Sociology Of Scientific Knowledge Research Articles

The eye of the beholder: how do public health researchers interpret regression coefficients? A qualitative study.

Calls for improved statistical literacy and transparency in population health research are widespread, but empirical accounts describing how researchers understand statistical methods are lacking. To address this gap, this study aimed to explore variation in researchers' interpretations and understanding of regression coefficients, and the extent to which these statistics are viewed as straightforward statements about health. Thematic analysis of qualitative data from 45 one-to-one interviews with academics from eight countries, representing 12 disciplines. Three concepts from the sociology of scientific knowledge and science studies aided analysis: Duhem's Paradox, the Agonistic Field, and Mechanical Objectivity. Some interviewees viewed regression as a process of discovering 'real' relationships, while others indicated that regression models are not direct representations, and others blended these perspectives. Regression coefficients were generally not viewed as being mechanically objective, instead interpretation was described as iterative, nuanced, and sometimes depending on prior understandings. Researchers reported considering numerous factors when interpreting and evaluating regression results, including: knowledge from outside the model, whether results are expected or unexpected, 'common-sense', technical limitations, study design, the influence of the researcher, the research question, data quality and data availability. Interviewees repeatedly highlighted the role of the analyst, reinforcing that it is researchers who answer questions and assign meaning, not models. Regression coefficients were generally not viewed as complete or authoritative statements about health. This contrasts with teaching materials wherein statistical results are presented as straightforward representations, subject to rule-based interpretations. In practice, it appears that regression coefficients are not understood as mechanically objective. Attempts to influence conduct and presentation of regression models in the population health sciences should be attuned to the myriad factors which inform their interpretation.

Animism and science in European perspective

The European tradition makes a sharp distinction between animism and science. On the basis of this distinction, either animism is reproved for failing to reach the heights of science, or science is reproved for failing to reach the heights of animism. In this essay, I draw on work in the history and philosophy and science, combined with a method from the sociology of scientific knowledge, to question the sharpness of this distinction. Along the way, I also take guidance from the research of North American Indigenous scholars. As it turns out, there is a rich, if largely overlooked, tradition of Aristotelian animism running through the history of modern European science, and this tradition sometimes resonates with Indigenous perspectives. By challenging the entrenched distinction between animism and science, I aim to help reconcile ongoing tensions between Indigenous and European scientific groups, and so strengthen prospects for their mutually beneficial cooperation.

Copyright, Ghosts, Information

Abstract In 1985, Marianne Mele Hall, the chairman of the Copyright Royalty Tribunal, resigned after a controversy surrounding her role in writing Lawrence Hafstad’s book, Foundations of Sand (1982), which included several racist passages. Although at first she claimed to have been the co-author, when the scandal broke she tried to avoid the political controversy by describing her role as a ghost writer or an editor. While the effort was to no avail and she had to resign, it nevertheless prompted an interesting epistolary conversation between the information scientist, Eugene Garfield, and the sociologist of science, Robert K. Merton, about the differences between the two terms. This essay looks at that correspondence and situates it alongside the emergence of the information industry affecting copyright.

„THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE“ (SSK) ZWISCHEN EPISTEMISCHEM SKEPTIZISMUS UND SOZIALER HERMENEUTIK DER WISSENSCHAFT. EINE KRITISCHE EINFÜHRUNG IN DAS SSK-FORSCHUNGSPROGRAMM

In this paper considerations are made regarding the question of whether the SSK (“Sociology of Scientific Knowledge”) research program represents a skeptical view of scientific knowledge. In this regard, I will try to defend the SSK against the objection of skepticism. The paper includes five parts. After a brief historical introduction about the development of the SSK research program, in the next two parts of the article the terms used here with reference to the SSK research program and epistemic skepticism are more precisely defined and critically discussed. In the fourth point, the attempt is made to illustrate the investigation undertaken here using the example of the so-called “regress of the experimenters”. The fifth part presents the basic theses of social hermeneutics that SSK proposes regarding scientific knowledge. The closing remarks offer me the opportunity to briefly summarize the most important points and, based on this, to make my suggestion for understanding the SSK.

