original table was created to match the agrarian, industrial and informational societies – those within which the system of higher education had been developed. The direction of its characterization has proven that the autonomy of universities has been diminished at present, the size of the whole system and its orientation towards political and economic demands have increased. It is indicated at the time when the high school began to lose its national character and to acquire features of internationality. It is noted that this coincided with the growth of the volume and impact of globalization and its study mainly within the humanities. The widespread representation of the interaction in higher education with the influences of globalization and internationalization, the basic definitions and differentiation, etc. is presented. The newest data on internationalization within the universities and far beyond them in state and interstate institutions are presented. The conclusions and recommendations formulated and proved the main hypothesis of our study and its main result. It consists in the fact that the higher school in general began to reproduce the path of industry with its variant of internationalization – a combination of products of many countries. We argue that in higher education the division of time and space of educational programs, institutions, places of internship, etc. began. Instead of ensuring PhD competences within a single state, basic schooling is found to be more profitable in one place, the profile secondary is in the other, the baccalaureate or master’s program in the country “A”, postgraduate study somewhere in “B”, the final professional development in the best world’s centers of MBA or some other training in London or Harvard. From this follows the following conclusion: Ukraine’s resources are already inadequate for the preparation of national personnel of the highest world quality. Such a “product” has already become international. (shrink)

What does it mean when calls to reconciliation come from dominant social groups? Whom do these calls address? What effects do they have? I take up these questions through a case study of the public discourse on “reasonable accommodation” in Québec. When the Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences concluded its tour of the regions and cities of Québec and, in the spring of 2008, the commissioners (philosopher Charles Taylor and sociologist Gérard Bouchard) issued their report on (...) the state of ethnocultural relations, their titular emphasis was on reconciliation. Their report, "Building the Future: A Time for Reconciliation," urged the francophone Québécois majority and immigrant or immigrant-descended cultural and religious minorities in Québec – the two groups between whom the conflict was staged in the discourse of “reasonable accommodation” – each to take its respective responsibility to rebuild Québec interculturalism in the aftermath of its public “crisis.” My case study indicates that when performed by the dominant group, calls to reconciliation can function in a complicated way to reproduce, rather than to transform, existing relations of power. Specifically, in the context of a nation-building project of a white settler society they may bolster, rather than undermine, the social bases of power that characterize such societies. To demonstrate how the discourse of “reasonable accommodation” dissimulates as to its material effects, I invoke Sara Ahmed’s concept of “nonperformativity.”. (shrink)

The replicability crisis refers to the apparent failures to replicate both important and typical positive experimental claims in psychological science and biomedicine, failures which have gained increasing attention in the past decade. In order to provide evidence that there is a replicability crisis in the first place, scientists have developed various measures of replication that help quantify or “count” whether one study replicates another. In this nontechnical essay, I critically examine five types of replication measures used in the (...) landmark article “Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science” (Open Science Collaboration, Science, 349, ac4716, 2015) based on the following techniques: subjective assessment, null hypothesis significance testing, comparing effect sizes, comparing the original effect size with the replication confidence interval, and meta-analysis. The first four, I argue, remain unsatisfactory for a variety of conceptual or formal reasons, even taking into account various improvements. By contrast, at least one version of the meta-analytic measure does not suffer from these problems. It differs from the others in rejecting dichotomous conclusions, the assumption that one study replicates another or not simpliciter. I defend it from other recent criticisms, concluding however that it is not a panacea for all the multifarious problems that the crisis has highlighted. (shrink)

