Normal Science Research Articles

Investigating the links between questionable research practices, scientific norms and organisational culture

BackgroundThis study investigates the determinants of engagement in questionable research practices (QRPs), focusing on both individual-level factors (such as scholarly field, commitment to scientific norms, gender, contract type, and career stage) and institution-level factors (including industry type, researchers' perceptions of their research culture, and awareness of institutional policies on research integrity).MethodsUsing a multi-level modelling approach, we analyse data from an international survey of researchers working across disciplinary fields to estimate the effect of these factors on QRP engagement.ResultsOur findings indicate that contract type, career stage, academic field, adherence to scientific norms and gender significantly predict QRP engagement. At the institution level, factors such as being outside of a collegial culture and experiencing harmful publication pressure, and the presence of safeguards against integrity breaches have small associations. Only a minimal amount of variance in QRP engagement is attributable to differences between institutions and countries.ConclusionsWe discuss the implications of these findings for developing effective interventions to reduce QRPs, highlighting the importance of addressing both individual and institutional factors in efforts to foster research integrity.

Academentia, management and satire: ‘The good, the bad and the ugly’

Orientation: The argument rethinks current managerial practices in higher education.Research purpose: Satire beckons when normal science cannot reproduce itself or shift to account for different ways of doing things. When reality mimics satire, satire becomes an appropriate methodology. Such literary approaches can reveal what normal science cannot.Motivation for the study: To add to critical management studies and the combatting of academentia as an institutional condition.Research design, approach and method: The general methodology derives from both literary and business principles read through critical management studies and cultural studies. Autoethnography is shown here to be useful within accounting and management studies. The Semler and the Kalahari management practices explicitly specify the need to rethink ‘operational models’.Main findings: No findings are offered in the conventional sense. Rather, relations are analysed and conclusions result from my own internal dialogue as a central player in the case study. The ‘transformation’ objectives of governance were disconnected from educational purposes. The resulting dramatic narrative hopefully appeals to readers in terms of their own lived conditions: can readers insert themselves into the narrative in terms of their own experiences?Practical and/or managerial implications: Institutions to be managed as adhocracies. What has been learned after 20 years of transformation and restructuring, if anything?Contribution and/or value-add: An engagement with critical management studies from the perspective of cultural studies identifies some solutions. Like the former, the latter examines issues of power relations, in this case, relations subsisting within administrative systems rather than the more usual framing as being between classes, races, ethnicities and genders.

Non-Copyrightability of Data in Scientific Publications: A Free-for-All or a Global Commons Partnership?