The humanist challenge to China’s dominant policies for popularizing science and technology (PST)

ABSTRACT In the early 2000s, a group of Chinese scholars who often refer to themselves as scientific humanists (科学文化人, or 科学人文主义者) launched a critique of dominant approaches to science popularization known as ‘kepu’ or science popularization (科普). Their scientific humanism connects traditional Chinese ideas about scientism and humanism to Western philosophy and STS, in particular the sociology of scientific knowledge. Challenging science popularization policies, the scientific humanists in 2001 launched the so-called Critical School of Science Communication (CSSC), which combines scientific humanism with STS approaches to science communication, namely critical public understanding of science and public engagement with science. The CSSC criticized the Popularization of Science and Technology (PST) policy adopted by China’s government and main scientific institutions to promote her technoscientific and technocratic visions. The CSSC is in favor of science communication, rather than science popularization, aimed at reconciling science with the humanities, stimulating genuine dialogue between science and the public, and ultimately increasing civic empowerment. CSSC proponents have engaged in a series of public interventions where they challenged dominant views on the social role of technoscience and PST. China’s explicit emphasis on, even legislative commitment to PST provided a unique context to which the CSSC responded by appropriating scientific humanism, itself an assemblage of Chinese ideas and STS theory, and STS-related concepts about science communication.

The current state of criminology in Chile: between amateurism and professionalisation

This paper explores the criminological scientific community in Chile from 1990 to 2020. We use the sociology of scientific knowledge as a conceptual framework to apply to the Chilean criminology development stage. We analyse the criminological community using social network analysis based on the co-affiliation networks of researchers (N=62) affiliated with research centres, think tanks and universities producing criminological knowledge. We describe the actors involved in the network of researchers and identify the clusters shaping the main areas of the country’s production and dissemination of criminological research. The findings reveal a low density between scholars in the network; the existence of central research topics related to citizen security and criminal law; the presence of clusters (for example, juvenile justice and prison studies, among others), and areas that are emerging in the production of criminological knowledge in Chile (cybercrime, crimmigration). We conclude that criminology in Chile is still in the amateur stage. However, there are signs of growing professionalisation in the discipline.

Scientific Practices as Social Knowledge

ABSTRACT Practice-based philosophy of science has gradually arisen in the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) and science and technology studies (STS) during the past decades. It studies science as an ensemble of practices and theorising as one of these practices. A recent study has shown how the practice-based approach can be methodologically justified with reference to Peirce and Dewey. In this article, I will explore one consequence of that notion: science, as practice, is necessarily social. I will disambiguate five different senses in which science is social. First, science presupposes language, which is essentially social. Second, practices, including science, are adaptations of the behaviour of an organism to an environment, of which other organisms are a part. Third, practices, including science, are public and hence shareable. Fourth, scientific knowledge can serve as a vehicle of social and moral reform. Fifth, scientific knowledge can be applied to improve the human condition. This fivefold result bears on the problem of realism.

Boris Hessen (1893‒1936), „Społeczne i ekonomiczne korzenie Principiów Newtona” i paradoksalna historia historiografii nauki

Artykuł komentuje słynny referat Borisa Hessena „Społeczne i ekonomiczne korzenie Principiów Newtona” przedstawiony podczas II Międzynarodowego Kongresu Historii Nauki i Techniki w Londynie w 1931 r. Komentarz ten czyniony jest w świetle rozważań z metodologii historiografii nauki, w tym autorskich idei hermeneutyki badawczej i hermeneutyki badawczej historiografii nauki, biografii Borisa Hessena, historii historiografii nauki, historii nauki oraz historii naukoznawstwa. Artykuł syntetycznie przedstawia hermeneutykę badawczą Hessena i wskazuje jej zasadnicze wady. Opisuje recepcję referatu Hessena na Zachodzie: zarówno szerzej znaną pozytywną recepcję (bernaliści i ich następcy, m.in. zwolennicy marksistowskich badań nauki i społecznej historii nauki), jak i o wiele mniej znaną negatywną recepcję (członkowie (Brytyjskiego) Towarzystwa na rzecz Wolności w Nauce, członkowie Harvardzkiej grupy J.B. Conanta Kształcenia Ogólnego z Zakresu Nauk Empirycznych). Przedstawia także zmienne losy recepcji myśli Hessena w ZSSR i Rosji w latach 1930–2020. Wskazuje również różne historiograficzne mity związane z „Borisem Hessenem”, w tym mit jakoby polskie naukoznawstwo powstało później lub w tym samym czasie co rosyjskie naukovedenie. Ułomność hermeneutyki badawczej Hessena, z jednej strony, i recepcja jego poglądów na Zachodzie oraz w ZSSR i w Rosji od lat 30. XX wieku do lat 20. XXI wieku, w tym mity historiograficzne związane z Hessenem, z drugiej strony, pokazują jak paradoksalna może być historia historiografii nauki i dowodzą konieczności pielęgnowania zdolności krytycznego myślenia wśród badaczy interpretujących naukę (historyków nauki, filozofów nauki, socjologów wiedzy naukowej itp.).

