Tag Archives: Reproducibility

Two cultures: the open science movement and the reproducibility movement

It’s C. P. Snow who comes to mind on seeing the words ‘science and two cultures’ (for anyone unfamiliar with the lecture and/or book see The Two Cultures Wikipedia entry).

This Sept. 14, 2020 news item on phys.org puts forward an entirely different concept concerning two cultures and science (Note: Links have been removed),

In the world of scientific research today, there’s a revolution going on—over the last decade or so, scientists across many disciplines have been seeking to improve the workings of science and its methods.

To do this, scientists are largely following one of two paths: the movement for reproducibility and the movement for open science. Both movements aim to create centralized archives for data, computer code and other resources, but from there, the paths diverge. The movement for reproducibility calls on scientists to reproduce the results of past experiments to verify earlier results, while open science calls on scientists to share resources so that future research can build on what has been done, ask new questions and advance science.

A Sept. 14, 2020 Indiana University (IU) news release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, explains the research findings, which unexpectedly (for me) led to some conclusions about diversity with regard to gender in particular,

Now, an international research team led by IU’s Mary Murphy, Amanda Mejia, Jorge Mejia, Yan Xiaoran, Patty Mabry, Susanne Ressl, Amanda Diekman, and Franco Pestilli, finds the two movements do more than diverge. They have very distinct cultures, with two distinct literatures produced by two groups of researchers with little crossover. Their investigation also suggests that one of the movements — open science — promotes greater equity, diversity, and inclusivity. Their findings were recently reported in the Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences [PNAS].

The team of researchers on the study, whose fields range widely – from social psychology, network science, neuroscience, structural biology, biochemistry, statistics, business, and education, among others – were taken by surprise by the results.

“The two movements have very few crossovers, shared authors or collaborations,” said Murphy. “They operate relatively independently. And this distinction between the two approaches is replicated across all scientific fields we examined.”

In other words, whether in biology, psychology or physics, scientists working in the open science participate in a different scientific culture than those working within the reproducibility culture, even if they work in the same disciplinary field. And which culture a scientist works in determines a lot about access and participation, particularly for women.

IU cognitive scientist Richard Shiffrin, who has previously been involved in efforts to improve science but did not participate in the current study, says the new study by Murphy and her colleagues provides a remarkable look into the way that current science operates. “There are two quite distinct cultures, one more inclusive, that promotes transparency of reporting and open science, and another, less inclusive, that promotes reproducibility as a remedy to the current practice of science,” he said.

A Tale of Two Sciences

To investigate the fault lines between the two movements, the team, led by network scientists Xiaoran Yan and Patricia Mabry, first conducted a network analysis of papers published from 2010-2017 identified with one of the two movements. The analysis showed that even though both movements span widely across STEM fields, the authors within them occupy two largely distinct networks. Authors who publish open science research, in other words, rarely produce research within reproducibility, and very few reproducibility researchers conduct open science research.

Next, information systems analyst Jorge Mejia and statistician Amanda Mejia applied a semantic text analysis to the abstracts of the papers to determine the values implicit in the language used to define the research. Specifically they looked at the degree to which the research was prosocial, that is, oriented toward helping others by seeking to solve large social problems.

“This is significant,” Murphy explained, “insofar as previous studies have shown that women often gravitate toward science that has more socially oriented goals and aims to improve the health and well-being of people and society. We found that open science has more prosocial language in its abstracts than reproducibility does.”

With respect to gender, the team found that “women publish more often in high-status authorship positions in open science, and that participation in high-status authorship positions has been increasing over time in open science, while in reproducibility women’s participation in high-status authorship positions is decreasing over time,” Murphy said.

The researchers are careful to point out that the link they found between women and open science is so far a correlation, not a causal connection.

“It could be that as more women join these movements, the science becomes more prosocial. But women could also be drawn to this prosocial model because that’s what they value in science, which in turn strengthens the prosocial quality of open science,” Murphy noted. “It’s likely to be an iterative cultural cycle, which starts one way, attracts people who are attracted to that culture, and consequently further builds and supports that culture.”

Diekman, a social psychologist and senior author on the paper, noted these patterns might help open more doors to science. “What we know from previous research is that when science conveys a more prosocial culture, it tends to attract not only more women, but also people of color and prosocially oriented men,” she said.

The distinctions traced in the study are also reflected in the scientific processes employed by the research team itself. As one of the most diverse teams to publish in the pages of PNAS, the research team used open science practices.

“The initial intuition, before the project started, was that investigators have come to this debate from very different perspectives and with different intellectual interests. These interests might attract different categories of researchers.” says Pestilli, an IU neuroscientist. “Some of us are working on improving science by providing new technology and opportunities to reduce human mistakes and promote teamwork. Yet we also like to focus on the greater good science does for society, every day. We are perhaps seeing more of this now in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

With a core of eight lead scientists at IU, the team also included 20 more co-authors, mostly women and people of color who are experts on how to increase the participation of underrepresented groups in science; diversity and inclusion; and the movements to improve science.

Research team leader Mary Murphy noted that in this cultural moment of examining inequality throughout our institutions, looking at who gets to participate in science can yield great benefit.

