Production Of New Scientific Knowledge Research Articles

Leaps of Knowledge

Chagas Disease is the main cause of heart failure in the Western Hemisphere. Initially restricted to the American continent, the people's migration to the Northern Hemisphere caused the disease to become present in the five continents. A scientific revolution occurs when an important discovery removes an obstacle to the serial production of new scientific knowledge of social interest. Such a revolution creates a paradigm accepted after experimental analysis and verification by scientists investigating the subject. An example of a leap in knowledge was the discovery of the protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi, its invertebrate and vertebrate hosts, an agent of a new human disease recognized by Dr. Carlos Chagas at the beginning of the twentieth century. Certainly, the seminal work of Carlos Chagas inseminates enthusiasm that is essential to disturb the minds of scientists who produce leaps of knowledge about recondite aspects of Chagas disease at the University of Brasilia.

The “Cartographic Impulse” and Its Epistemic Gains in the Process of Iteratively Mapping M87’s Black Hole

After the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration released in April 2019 the first empirical images of a black hole, an astrophysical object previously thought “unseeable,” much of the public discourse has approached these images as straightforward visual depictions of a black hole. This article challenges this view by showing that the first images of a black hole went beyond merely making an invisible cosmic object visible and that the images published in April 2019 were just the first in a series of black hole images the researchers continue producing. Drawing primarily on Sybille Krämer’s concept of the cartographic impulse, the article demonstrates that the Event Horizon Telescope images are, first and foremost, epistemic tools. These epistemic tools enable researchers to actively explore various physical aspects and dynamic properties of a black hole’s immediate environment and test theoretical predictions about it, thus making this elusive environment empirically knowable. To demonstrate this, the article analyses the mapping operations that combined automated algorithmic procedures with expert human judgment and through which these images were produced, read, and interpreted. It also examines how the different Event Horizon Telescope images relate to one another, which particular epistemic functions they fulfil in the research context, under which conditions, and with which limitations, thus tracing how these images facilitate the production of new scientific knowledge about black holes.

Ethics Expertise between Imagined Publics and Imagined Scientists

The notion of value-neutral or at least independent scientific expertise is mainly based on the distinction between statements of facts and value judgement. The functioning of ethics committees, in particular bioethics committees, demonstrates that this separation is doomed to fail. These committees are supposed to regulate the production of new scientific knowledge through appeal to extra-scientific, non-epistemic values. In making regulatory judgments, the committees find themselves on the edge of a tension between `cognitive democracy' and epistemic inequality. Сommittees have a duty to represent the interests of the public, protecting its dignity and freedoms from possible abuse from researchers. At the same time, the committees, by conducting an “internal” judgment on the ethical permissibility of research projects, remain part of scientific groups and institutions. However, members of ethics committees often imagine academic colleagues as having an incomplete, deficient view of the public good. The committees find themselves in a field of conflict between the epistemic deficits of the imagined public and the ethical deficits of imagined scientists. However, counteracting this double deficit logic can take the form of an ethical abstinence that shuts down the possibilities of value-laden imagination. Moreover, such withdrawal itself is ideologically engaged. The program of `critique of forms of life' can be seen as setting the overall perspective of combining representation with the possibilities of normative judgment. This combination is particularly relevant in light of the ongoing debates about moral enhancement and human genome editing, since both areas of biomedical inquiry involve biotechnological and social transformation of human forms of life.

Contextual Vulnerability Should Guide Fair Subject Selection in Xenotransplantation Clinical Trials

Contextual Vulnerability Should Guide Fair Subject Selection in Xenotransplantation Clinical Trials

Interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity

The production of new scientific knowledge and practical solutions to complex problems require increasing amounts of interdisciplinary collaboration, while requirements for transdisciplinary cooperation have recently likewise become more frequent. In practice, however, they are rarely implemented adequately; what occurs instead is merely multidisci­plinary collaboration. True implementation of inter- and/or transdisciplinary collaboration is often met with certain difficulties and obstacles: problems due to limited disciplinary competence, problems due to protecting knowledge and power, the problem of competence required for inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration, complexity problems, method­ological problems and problems caused by differences in cultural traditions. It is necessary to acquire clear general defi­nitions of the concepts of multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity, to define and implement general guidelines for the development of multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary practice and to develop a new general culture of collaboration in research and practice of complex problem-solving.