Does Post-truth Expand or Restrict Political Choice? Politics, Planning, and Expertise in a Post-truth Environment

Abstract Steve Fuller has replied to my critique of his endorsement of a post-truth epistemology. I trace the divergence in our approach to social epistemology by examining our distinct responses to the principle of symmetry in the sociology of scientific knowledge. Fuller has extended the concept of symmetry and challenged the field to embrace a post-truth condition that flattens the difference between experts and the public. By contrast, I have criticized the concept of symmetry for policing the field to rule ideology critique out of court. I argue that a focus on post-truth populism obscures the role of counter-elites and ideologies that restrict political choice. A better way to promote democracy would be to support minority positions within science that promise to open up suppressed political possibilities and to seek the coordinated use of different disciplines to address significant public problems.

The strong program in embodied cognitive science

AbstractA popular trend in the sciences of the mind is to understand cognition as embodied, embedded, enactive, ecological, and so on. While some of the work under the label of “embodied cognition” takes for granted key commitments of traditional cognitive science, other projects coincide in treating embodiment as the starting point for an entirely different way of investigating all of cognition. Focusing on the latter, this paper discusses how embodied cognitive science can be made more reflexive and more sensitive to the implications that our views of cognition have for how we understand scientific practice, including our own theorizing about cognition. Inspired by the “strong programme” in the sociology of scientific knowledge, I explore the prospect of an analogously “strong” program in embodied cognitive science. I first draw from Dewey’s transactional notion of “situation” to identify a broad sense in which embodied cognitive science takes cognition, as an embodied phenomenon, to be situated. I then sketch a perspective I call situated reflexivity, which extends the Deweyan analysis to understand scientific practice in the same terms, and thereby illustrates what research in line with a strong program in embodied cognitive science can look like. This move, I propose, has the potential of setting up a new inquiry situation that makes more salient the embodiment of scientific practice and that, through this, can help organize our own embodied cognitive activities as we try to make sense of scientific work, including our own.

Perception and Observation in the Strong Program in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge

The article analyzes a connection between empiricism and the Strong Program in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (D. Bloor, B. Barnes, J. Henry). I use Strong Program’s theories of perception and observation in science as cases to demonstrate this link. The main points of my argument are the following. First, characteristic problems of the empiricist tradition are at the focus of the Strong Program. Second, relations between the Strong Program and empiricist tradition are complex. While proponents of the Strong Program criticize classical empiricism of Bacon and logical empiricism, they employ new empiricism of Mary Hesse’s network model as a crucial theoretical resource for their social theory of knowledge. Third, The Strong Program uses Hesse’s theory as a model for the renewal of the sociology of (scientific) knowledge. A key point of the analysis is that it is reasonable to add to the Mannheimian and Wittgensteinian traditions in the sociology of knowledge another empiricist one as exemplified in the Strong Program. I conclude the article by stressing interdisciplinary tendencies in this empiricist sociology of scientific knowledge.

Wittgenstein on Intention and Action in the Perspective of Contemporary Approaches in Social Theory

A sequential reconstruction of Wittgenstein’s notes on action and intention (presented in this article) aims to stimulate a further discussion of the productivity of using Wittgenstein’s notes on action theory within social theory (and within research in moral philosophy and philosophy of law). It provides as an illustration of Wittgenstein’s consistent commitment to the principle of contextualism (suggesting an inextricable bond of social and philosophical concepts and their inclusion into various forms of life and linguistic practices). In terms of the principle of contextualism, the article examines numerous attempts to incorporate the philosophy of the late Wittgenstein into social and related research (Albert Ogien, Chantal Mouffe, ethnomethodology, Strong Programme in the sociology of scientific knowledge, the sociology of color).