Scientific publications provide a wealth of peer-reviewed, high-quality data that have been maintained over time, resulting in data persistence. As data repositories with rich provenance information, publications are indispensable sources for the integration and extension of networks of interlinked Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR*1) bio/geodiversity data. In this way, they form pivotal fact- and knowledge-based contributions to applications that address the biodiversity crisis. The mobilization of data preserved in scientific publications is hindered, however, by distinct copyright legislation contexts for publications versus the data that they contain. Moreover, legislations concerning copyright continue to lack harmonization across jurisdictions, their interpretation is difficult, and the applicable legal national scope can be uncertain. We clarify and highlight that data within scientific publications are not copyrightable and thus can be openly and freely reused once legal access has been gained to their enclosing publication*2. To ensure that publications are as accessible as possible, a joint statement supported by the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), the Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities (CETAF) and the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC) (Benichou et al. 2023) recommends that authors and publishers make their works as accessible as possible by using a CC-BY license or preferably waive copyright (CC0) to their publications. Explicitly associating a public domain mark (PDM, e.g., the PDM from Creative Commons) to their published data, provides users with certainty about reusability. Yet, by setting works and bio/geodiversity data into the public domain, they do not become a free-for-all. We stress that data need to be associated with clear provenance information in alignment with scientific best practices and the scientific community's social norms. This includes providing detailed attribution to authors of cited works and reused data. Proposed data governance labels, for example, modeled after the Local Contexts labels developed by the international Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLC) community, would enable authors to communicate social and ethical contexts and applicable rules to data users for ensuring the sustainability of a shared environmental and data commons. Categories of Local Contexts labels that are of interest and applicable in the sciences are, for example, those that communicate (1) correct citation information and ask for attribution when knowledge and/or data are reused (Traditional Knowledge label (TK) Attribution), (2) an interest in being recognized and acknowledged due to a significant relationship with and responsibility for samples and data (Biocultural label (BC) Provenance), (3) the verification of the data and their context following a community protocol (TK Verified), (4) that non-commercial use (TK Non-Commercial/BC Non-Commercial) or (5) outreach activities (TK Outreach/BC Outreach) are generally permitted, while for other uses direct contact and engagement is required, or (6) an openness to collaboration and partnerships (TK Collaboration/BC Collaboration). There are concerns about the tension between the goal of achieving open data (e.g., Anonymous 2014) to enable and promote open science (e.g., UNESCO 2021) and, at the same time, imposing restrictions on these data in the form of governance labels. Furthermore, while the reference of the publication through which data are published, as well as more specifically bibliographic references cited for specific data within the publication, provide sufficient information for attribution and provenance, much more fine-grained and nuanced contextual information (e.g., in the form of metadata) is needed for assuring responsible reuse. Such context-providing metadata unlock the full potential of the data and enable their reusability. This can be done using machine-actionable markup tags in combination with human-readable labels that inform machines and human users about the semantics of the data as well as their ethical and social dimensions that govern responsible and sustainable reuse. Future work is needed to discover, differentiate and define the quality and scope of the appropriate contexts that are necessary and sufficient for being able to fully and responsibly reuse the data in different situations.

Labour process theory: in and beyond the core: continuities, challenges, and choices

Since the publication of Braverman’s seminal Labor and Monopoly Capital (1974), labour process theory (LPT) has become a successful theory-building project driven by empirical expansion and conceptual innovation, operating as the equivalent of a normal science, with a distinctive scope and specific empirical focus on workplace regimes in the context of capitalist political economy. It’s toolkit or conceptual architecture combines underpinning and ordering principles with contingent and flexible operational categories concerning labour power and control. Though LPT has built stronger conceptual connections between workplace and accumulation regimes, changes in the global order have brought new theoretical and empirical challenges that are requiring it to adjust some of its core concepts and boundaries to consider development such as new sources of labour power, migration, and mobility.

The changing roles of scientific journals.

After centuries of relative stability, the scientific publishing world has undergone tremendous disruption and change during the first decades of the 21st century. The causes for disruption can be traced to the information revolution, which brought such benefits as rapid publication, greater connectivity, and ready access to large databases, along with less desirable practices including image manipulation, plagiarism, and other ethical transgressions. The information revolution has driven the proliferation of journals, expansion of for-profit academic publishing, and empowerment of the open-access movement, each of which has exerted new financial pressures on traditional publishing models. As journals became the focal point for ethical concerns in science, they have adapted by increasing the scope of their duties, which now include archiving of data, enforcement of good practices, establishment of standards for rigor, and training the next generation of reviewers and editors. Here, we consider the seismic changes occurring in scientific publishing and place them into the context of a rapidly changing landscape of scientific and publishing norms.

Ivan Pavlov’s conditioned reflexes and Ivane Beritashvili’s doctrine of image-driven behavior: Materialism, myth, and politics