In his essay “The Crisis in the Teaching of Philosophy” Derrida writes “Philosophy would repeat itself and would reproduce its own tradition as the teaching of its own crisis and as the paideia of self-critique in general. This paideia goes hand in hand, and there is nothing fortuitous about this, with what I will call without taking it lightly, an imperialist self-confidence of philosophy.” In a properly Derridean fashion these lines are haunting for me. What is “imperialist” about (...) philosophy; the self-confidence? Is the confidence imperialist or is it the entire content of the philosophical tradition? Is there something colonial about not only dominating other disciplines and assigning them their regional ontologies, but also about the very discourse of philosophy itself? Of course, this very question presupposes there is such a thing as a “philosophical discourse” that has an identity which is itself a philosophical question. Is there such a thing as identity? If philosophy does not have this discursive identity, is it the crisis that is imperialist, crisis in the sense of constantly being separated from itself, always not having an identity or “never having an identity”? Perhaps in a different yet admittedly still problematic way, does philosophy dominate, colonize, thinking itself, both culturally and conceptually. Derrida continues his essay by forging an alliance between decolonization and deconstruction. It is a curious alliance because it both endorses and rejects philosophy (in a properly philosophical fashion): “If, like philosophy and the deconstruction of the philosophical, decolonization is interminable, it is because it cannot be effective either as simple mode of reappropriation or as a simple mode of opposition or overturning.” (Derrida 2002, 103). (shrink)

The links between the crisis of subprime mortgages and the so-called crisis of European sovereign debt are sometimes concealed, so as to create a veritable sense of shared guilt meant to sanction the legitimacy of the austerity policies that have been imposed by virtuous Northern European countries on the undeserving countries of Southern Europe. We will analyse three main aspects of the current crisis: we will interpret the austerity policies that today characterize the eurozone as the result (...) of financialization; we will define the state of permanent crisis as an instrument of governance characterized by specific economic policies; we will show how all this unfolds at a stage of capitalist development wherein a new constituent process begins to take shape in a fragmented but nonetheless significant manner, and how this process is reclaimed by the very subjectivities upon which the accumulation of cognitive and relational skills depends in order to reproduce itself: the Welfare of the Common. (shrink)

Amongst intellectuals and activists, neoliberalism has become a potent signifier for the kind of free-market thinking that has dominated politics for the past three decades. Forever associated with the conviction politics of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the free-market project has since become synonymous with the 'Washington consensus' on international development policy and the phenomenon of corporate globalization, where it has come to mean privatization, deregulation, and the opening up of new markets. But beyond its utility as a protest slogan (...) or buzzword as shorthand for the political-economic Zeitgeist, what do we know about where neoliberalism came from and how it spread? Who are the neoliberals, and why do they studiously avoid the label? Constructions of Neoliberal Reason presents a radical critique of the free-market project, from its origins in the first half of the 20th Century through to the recent global economic crisis, from the utopian dreams of Friedrich von Hayek through the dogmatic theories of the Chicago School to the hope and hubris of Obamanomics. The book traces how neoliberalism went from crank science to common sense in the period between the Great Depression and the age of Obama. Constructions of Neoliberal Reason dramatizes the rise of neoliberalism and its uneven spread as an intellectual, political, and cultural project, combining genealogical analysis with situated case studies of formative moments throughout the world, like New York City's bankruptcy, Hurricane Katrina, and the Wall Street crisis of 2008. The book names and tracks some of neoliberalism's key protagonists, as well as some of the less visible bit-part players. It explores how this adaptive regime of market rule was produced and reproduced, its logics and limits, its faults and its fate. (shrink)

In this article, I trouble the pedagogical practice of comforting discomfort in the social-justice classroom. Is it possible to support white students, for instance, and not comfort them? Is it possible to support white students without recentering the emotional crisis of white students, without disregarding the needs and interests of students of color, and without reproducing the violence that students of color endure? First I address the dangers of comforting discomfort and discuss Robin DiAngelo's notion of white fragility, which (...) has been used to explain the tendency of white people to flee discomfort rather than tarry with it. Employing Erinn Gilson's work on vulnerability, I argue that white fragility is not a weakness but an active performance of invulnerability. I conclude by arguing that developing vulnerability is a counter to white fragility, and that one way such vulnerability can be encouraged is through offering critical hope, which I maintain is a type of support that does not comfort. (shrink)