The Modified Imitation Game: A Method for Measuring Interactional Expertise.

The study of the sociology of scientific knowledge distinguishes between contributory and interactional experts. Contributory experts have practical expertise—they can “walk the walk.” Interactional experts have internalized the tacit components of expertise—they can “talk the talk” but are not able to reliably “walk the walk.” Interactional expertise permits effective communication between contributory experts and others (e.g., laypeople), which in turn facilitates working jointly toward shared goals. Interactional expertise is attained through long-term immersion into the expert community in question. To assess interactional expertise, researchers developed the imitation game—a variant of the Turing test—to test whether a person, or a particular group, possesses interactional expertise of another. The imitation game, which has been used mainly in sociology to study the social nature of knowledge, may also be a useful tool for researchers who focus on cognitive aspects of expertise. In this paper, we introduce a modified version of the imitation game and apply it to examine interactional expertise in the context of blindness. Specifically, we examined blind and sighted individuals’ ability to imitate each other in a street-crossing scenario. In Phase I, blind and sighted individuals provided verbal reports of their thought processes associated with crossing a street—once while imitating the other group (i.e., as a pretender) and once responding genuinely (i.e., as a non-pretender). In Phase II, transcriptions of the reports were judged as either genuine or imitated responses by a different set of blind and sighted participants, who also provided the reasoning for their decisions. The judges comprised blind individuals, sighted orientation-and-mobility specialists, and sighted individuals with infrequent socialization with blind individuals. Decision data were analyzed using probit mixed models for signal-detection-theory indices. Reasoning data were analyzed using natural-language-processing (NLP) techniques. The results revealed evidence that interactional expertise (i.e., relevant tacit knowledge) can be acquired by immersion in the group that possesses and produces the expert knowledge. The modified imitation game can be a useful research tool for measuring interactional expertise within a community of practice and evaluating practitioners’ understanding of true experts.

Why do Environmental and Ecological Economics Diverge?

Environmental economics and ecological economics became established scientific fields as a result of the growth and the success of the environmental movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Using the strong programme in the sociology of scientific knowledge and the general theory of scientific/intellectual movements, this article compares four pairs of scholars (two pairs of scholars appropriated for these fields and fields' founders during the emergence and establishment of the fields). The article depicts how their institutional, ideological and scientific backgrounds contributed to the divergence of these fields. Practitioners of environmental economics and ecological economics were influenced by different strands of the environmental movement. Environmental economics has epistemological and institutional links with environmentalism and ecological economics with ecologism. Different types of interdisciplinarity were used in these fields—a bridge building type of interdisciplinarity in the case of environmental economics and a restructuring and integrative in the case of ecological economics.

Stop studying “fake news” (we can still fight against disinformation in the media)

The problem of “fake news” has received considerable attention both in public discourse and in scholarship. However, many have argued that the term should be avoided for ideological reasons or because it lacks clarity. At the same time, a growing body of literature investigates “fake news” empirically. We complement this discussion by reflecting on epistemological and methodological problems with the term “fake news” and the implications for possible solutions to the problem of disinformation such as automatic detection and increased media literacy. Based on the principle of symmetry established in the sociology of scientific knowledge, we show that a classification of messages according to the researcher’s assessment of their truthfulness can lead to biased or tautological explanations. We argue that many researchers commit themselves to the truth or falsehood of messages in cases where they should not and avoid such a commitment when it is necessary.

Self-Contradiction in Faculty's Talk about Writing: Making and Unmaking Autonomous Models of Literacy