ABSTRACT Ivane Beritashvili has been regarded as an “anti-Pavlovian” for nearly a century. One respect in which Beritashvili is said to be anti-Pavlovian is in granting an explanatory role to subjective mental states in his doctrine of image-driven behavior. In this article, I aim to problematize the anti-Pavlovian assessment and argue that Beritashvili did not deviate from Pavlovian scientific norms, minor points of theoretical and methodological differences between them notwithstanding. Furthermore, several respects in which Beritashvili is claimed to be anti-Pavlovian are ways in which he resembles Pavlov. Turning my attention to Beritashvili’s critics in the Soviet Union, those responsible for his censure, I argue that it is the critique of Beritashvili that runs counter to the norms Pavlov embraced. I contest the claim that his alleged deviations from Pavlovian orthodoxy justify classification as anti-Pavlovian in a sense that is either historically accurate or philosophically interesting, and submit that the grounds on which Beritashvili is derided as anti-Pavlovian would also justify labeling Pavlov himself as anti-Pavlovian. Informed by the case of Beritashvili and others who were politically persecuted for their scientific work in the Soviet Union, I conclude with reflections on science, politics, and the intrusion of the latter in the former.

BEFORE STRUCTURE. THE RISE OF KUHN’S CONCEPTUAL SCHEME IN THE COPERNICAN REVOLUTION

Thomas S. Kuhn’s intellectual development could be summed up in a two-stage course, first, the transition from physics to the history of science (primarily physics) and then from the history of science to the philosophy of science, a field in which he achieved consecration with The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (SSR) published in 1962. In the 1950s, before SSR, Kuhn dealt with the history of science and, finally, developed a detailed research on the case of the Copernican Revolution, publishing a book with the same name. The Copernican Revolution. Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought (CR). My aim in this paper is to argue that in this case study Kuhn identified all those situations that he will later describe in the terms of the SSR’s vocabulary, from “paradigm” and “incommensurability”, to “normal science” and “scientific revolution.” I think that although the terminological options in CR differ, such as, for example, the use of the expression “conceptual scheme” for what will later be called “paradigm”, a simple conceptual archaeology directs us to claim that CR is the immediate predecessor of SSR.

A Delicate Balancing Act: Integrative Pluralism and the Pursuit of Unified Theories

AbstractThis paper examines the interplay between integrative explanatory pluralism and the quest for unified theories. We argue that when grounded in virtues associated with satisfactory explanations, integrative pluralism exhibits an inherent instability stemming from the conflict between the demand for unity and the commitment to preserving a patchwork of disparate partial explanations. A case study in cognitive science illuminates the challenges of maintaining both systematicity and depth in explanations within this framework. While this instability does not render integrative pluralism fundamentally flawed, it stresses the importance of a diachronic analysis of scientific dynamics and norms. The conclusion highlights the continued value of integrative pluralism in interdisciplinary research programs, while emphasizing its role as a temporary rather than permanent approach.

An Overview of Language Shift from French to English in Scientific Articles

The drastic language shift that Algeria has witnessed in recent years, notably towards English, has gained significant ground. This paper examines the evolving dynamics of scientific discourse translation in Algeria. Since gaining independence in 1962, Algeria has been closely associated with Francophone networks, with the French historically dominating scientific communication. However, in recent decades, English has gained predominance in scientific discourse, surpassing French. Through a comprehensive review of academic literature, this paper explores the historical context that has shaped Algeria’s linguistic landscape, leading to this significant transition. The study delves into concepts such as language shift, domain loss, terminology, and translation to understand their impact and relationship within multilingual research contexts. By examining these concepts, the paper seeks to illustrate how they have influenced the shift towards English in Algerian scientific communication. Additionally, the paper investigates the underlying motivations for the increased adoption of English as the primary language of scientific discourse among Algerian researchers and institutions. Key factors include the influence of international scientific norms, the availability of extensive English language resources, participation in global research collaborations, and the enhanced visibility that English provides in the global scientific arena. While this transition to English offers numerous opportunities for Algerian researchers, such as improved access to international research networks and increased publication potential, it also presents challenges. Linguistic and cultural barriers may hinder effective communication and collaboration, potentially impacting the quality of research and its dissemination. The paper concludes by analyzing the intricate ramifications of these translation trends and their implications for Algeria’s scientific research landscape. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for developing strategies to support researchers through this transition and ensuring their successful integration into the global scientific community.