The promising drugs included in WHO’s Solidarity Project: a choice based in scientific knowledge and institutional competencies

BACKGROUND In March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched the Solidarity Program, probably the largest global initiative to encourage and support research in four promising drugs, named Remdesivir, Hydroxychloroquine, β Interferon and the combination Lopinavir / Ritonavir, to reduce the mortality of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).OBJECTIVES Considering the potential impact of Solidarity Program to restrain the current pandemic, the present study aims to investigate whether it was designed upon indicators of scientific productivity, defined as the level of the production of new scientific knowledge and of the institutional capabilities, estimated in terms of scientific publications and technological agreements.METHODS The scientific documents on Alphacoronavirus, Betacoronavirus, Gammacoronavirus and Coronavirus were retrieved from Scopus database while the technological agreements on coronavirus were obtained through Cortellis. As for the institutions and countries, we have considered the data on author’s affiliations in both set of data. For comparison, we included the analysis of documents related with other drugs or therapies, such as vaccines and antibodies, which were listed in a Clarivate’s report on coronaviruses research.FINDINGS Most of the analysis refers to documents on Coronavirus, the largest group. The number of documents related to WHO’s drugs are almost five times higher than in the other groups. This subset of documents involves the largest and most diverse number of institutions and countries. As for agreements, we observed a smaller number of institutions involved in it, suggesting differences between countries in terms of technical and human capabilities to develop basic and/or clinical research on coronavirus and to develop new forms or products to treat or to prevent the disease.MAIN CONCLUSIONS Hence, the results shown in this study illustrate that decisions taken by an international scientific body, as WHO, were mainly based in scientific knowledge and institutional competencies.

Empowering young people with climate and ocean science: Five strategies for adults to consider

Young people are the world leaders of the future, and today are emerging as current advocates of change calling for climate and ocean action. Many young people are increasingly aware, concerned, and overwhelmed about the impacts of climate and ocean change. However, current institutional and academic structures, alongside the challenges of growing up today - including social injustice, climate anxiety, nature disconnectedness, and the proliferation of fake news on climate and ocean science - limit young people’s opportunity and agency to protect their future from these impacts. It is clear from the nature of these challenges that the production of new scientific knowledge alone is not enough to support, prepare, and empower young people to cope with climate change now and in into the future. This Perspective outlines actions, under the context of for the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030), that that can support and empower young people with science and enable them to actively shape the sustainability of Earth’s climate and the ocean. Based on advances in recent research and transdisciplinary efforts, we present five actionable strategies for programmes and initiatives to engage young people in climate and ocean literacy towards shaping their sustainable future: 1) inclusion of diverse voices; 2) active dialogue-based science learning; 3) connection to nature; 4) critical thinking skills; and 5) co-created visions of a sustainable future. These five strategies can help to prepare young people with enhanced knowledge, skills and experiences, and strengthen the agency needed to meet the global climate and ocean challenges they are inheriting. We show how these strategies can be implemented during the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, which aims to enhance capacity-building and foster transformative solutions for ocean sustainability. We propose that together, and synergistically, these strategies can equip and empower young people to have a say in shaping their sustainable future.

Technological change in the production of new scientific knowledge: a second look

ABSTRACT This paper presents and explains an approach for measuring technological change in the production of new scientific knowledge. The paper expands our previous work on this topic. Our approach is illustrated by using as an example new scientific journal publications from the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology. The empirical findings are consistent with the expectation that resource constraints will cause a breakdown in the process of creating new scientific knowledge and with the evidence that scientific research has been less productive in recent decades.

Simultaneous Pursuit of Discovery and Invention in the US Department of Energy

The division of “basic” and “applied” research is embedded in federal R&D policy, exemplified by the separation of science and technology in the organizational structure of the US Department of Energy (DOE). In this work, we consider a branch of DOE that shows potential to operate across this boundary: the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E). We construct a novel dataset of nearly 4,000 extramural financial awards given by DOE from 2010 to 2015, primarily to businesses and universities. We collect the early knowledge outputs of these awards from Web of Science and the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Compared to similar awards from other parts of DOE, ARPA-E awards are more likely to jointly produce both a publication and a patent, with at least 5 times higher odds. ARPA-E awards have been productive in creating new technology, without a detrimental effect on the production of new scientific knowledge. This observation suggests the unity of research activities which are often considered separate: that which produces discoveries and that which produces inventions.