In Writing Across the Curriculum/Writing in the Disciplines and Academic Literacies, researchers have produced compelling evidence of the disjunction between faculty members’ assertions that good writing is universal—i.e., the autonomous model of literacy—and faculty’s own tacit practice of discipline-specific conventions. In studies of race and language in education, scholars have identified disconnections between what teachers profess to value—e.g., students’ right to their own language—and how they actually grade. Contradictions are a natural part of any ideology, and these are commonly understood to demonstrate the resilience of the autonomous model. In this article, however, I introduce a set of theoretical tools from the sociology of scientific knowledge—namely, the concept of interpretative repertoires and of variability in participants’ interpretations as an analytic resource—that can reveal cracks in the autonomous model. Although these tools are over thirty years old, they have not circulated widely in literacy and composition studies. I apply the tools to text-based interviews with two faculty writers who had espoused universal “rules” for writing. After identifying apparent disconnections between the rules and their own practices or those of other writers with whom they worked, I present this evidence to them and analyze their explanations: They maintain that the rules still apply, but their accounts are complex, shifting, and self-contradictory. These case studies reveal, rather than its strength, the inherent instability of the autonomous model. Ultimately, I hope that these research tools can, in conjunction with systemic efforts, aid in dismantling the construct of “good writing” and its inherent privileging of white language practices.

The Need for Multidisciplinary Research within the History and Theory of Homeopathy.

The controversial issue of homeopathy's scientificity will, in all probability, not be settled by means of clinical trials alone, as long as uncertainty or ignorance about methodological, philosophical, and socio-economical essentials prevail on both sides of the argument. Rather than uncritically adopt the standards of the currently predominant paradigm, homeopathy should not forget its roots, peculiarities, and self-conception. Contrary to conventional medicine, it is based on a teleological image of humanity, a holistic and sustainable approach towards curing sickness, and an up-to-date concept of medical theory in terms of healing arts. However, under today's frameworked conditions of industrialisation, commercialisation and commodification, the strengths of homeopathy tend to be disregarded or even attacked, and a special kind of reductionist and materialist rationality, compatible with expanding markets and profits, is preferably facilitated. To reveal and demonstrate these developments and relationships on a scientific level, there is a need for multidisciplinary research on the part of the humanities, such as history and theory of medicine, history and theory of science, history of economics, sociology of scientific knowledge, and philosophy.

Using crowdsourced mathematics to understand mathematical practice

Records of online collaborative mathematical activity provide us with a novel, rich, searchable, accessible and sizeable source of data for empirical investigations into mathematical practice. In this paper we discuss how the resources of crowdsourced mathematics can be used to help formulate and answer questions about mathematical practice, and what their limitations might be. We describe quantitative approaches to studying crowdsourced mathematics, reviewing work from cognitive history (comparing individual and collaborative proofs); social psychology (on the prospects for a measure of collective intelligence); human–computer interaction (on the factors that led to the success of one such project); network analysis (on the differences between collaborations on open research problems and known-but-hard problems); and argumentation theory (on modelling the argument structures of online collaborations). We also give an overview of qualitative approaches, reviewing work from empirical philosophy (on explanation in crowdsourced mathematics); sociology of scientific knowledge (on conventions and conversations in online mathematics); and ethnography (on contrasting conceptions of collaboration). We suggest how these diverse methods can be applied to crowdsourced mathematics and when each might be appropriate.

Objektivní poznání v kontextu naturalizace filosofie

In the paper, we analyze several key philosophical approaches to objective knowledge (Descartes, Kant), which we described as “speculative”, that is theoretical and independent of experience. Our interpretation is based on the argument that the demarcation between speculative philosophy and empirical science (which is at the same time the boundary of objective knowledge) has been gradually reduced and that philosophy has been naturalized. We claim that Popper’s transcendental thesis was extended by Quine and his appeal to the naturalization of philosophy, and Bloor accepted naturalism as one of the premises for his sociology of scientific knowledge. The culmination of this tendency is in empirical and experimental philosophy. In conclusion, we will introduce experimental philosophy, which has developed significantly in recent years, as one of the ways how to approach the question of “objective knowledge” by combining speculative approaches and empirically acquired data.

Objectivity in contexts: withholding epistemic judgement as a strategy for mitigating collective bias

In this paper I discuss and develop the risk account of scientific objectivity, which I have recently introduced, contrasting it to some alternatives. I then use the account in order to analyse a practice that is relatively common in anthropology, in the history of science, and in the sociology of scientific knowledge: withholding epistemic judgement. I argue that withholding epistemic judgement on the beliefs one is studying can be a relatively efficient strategy against collective bias in these fields. However, taking into account the criticisms presented against the strategy, I also argue that it is a usable strategy only when the distance between the researchers and their ideas, and the people and ideas being studied, is significant enough.