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+--- Thread: Article How do we democratize scientific research? (/thread-17215.html)
How do we democratize scientific research? - C C - Jan 20, 2025
Parody Alcove: The left should note that "radical egalitarianism about knowledge" surely opens the door to more than just allowing "indigenous science" into the fold. Like no longer hindering things such as climate disinformation, or even being able to disparagingly label the latter as such. Sometimes it appears that the fatal flaw of democracy is that it doesn't know when to quit. It incrementally pursues social justice utopia to yet another reality-impaired dystopia at the end of its quest.
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How do we democratize scientific research?
https://undark.org/2025/01/10/opinion-democratize-scientific-research/
EXCERPT: Our hypothetical journal has an “Unaffiliated Researcher” section. This is dedicated to the work of independent researchers, those with no formal academic affiliation or credentials. In this scenario, everyday people can formally participate in the research process, even the famously guarded institution of publishing peer-reviewed manuscripts.
Is this a horror story? Or does it represent progress? How would we feel about a world where everyone can participate in the formal enterprise of research? I argue that a future that democratizes research, making both its consumption and production more accessible, would increase the number of quality ideas in circulation and support efforts to defend science in the face of decreasing trust in scientists...
[...] Is there an ethical obligation to promote public participation in the scientific process? One thread of reasoning stems from the fact that the public funds (through taxes) a lot of the research that we scientists build our careers around. Therefore, academic efforts at inclusion are often framed around doing “outreach” or citing the research’s “broader impacts.” These efforts encompass very important activities in schools, “citizen-science” projects, summer research programs, prison education curricula, and attempts to include scientists from the Global South in the process of publishing in prestigious journals and attending scientific conferences.
Other efforts focus on the democratization of data. One example is the open science movement, built on the idea that scientific data — especially that generated with public funding — should not be a private commodity, but instead a public property that all can freely access. These efforts are fused to the rise of open-access journals and preprint servers like arXiv and OSF.
In 2021, anti-vaccine protesters gather to advocate for medical freedom and health choice in Minnesota.
These initiatives highlight how opening doors should be less about being a do-gooder and more about how to do better science. We should want access to the unexpressed scientific ideas that may lurk in the minds of young people, who may only be guilty of being born into poverty or in a country dealing with the aftermath of a genocide.
It isn’t hard to imagine a disastrous outcome from this attempt at democracy. Research is already diluted by shoddy work that is flawed, unhelpful, or cannot be replicated. Furthermore, nefarious new movements, promoted by those who benefit from ignorance, can peddle harmful misinformation and pseudoscience. To open the borders may further scramble science’s signal and stymie attempts to discern real from fake.
I would argue that the current gatekeeper structure of formal (mostly academic) research creates the conditions that foster a war on science...(MORE - details)
RE: How do we democratize scientific research? - confused2 - Jan 21, 2025
An ignorant electorate is easier to lead (and mislead) than an educated one.