Spatial distribution of scientific activities: An exploratory analysis of Brazil, 2000-10

The literature analyzing the spatial distribution of scientific and technological production in Brazil identifies differences in the regional distribution of scientific and technological resources. In this paper, we contribute to this discussion, by analyzing the dynamics of the production of new scientific knowledge in the states that contributed the most to national scientific production in the period 2000–10: Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais and Rio Grande do Sul, also known as the ‘scientific quartet’. Our hypothesis is that even with federal policies aimed at the expansion and decentralization of the production of new scientific knowledge, this production is still strongly anchored in the ‘scientific quartet’. We further identify a concentration of scientific production in three major areas of knowledge: agricultural, biological and health sciences.

Essays on the Production and Commercialization of New Scientific Knowledge: Dissertation Overview

Scientific research frequently generates tremendous economic value. Yet, this value tends to be elusive and public and private organizations often struggle to obtain returns from their investment in science. This dissertation, composed of three essays, examines persistent challenges to the production and commercialization of new scientific knowledge. The first essay of the dissertation describes simultaneous discoveries and their potential as a research tool for social science. It also introduces the first systematic and automated method to generate a list of such events. The resulting dataset of 578 recent simultaneous discoveries can be used to investigate a number of questions, including the impact of the discovery environment, by using them to conduct the first “twin studies” of new knowledge. As an example, the second essay investigates the relative impact of universities and firms on science-based invention by examining 39 discoveries made simultaneously in academia and in industry. As compared to universities, the results indicate that firms amplify the technological impact of new scientific knowledge. The third essay of the dissertation, coauthored with Fiona Murray and Joshua Gans, explores tradeoffs associated with collaboration in the production of new scientific knowledge. Specifically, we find that collaboration is not only associated with higher-quality output, it is also associated with lower individual productivity as well as challenges surrounding the allocation of credit. Taken together, the three essays examine important challenges associated with the production and commercialization of new scientific knowledge — thus providing insights about the drivers of economic value from public and private investment in science.

Music and the emergence of experimental science in early modern Europe

The seventeenth century witnessed major advances in physics and experimental science. This paper argues that while the role of new visual technologies (e.g. the microscope) has been well studied, less attention has been paid to acoustic technologies in early modern natural philosophy. In particular, I attend to the relationship between making music, a specific form of organised sound mediated through instruments, and the production of new scientific knowledge. On the one hand, this relationship developed in the context of acoustics, a new discipline first mapped out by Francis Bacon. On the other hand, music’s relationship to natural philosophy was also more fundamental, since harmony was understood as an organising principle of the universe, the laws of musical strings providing a model for other forms of vibrative motion. I also show the importance of musical training for Galileo’s experiments and the significance of harmony for Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke.

Issues in the analysis of co-authorship networks

Scientific collaboration is a complex phenomenon that improves the sharing of competences and the production of new scientific knowledge. Social Network Analysis is often used to describe the scientific collaboration patterns defined by co-authorship relationships. Different phases of the analysis of collaboration are related to: data collection, network boundary setting, relational data matrix definition, data analysis and interpretation of results. The aim of this paper is to point out some issues that arise in these different phases, highlighting: (i) the use of local archives versus international bibliographic databases; (ii) the use of different approaches for setting boundaries in a whole-network; (iii) the definition of a co-authorship data matrix (binary and weighted ties) and (iv) the analysis and the interpretation of network measures for co-authorship data. We discuss the different choices that can be made in these phases within an illustrative example on real data which is referred to scientific collaboration among researchers affiliated to an academic institution. In particular, we compare global and actor-level network measures computed from binary and weighted co-authorship networks in different disciplines.

Science-driven integrated river basin management: a mirage?

The European Union Water Framework Directive (WFD) represents a new approach to the management of water across Europe. As part of the implementation of the WFD, integrated, catchment-scale plans for the protection and restoration of aquatic ecosystems must be developed. These plans need to be supported by new science, focused on understanding the general modes of behaviour of complex aquatic ecosystems, and the fundamental principles that govern this behaviour. This requires the collaborative production of new scientific knowledge, drawing on expertise from multiple academic disciplines, and refocusing on larger spatial and longer temporal scales. To mobilise existing scientific knowledge, and to produce new knowledge that is effectively adopted in policy and practice, scientists and managers must also develop collaborative partnerships involving the co-production and bidirectional exchange of knowledge. However, many personal and institutional barriers currently limit the development of such partnerships. Particular issues surround individual willingness to step outside disciplinary comfort zones, and the role of professional norms, rewards and value systems. The lack of training and support for individual knowledge-brokers, who work to develop these partnerships at the interface between science and management, is also a limiting factor. Even with such collaborative partnerships in place between scientists, and between scientists and managers, scientific knowledge will only ever be one contributor to the decision-making processes occurring within the WFD. Scientific knowledge will compete alongside issues of personal and institutional values, of moral judgements, of equity and of social justice in the consensus-building processes occurring within decision-making fora. The potential for, and the limits of, scientific knowledge to support the implementation of the WFD should be clearly recognised.