Breaking silos: the effectiveness of a knowledge integration approach for dance curricula

ABSTRACT The knowledge integration (KI) approach has been widely studied and recommended for improving the learning and teaching of science subjects (biology, physics, etc.). If the cognitive processes of learning, however, do not vary across domains, then what is helpful for science should also be helpful for dance. Choosing the teaching and learning of an improvisational and creative dance as a case on the far opposite end from the usual seated and normative science curriculum, one randomized-controlled trial and one before-after intervention trial were conducted to test if a KI curriculum is more effective than a common curriculum. Both trials found the KI approach significantly more effective in improving the performance of young dancers. As found, KI can be effectively applied to the curriculum design of breakdance, thus providing evidence to support the universality of this approach. It is implied that KI can, ergo, benefit learners of more subjects, including the artful ones, and need not be siloed as relevant only for science education.

Embedding Mathematics in Socio-Scientific Games: The Mathematical in Grappling with Wicked Problems

This paper discusses the ways in which digitally enabled transformation in mathematics education could envisage a role for rationality in post-normal science and wicked problems. The scene is set firstly by reviewing the ways in which digital media have been designed and used in transformative mathematics education as a rationale for thinking about such media for wicked problem education. The problem is set in epistemological terms: can normal science approaches contribute to post-normal science? By considering the basic arguments regarding wicked problem education, I focus on the discussion of a specific constructionist digital tool called ‘ChoiCo: Choices with Consequences’, designed to embed mathematical ideas and facilitate mathematical reasoning, yet be about grappling with wicked problems. The final section discusses student discourse to set the scene for what such reasoning might look like in the context of grappling with wicked problems.

Building a Restorative Agricultural Economy: Insights from a Case Study in Santa Catarina, Brazil

Agriculture is the most important economic sector and simultaneously the greatest threat to the ecosystem functions on which all complex life depends. It is therefore a logical starting point for developing a restorative economy. We must develop and disseminate agroecosystems capable of providing food security for all, while simultaneously restoring vital ecosystem processes degraded by conventional agriculture. We review 25 years of transdisciplinary work towards this goal on an agroecology project in Santa Rosa de Lima, Santa Catarina, Brazil and distill some key lessons for like-minded efforts. We apply the methods of Participatory Action Research and Post Normal Science to integrate the knowledge, insights and goals of farmers, diverse scientists, agricultural extensionists, and policymakers to design high-biodiversity silvopastoral systems and multi-function riparian forests capable of improving farmer livelihoods, and propose policies to support their adoption by aligning the interests of farmers and society. We explain the science underlying our project and document resulting improvements in farmer livelihoods and ecosystem services. We then examine the socioeconomic obstacles to disseminating our innovations and policies that might overcome them and describe our pragmatic approaches to working with policymakers. We conclude that integrating natural sciences, socio-economic analysis and politics are all necessary yet insufficient to promote the large-scale adoption of restorative agriculture. We contend that building a restorative economy will also require a fundamental extension of humanity’s moral values to the rest of nature, and use evolutionary science to support our views. Rather than offering a recipe for successful projects, our take-home message is that developing a restorative agricultural economy in an ever-evolving system is a continuous participatory process with no endpoint.

Conducting sustainability research in the anthropocene: toward a relational approach

Scholars and practitioners are urgently highlighting the need to apply a relational approach to effectively address societal crises. At the same time, little is known about the associated challenges, and there is little advice regarding how to operationalize this approach in sustainability science. Against this background, this article explores how we can break out of our current paradigms and approaches, and instead apply relational thinking, being, and acting in the way we conduct research. To achieve this, we systematically list all major research phases, and assess possible pathways for integrating a relational paradigm for each step. We show that moving toward a relational paradigm requires us to methodically question and redefine existing theories of change, concepts, and approaches, for instance by combining abductive reasoning, first-person inquiries, and decentering the human through critical complexity theory. Challenging mainstream thought, and daring to ask different questions in each step is crucial to ultimately shift scientific norms and systems. Hence, we offer a catalog of questions that may help to systematically integrate relational being, thinking, and acting into the process, as a tool for transforming current paradigms in research, and associated education and practice. Finally, we highlight the importance of further research to develop and refine our outcomes.