“Trying to understand inequality in science has the potential to benefit society now more than ever. Understanding how the culture of science can compound problems of inequality or mitigate them could be a real advance in this moment when long-standing inequalities are being recognized–and when there is momentum to act and create a more equitable science.”

I think someone had a little fun writing the news release. First, there’s a possible reference to C. P. Snow’s The Two Cultures and, then, a reference to Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities (Wikipedia entry here) along with, possibly, an allusion to the French Revolution (liberté, égalité, et fraternité). Going even further afield, is there also an allusion to a science revolution? Certainly the values of liberty and equality would seem to fit in with the findings.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Open science, communal culture, and women’s participation in the movement to improve science by Mary C. Murphy, Amanda F. Mejia, Jorge Mejia, Xiaoran Yan, Sapna Cheryan, Nilanjana Dasgupta, Mesmin Destin, Stephanie A. Fryberg, Julie A. Garcia, Elizabeth L. Haines, Judith M. Harackiewicz, Alison Ledgerwood, Corinne A. Moss-Racusin, Lora E. Park, Sylvia P. Perry, Kate A. Ratliff, Aneeta Rattan, Diana T. Sanchez, Krishna Savani, Denise Sekaquaptewa, Jessi L. Smith, Valerie Jones Taylor, Dustin B. Thoman, Daryl A. Wout, Patricia L. Mabry, Susanne Ressl, Amanda B. Diekman, and Franco Pestilli PNAS DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1921320117 First published September 14, 2020

This paper appears to be open access.

Here’s an image representing the researchers’ findings,

Caption: Figure 1. From “I” science to team science. Moving from an ‘!’-focused, independent, lab-centric approach to science to a more collaborative team science that promotes communal values, sharing, education, and training. Teamwork is a strength for scientific work and discovery; the total is more than the sum of the individual part contributions. Credit: Indiana University

EuroScience Open Forum in Toulouse, France from July 9 to July 14, 2018

A March 22, 2018 EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) 2018 announcement (received via email) trumpets some of the latest news for this event being held July 9 to July 14, 2018 in Toulouse, France. (Located in the south in the region known as the Occitanie, it’s the fourth largest city in France. Toulouse is situated on the River Garonne. See more in its Wikipedia entry.) Here’s the latest from the announcement,

ESOF 2018 Plenary Sessions

Top speakers and hot topics confirmed for the Plenary Sessions at ESOF 2018

Lorna Hughes, Professor at the University of Glasgow, Chair of the Europeana Research Advisory Board, will give a plenary keynote on “Digital humanities”. John Ioannidis, Professor of Medicine and of Health Research and Policy at Stanford University, famous for his PLoS Medicine paper on “Why most Published Research Findings are False”, will talk about “Reproducibility”. A third plenary will involve Marìa Teresa Ruiz, a Chilean astronomer and the 2017 L’Oreal UNESCO award for Women in Science: she will talk about exoplanets.

 

ESOF under the spotlights

French President’s high patronage: ESOF is at the top of the institutional agendas in 2018.

“Sharing science”. But also putting science at the highest level making it a real political and societal issue in a changing world. ESOF 2018 has officially received the “High Patronage” from the President of the French Republic Emmanuel Macron. ESOF 2018 has also been listed by the French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs among the 27 priority events for France.

A constellation of satellites around the ESOF planet!

Second focus on Satellite events:
4th GEO Blue Planet Symposium organised 4-6 July by Mercator Ocean.
ECSJ 2018, 5th European Conference of Science Journalists, co-organised by the French Association of Science Journalists in the News Press (AJSPI) and the Union of European Science Journalists’ Associations (EUSJA) on 8 July.
– Esprit de Découvertes (Discovery spirit) organised by the Académie des Sciences, Inscriptions et Belles Lettres de Toulouse on 8 July.

More Satellite events to come! Don’t forget to stay long enough in order to participate in these focused Satellite Events and … to discover the city.

The programme for ESOF 2018 can be found here.

Science meets poetry

As has become usual, there is a European City of Science event being held in Toulouse in concert (more or less) with and in celebration of the ESOF event. The City of Science event is being held from July 7 – July 16, 2018.

Organizers have not announced much in the way of programming for the City of Science other than a ‘Science meets Poetry’ meeting,

A unique feature of ESOF is the Science meets Poetry day, which is held at every Forum and brings poets and scientists together.

Indeed, there is today a real artistic movement of poets connected with ESOF. Famous participants from earlier meetings include contributors such as the late Seamus Heaney, Roald Hoffmann [sic] Jean-Pierre Luminet and Prince Henrik of Denmark, but many young and aspiring poets are also involved.

The meeting is in two parts:

  • lectures on subjects involving science with poetry
  • a poster session for contributed poems

There are competitions associated with the event and every Science meets Poetry day gives rise to the publication of Proceedings in book form.

