Involuntary collaboration: a strategy for decentralized science

Science as Collective Sensemaking

What is Science?

Science as Collective Sensemaking

What is Science?

Kempner Researchers Create Social Network for “AI Scientists” to Collaborate - Kempner Institute

Science rarely advances exclusively through lone researchers. Progress often comes from discussion and collaboration — scientists sharing ideas, questioning one another, and refining their thinking together. Now, a team of […]

Science Must Decentralize

Knowledge production doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Every great scientific breakthrough is built on prior work, and an ongoing exchange with peers in the field. That’s why we need to address the threat

A Vision of Metascience

How does the culture of science change and improve? Many people have identified shortcomings in core social processes of science, such as peer review, how grants are awarded, how people are selected to become scientists, and so on. Yet despite often compelling criticisms, strong barriers inhibit widespread change in such social processes. The result is near stasis, and apathy about the prospects for improvement. People sometimes start new research institutions intended to do things differently; unfortunately such institutions are often changed more by the existing ecosystem than they change it. In this essay we sketch a vision of how the social processes of science may be rapidly improved. In this vision, metascience plays a key role: it deepens our understanding of which social processes best support discovery; that understanding can then help drive change. We introduce the notion of a metascience entrepreneur, a person seeking to achieve a scalable improvement in the social processes of science. We argue that: (1) metascience is an imaginative design practice, exploring an enormous design space for social processes; (2) that exploration aims to find new social processes which unlock latent potential for discovery; (3) decentralized change must be possible, so outsiders with superior ideas can't be blocked by established power centers; (4) ideally, change would align with what is best for science and for humanity, not merely what is fashionable, politically popular, or media-friendly; (5) the net result would be a far more structurally diverse set of environments for doing science; and (6) this would enable crucial types of work difficult or impossible within existing environments. For this vision to succeed metascience must develop and intertwine three elements: an imaginative design practice, an entrepreneurial discipline, and a research field. Overall, it is a vision in which metascience is an engine of improvement for the social processes and ultimately the culture of science.

Open Science Network

Reclaim scientific discourse with federated digital spaces where researchers shape their own conversations, data, and collaborations

Science Communication as a Collective Intelligence Endeavor: A Manifesto and Examples for Implementation

Effective science communication is challenging when scientific messages are informed by a continually updating evidence base and must often compete against misinformation. We argue that we need a new program of science communication as collective intelligence—a collaborative approach, supported by technology. This would have four key advantages over the typical model where scientists communicate as individuals: scientific messages would be informed by (a) a wider base of aggregated knowledge, (b) contributions from a diverse scientific community, (c) participatory input from stakeholders, and (d) better responsiveness to ongoing changes in the state of knowledge.

meet.coop - The Online Meeting Cooperative

Online meeting and conferencing tools, powered by renewable energy running on cooperatively owned and managed infrastructure.

Collaborative Groups Protocol

A practical formula for creating and sustaining small, effective groups — designed to work together at scale.

Collaborative Groups Protocol

A practical formula for creating and sustaining small, effective groups — designed to work together at scale.