Application of ChatGPT in soil science research and the perceptions of soil scientists in Indonesia

Since its arrival in late November 2022, ChatGPT-3.5 has rapidly gained popularity and significantly impacted how research is planned, conducted, and published using a generative artificial intelligence approach. ChatGPT-4 was released four months later and became more popular in November 2023. However, there is little study about the perception of scientists of these chatbots, especially in soil science. This article presents the new findings of a brief research investigating soil scientists' responses and perceptions towards chatbots in Indonesia. This artificial intelligence application facilitates conversation-based interactions in text format. The study evaluated ten ChatGPT answers to fundamental questions in soil science, which has developed into a normal science with a mutually agreed-upon paradigm. The evaluation was carried out by seven soil scientists recognized for their expertise in Indonesia, using a scale of 1–100. In addition, a questionnaire was distributed to soil scientists at the National Research and Innovation Agency of the Republic of Indonesia (BRIN), universities, and Indonesian Soil Science Society (HITI) members to gauge their perception of ChatGPT's presence in the research field. The study results indicate that the scores of ChatGPT answers range from 82.99 to 92.24. ChatGPT-4 is better than both the paid and free versions of ChatGPT-3.5. There is no significant difference between the English and Indonesian versions of ChatGPT-4.0. However, the perception of general soil scientists about the level of trust is only 55%. Furthermore, 80% of soil scientists believe that chatbots can only be used as digital tools to assist in soil science research and cannot be used without the involvement of soil scientists.

Robert Millikan, Japanese internment, and eugenics

Robert A. Millikan (1868–1953) was the second American to win the Nobel Prize in physics. At the peak of his influence, no scientist save Einstein was more admired by the American public. Millikan, the head of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) during its first 24 years, oversaw its rapid growth into one of the leading scientific institutions of the world. However, in response to demands for social justice following the murder of George Floyd, Caltech launched an investigation into Millikan. Caltech reached a decision to strip Millikan of honors (such as the library named after him), following accusations from various sources that he was a sexist, racist, xenophobic, antisemitic, pro-eugenic Nazi sympathizer. In short, Caltech threw the book at him. This article analyzes two accusations against Millikan. The first of these accusations was published in Nature: that he collaborated to deprive Japanese Americans of their rights during their forced relocation to internment camps during the Second World War. An examination of original historical sources will show that this accusation is false. On the contrary, Millikan actively campaigned during the war to promote the rights of Japanese Americans. This article traces the stages of misrepresentation that led to current false beliefs about Millikan. In view of Millikan’s extraordinary position in American science, this misrepresentation is a cautionary tale. The article also treats Caltech’s central accusation against Millikan: he lent his name to “a morally reprehensible eugenics movement” that had been scientifically discredited in his time. The article considers the statements purporting to show that eugenics movement had been denounced by the scientific community by 1938. In a reversal of Caltech’s claims, all three of Caltech’s scientific witnesses against eugenics—including two Nobel laureates—were actually pro-eugenic to varying degrees. This article concludes that Millikan’s beliefs fell within acceptable scientific norms of his day.

Mapping science through editorial board interlocking: connections and distance between fields of knowledge and institutional affiliations

Research is a global enterprise underpinned by the general belief that findings need to be true to be considered scientific. In the complex system of scientific validation, editorial boards (EBs) play a fundamental role in guiding journals’ review process, which has led many stakeholders of sciences to metaphorically picture them as the “gatekeepers of knowledge.” In an attempt to address the academic structure that governs sciences through editorial board interlocking (EBI, the cross-presence of EB members in different journals) and social network analysis, the aim of this study is threefold: first, to map the connection between fields of knowledge through EBI; second, to visualize and empirically test the distance between social and general sciences; and third, to uncover the institutional structure (i.e., universities) that governs these connections. Our findings, based on the dataset collected through the Open Editors initiative for the journals indexed in the JCR, revealed a substantial level of collaboration between all fields, as suggested by the connections between EBs. However, there is a statistically significant difference between the weight of the edges and the path lengths connecting the fields of natural sciences to the fields of social sciences (compared to the connections within), indicating the development of different research cultures and invisible colleges in these two research areas. The results also show that a central group of US institutions dominates most journal EBs, indirectly suggesting that US scientific norms and values still prevail in all fields of knowledge. Overall, our study suggests that scientific endeavor is highly networked through EBs.