The public way to peer-review

There is a substantial divergence between the standards of integrity associated with "good science" and the problems imposed by the conflict of interest on research, specially in the biomedical field. There are at least as many ways in which information may be altered and the production of new scientific knowledge may be affected as there are links that can be established between researchers, private companies, and editors and staff of the specialized press. The pressures resulting from this high number of connections can affect all stages of research, from trial design to data analysis, from result publishing and dissemination to who will be the author of the articles.

The Scientific Productivity of Nations

A primary goal of the sociology of science is to understand the influence of social processes on the production of new scientific knowledge. There are three aspects of scientific knowledge that are generally considered important. First is its actual cognitive content. During the last 15 years the most emphasis has been placed on this dimension: understanding how social processes influence the construction of the actual cognitive content of science.1 Second is the foci of scientific attention, or how social variables influence which problems scientists decide to investigate. This has been a concern of sociologists of science since Merton's classic study of seventeenth-century English science.2 Third is the rate of scientific advance or how social, cultural and economic variables influence the amount of new knowledge produced. Although Merton's analysis in 1938 also dealt with the problem, in recent years relatively little attention has been paid to this aspect of the growth of scientific knowledge. We address this, using international data sets with nations as the unit of analysis. In an interesting report recently published in Science, Robert May has shown that there are great inequalities in the amount of science produced by various nations.3 Currently, the United States alone produces more than one third of the world's science, and the overwhelming majority is produced by a relatively small number of wealthy countries. It is also clear that which countries contribute the most to scientific knowledge is not a constant. It is generally accepted by historians of science that the centre of science was Italy in the sixteenth century, England in the second half of the seventeenth century, France around 1800, Germany around 1840, and the United States since 1920.4 Some people are concerned that in the future the United States may lose its current scientific preeminence. We will review theories which attempt to explain how national scientific productivity is influenced by social, cultural and economic forces, and present evidence enabling us to evaluate their adequacy empirically.

The movement of younger scientists into and out of the United States from 1967 to 1980: some aspects of the international movement of scientific knowledge.

A CONnNUOUS movement of scientific knowledge and of individual scientists from one country to another is indispensable to the productivity of scientific work. Many scientists and public institutions throughout the world are apprehensive lest reductions in this international movement are having a significantly deleterious effect upon science, and that the threat to the future is even more grave. The effect of diminished international movement by younger scientists especially is a ground for critical reflection. Since the Second World War the flow of scientists into and out of the United States has been a major element of such movements. It is therefore of great interest to inquire into trends in recent years and into the causes of the changes which have occurred. Such an inquiry must consist in part of the analysis of the numbers of scientists of various countries who accept postdoctoral appointments in other countries? Such data as are at present available are inadequate and the validity of any analysis of the existing information is limited. Adequate statistical information would be only the beginning of an inquiry since it is the effect of international movement on the production of new scientific knowledge that should be the central object of such studies. However, even if the effects of movement on the productivity of science could be estimated precisely, this alone would not provide an adequate basis for deciding the optimal amount of movement. For one thing, the financial resources available for the support of movements of scientists from one country to another must compete with alternative uses of those resources for scientific purposes. It is by no means certain that a given amount of money would not be better spent on research done in their own country by the nationals of that particular count ry-or on the training of its young scientists--than on spending the same sum to send American scientists

Medical Work: Accommodating a Body of Knowledge to Practice

Abstract It is the purpose of this paper to examine the relationship between the production of new scientific knowledge and the application of that knowledge to medical practice. The paper focuses, first, on the growth of the scientific enterprise and argues that the expanding medical division of labor is the profession's accommodation to the increased size of its body of knowledge. The paper goes on to discuss the emergent role of a new category of workers in that division of labor, clinical researchers. The second major focus of the paper concerns the relationship among medical specialists, who must allocate the new scientific discoveries among themselves. The final portion of the paper identifies the components of the process which accomplishes the task of distributing medical work among the specialty communities. The issue of primary concern to this discussion, which appears only as an underlying theme until the concluding section, is the effect of this allocation process on the structure of the medical profession and the type of medical care it delivers.