In Toulouse, the event will be staged by EuroScience in collaboration with the Académie des Jeux Floraux of Toulouse, the Société des Poètes Français and the European Academy of Sciences Arts and Letters, under patronage of UNESCO. The full programme will be announced later, but includes such themes as a celebration of the number 7 in honour of the seven Troubadours of Toulouse, who held the first Jeux Floraux in the year 1323, Space Travel and the first poets and scientists who wrote about it (including Cyrano de Bergerac and Johannes Kepler), from Metrodorus and Diophantes of Alexandria to Fermat’s Last Theorem, the Poetry of Ecology, Lafayette’s ship the Hermione seen from America and many other thought-provoking subjects.

The meeting will be held in the Hôtel d’Assézat, one of the finest old buildings of the ancient city of Toulouse.

Exceptionally, it will be open to registered participants from ESOF and also to some members of the public within the limits of available space.

Tentative Programme for the Science meets Poetry day on the 12th of July 2018

(some Speakers are still to be confirmed)

  • 09:00 – 09:30 A welcome for the poets : The legendary Troubadours of Toulouse and the poetry of the number 7 (Philippe Dazet-Brun, Académie des Jeux Floraux)
  • 09:30 – 10:00 The science and the poetry of violets from Toulouse (Marie-Thérèse Esquerré-Tugayé  Laboratoire de Recherche en Sciences Végétales, Université Toulouse III-CNRS)
  • 10:00 –10:30  The true Cyrano de Bergerac, gascon poet, and his celebrated travels to the Moon (Jean-Charles Dorge, Société des Poètes Français)
  • 10:30 – 11:00  Coffee Break (with poems as posters)
  • 11:00 – 11:30 Kepler the author and the imaginary travels of the famous astronomer to the Moon. (Uli Rothfuss, die Kogge International Society of German-language authors )
  • 11:30 – 12:00  Spoutnik and Space in Russian Literature (Alla-Valeria Mikhalevitch, Laboratory of the Russian Academy of Sciences  Saint-Petersburg)
  • 12:00 – 12:30  Poems for the planet Mars (James Philip Kotsybar, the ‘Bard of Mars’, California and NASA USA)
  • 12:30 – 14:00  Lunch and meetings of the Juries of poetry competitions
  • 14:00 – 14:30  The voyage of the Hermione and « Lafayette, here we come ! » seen by an American poet (Nick Norwood, University of Columbus Ohio)
  • 14:30 –  15:00 Alexandria, Toulouse and Oxford : the poem rendered by Eutrope and Fermat’s Last Theorem (Chaunes [Jean-Patrick Connerade], European Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, UNESCO)
  • 15:00 –15:30  How biology is celebrated in contemporary poetry (Assumpcio Forcada, biologist and poet from Barcelona)
  • 15:30 – 16:00  A book of poems around ecology : a central subject in modern poetry (Sam Illingworth, Metropolitan University of Manchester)
  • 16:00 – 16:30  Coffee break (with poems as posters)
  • 16:30 – 17:00 Toulouse and Europe : poetry at the crossroads of European Languages (Stefka Hrusanova (Bulgarian Academy and Linguaggi-Di-Versi)
  • 17:00 – 17:30 Round Table : seven poets from Toulouse give their views on the theme : Languages, invisible frontiers within both science and poetry
  • 17:30 – 18:00 The winners of the poetry competitions are announced
  • 18:00 – 18:15 Chaunes. Closing remarks

I’m fascinated as in all the years I’ve covered the European City of Science events I’ve never before tripped across a ‘Science meets Poetry’ meeting. Sadly, there’s no contact information for those organizers. However, you can sign up for a newsletter and there are contacts for the larger event, European City of Science or as they are calling it in Toulouse, the Science in the City Festival,

Contact

Camille Rossignol (Toulouse Métropole)

camille.rossignol@toulouse-metropole.fr

+33 (0)5 36 25 27 83

François Lafont (ESOF 2018 / So Toulouse)

francois.lafont@toulouse2018.esof.eu

+33 (0)5 61 14 58 47

Travel grants for media types

One last note and this is for journalists. It’s still possible to apply for a travel grant, which helps ease but not remove the pain of travel expenses. From the ESOF 2018 Media Travel Grants webpage,

ESOF 2018 – ECSJ 2018 Travel Grants

The 5th European Conference of Science Journalists (ECSJ2018) is offering 50 travel + accommodation grants of up to 400€ to international journalists interested in attending ECSJ and ESOF.

We are looking for active professional journalists who cover science or science policy regularly (not necessarily exclusively), with an interest in reflecting on their professional practices and ethics. Applicants can be freelancers or staff, and can work for print, web, or broadcast media.

More information

ESOF 2018 Nature Travel Grants

Springer Nature is a leading research, educational and professional publisher, providing quality content to its communities through a range of innovative platforms, products and services and is home of trusted brands including Nature Research.

Nature Research has supported ESOF since its very first meeting in 2004 and is funding the Nature Travel Grant Scheme for journalists to attend ESOF2018 with the aim of increasing the impact of ESOF. The Nature Travel Grant Scheme offers a lump sum of £400 for journalists based in Europe and £800 for journalists based outside of Europe, to help cover the costs of travel and accommodation to attend ESOF2018.

More information

Good luck!

(My previous posting about this ESOF 2018 was Sept. 4, 2017 [scroll down about 50% of the way] should you be curious.)