A medical language for climate discourse

Innovative communication theories propose that we understand messages not by decoding their meaning but by inferring what speakers intend to express. However scientifically accurate the messages climate scientists have put forward, the appropriate inferences may not have been drawn by most of their audiences. One of the main reasons may be that scientific metaphors allow for multiple interpretations, yet, because of their expressive power, they impact discourses disproportionately. Climate communication took a path of euphemistic scientific expressions partially due to the noble scientific norms of self-restraint and modesty, but the hidden implications of climate jargon distort the way non-experts think about the heating climate. Consequently, the current climate jargon hinders informed decisions about Earth’s life support systems. Changing the softened expressions of climate language, from the cool of basic research to the heat and compassion of medical contexts, may allow for more productive public and political debates – which may lead to more powerful policy solutions. Speaking and thinking in medical terms could turn the perception of worst case scenarios from hypotheticals or doomism to life-saving interventions. We typically start reducing fever before it gets out of control, let alone crosses a threshold of potential death. Instead of putting on a positivist mascara, a calm and serious discussion of safety measures in medical terms, for example, talking about climatic tipping cascades as metastases, could foster a more honest evaluation of the required legal and regulatory steps to keep our home planet habitable.

Judicial Judgment Standard of Generative Artificial Intelligence and Training Data from the Perspective of Fair Use

With the development of generative artificial intelligence, text and data mining has been put into more applications. However, as a technology for collecting and processing a large number of other works, it faces copyright infringement under the current legal system. As a step in the operation of artificial intelligence, text and data mining is to collect and process existing works and information to realize the behavior of knowledge "reproduction", thus promoting the utilization of knowledge and social innovation. Meanwhile, copyright exemption should be provided for its fair use system. The fair use system in the United States can give full play to the autonomy of judges in specific cases and flexibly identify fair use exemptions, while the copyright exception in Europe clarifies that text and data mining activities should be exempted under specific circumstances. Learning from both, China can not only break the closed fair use system, but also build an evaluation system of artificial intelligence infringement and benefit-sharing mechanism, so as to provide scientific norms for fair use and improve the development of artificial intelligence and big data industry in China.

The attitude of Korean and Indonesian scientists toward Merton’s scientific norms

The attitude of Korean and Indonesian scientists toward Merton’s scientific norms

Testimonial justification under epistemic conflict of interest

Can a hearer be rationally justified to have beliefs based on testimony alone when the source of his information is known to have conflicting epistemic goals? When it comes to belief justification, existing theories either recommend avoiding epistemic conflicts of interest or ignoring them. This is an important epistemological limitation. A theory that comes in degrees, capable of explaining what beliefs we are justified to hold and why, despite epistemic conflict of interest, is still lacking. Building on a game-theoretical approach, I suggest such a theory and argue that the hearer can justify some beliefs on testimony alone. This justification relies on an equilibrium concept, which is only reached in the long run. In addition, the hearer’s justified beliefs will always be less accurate than those held by the original source. For instance, assume the speaker is a climate scientist who has good reasons to believe that a 2∘\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$^{\\circ }$$\\end{document}C increase in temperature will lower the current global GDP by 10 percentage points. Under epistemic conflict of interest, a hearer will typically be justified to a belief close to that value, but not equal to it. The smaller the epistemic conflict of interest, the closer, on average, the hearer’s and speaker’s belief. These results highlight the importance of scientific norms which, in practice, are the embodiment of these equilibrium mechanisms and thus of scientific credibility.