WHAT IS THE RESEARCH IMPACT OF (THE IDEAL OF) SCIENTIFIC TRUTH?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15503/jecs2021.2.113.136Słowa kluczowe:
research impact, unintended consequences, sociology of science, evolutionary thinkingAbstrakt
Aim. This paper elucidates how the emergent impact agenda is slowly but surely changing the normative framework of modern Western science.
Method. The paper investigates conceptually the implications of the impact agenda for the research process. We outline a chronology around the evaluation regime of research impact and identify the causal mechanisms that change the disciplinary structure of the research ecosystem. We draw upon a sociological model of scientific knowledge production to contrast and discuss how impact facts mimic the process of scientific knowledge production but are geared towards a different end.
Results. Our findings indicate that an explicit emphasis on societal contribution not only propositions a different purpose of research, but also changes the logic of research along its entire construction. The impact logic mimics the creation of scientific facts; nevertheless, as it is geared towards a different end, it hermetically seals itself from criticism as any form of scrutiny would otherwise undermine its own legitimacy.
Conclusion. We conclude that only explicit acknowledgement of the adverse potential of the impact agenda can maintain science’s benefit to society. We argue that an emphasis on the advancement of knowledge, as opposed to impact, can maintain innovation and preempt social tension. The contribution of this paper lies in identifying the societal influence of the scientific ideal of truth, and articulating the unintended consequences of the impact agenda as the emerging impact or starve paradigm.
##plugins.generic.usageStats.downloads##
Bibliografia
Allbutt, H., & Irvine, S. (2021). Research assessment in a National Health Service organisation: a process for learning and accountability. Evidence & Policy: A Journal of Research, Debate and Practice, 1–13.
Angell, I. O., & Demetis, D. (2010). Science's First Mistake: Delusions in pursuit of theory. A&C Black.
Barnett, R. (1990). The idea of higher education. McGraw-Hill Education (UK).
Biagioli, M., Kenney, M., Martin, B., & Walsh, J. P. (2018). Academic misconduct, misrepresentation and gaming: A reassessment. Research Policy, 48(2), 401–413.
Bonaccorsi, A., Melluso, N., Chiarello, F., & Fantoni, G. (2021). The credibility of research impact statements: A new analysis of REF with Semantic Hypergraphs. Science and Public Policy, 48(2), 212-225.
Bourdieu, P. (1988). Homo academicus. Stanford University Press. (Original work published 1984)
Brauer, R. (2018). What research impact? Tourism and the changing UK research ecosystem. Doctoral dissertation, University of Surrey.
Brauer, R. (2019). Understanding collective knowledge production: What lessons can be learned from controversy? In: Dymitrow M. & Ingelhag K. (Eds.). Anatomy of a 21st-century sustainability project. Mistra Urban Futures, pp. 78-90.
Brauer, R. (2020). Research impact, ethics and academic integrity, Institute of Applied Ethics, Hull, UK 10th of March 2020.
Brauer, R. (2021). Impact and the (new) research ecosystem. Workshop on research impact for the Faculty of Business Law and Politics, University of Hull, 26th of May 2021.
Brauer, R., Arsovski, S. & Dymitrow, M. (2021). Universities, the categorical imperative and responsible research. STS Conference Graz 2021, 3rd of May 2021.
Brauer, R., Barnes, R., & Hollinshead, K. (2019). What is the purpose of a university in the 21st century?, Bacchus Institute of Science, Hull, UK, 12th of June 2019.
Brauer, R., & Dymitrow, M. (2017). Human geography and the hinterland: The case of Torsten Hägerstrand’s ‘belated’ recognition. Moravian Geographical Reports, 25(2), 74-84.
Brauer, R., Dymitrow, M., & Tribe, J. (2019). The impact of tourism research. Annals of Tourism Research, 77, 64-78.
Brauer, R., Dymitrow, M., Worsdell, F. & Walsh, J. (2020). Maculate reflexivity: Are universities losing the plot?. 7th International Conference Education Culture Society, 12th of September 2020
Brauer, R. & Dymitrow, M. (2021): The language of sustainable tourism as a proxy indicator of research quality. Sustainability, 13(1), 25.
Brauer, R., Dymitrow, M., & Tribe, J. (2021). A wider research culture in peril: A reply to Thomas. Annals of Tourism Research, 86(1).
Campbell, D.T., (1974). Evolutionary epistemology. In: Schlipp P. A. (Ed.). The philosophy of Karl Popper. Open Court Publishing Company, pp. 413–463.
Chubb, J., & Reed, M. S. (2018). The politics of research impact: academic perceptions of the implications for research funding, motivation and quality. British Politics, 13(3), 295-311.
Collins, H. M. (2010). Gravity's shadow. University of Chicago Press.
Collins, H., M., & Evans, R. (2008). Rethinking expertise. University of Chicago Press.
Collins, H. M., & Pinch, T. J. (1979). The construction of the paranormal: Nothing unscientific is happening. The Sociological Review, 27(1), 237-270.
Collins, R., (2005). Interaction ritual chains. Princeton University Press.
Crawford, A. (2020). Societal Impact as ‘Rituals of Verification’ and The Co-Production of Knowledge. The British Journal of Criminology, 60(3), 493-518.
Finch, D. J. (2016) Lessons from REF 2014. Research Excellence and the Social Science. Academy of Social Sciences Professional Briefings, 6, 2-6.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1988). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Dymitrow, M. & Brauer, R. (2017). Performing rurality. But who? Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series, 38, 27–45.
Dymitrow, M. & Brauer, R. (2018). Meaningful yet useless? Factors behind the retention of questionable concepts in human geography. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 100(3), 195–219.
Dymitrow, M., & Ingelhag, K. (2020). Anatomy of a 21st-century sustainability project: The untold stories. Urban Mistra Futures.
Edwards, P. N. (2010). A vast machine: Computer models, climate data, and the politics of global warming. MIT Press.
ESRC (2021, August 10). Doctoral training. https://esrc.ukri.org/skills-and-careers/doctoral-training/
ESRC (2020, August 12). What is impact?. http://www.esrc.ac.uk/research/evaluation-and-impact/what-is-impact/.
Etzkowitz, H., & Leydesdorff, L. A. (1997). Universities and the global knowledge economy. Pinter.
Feyerabend, P. (1993). Against method. Verso.
Fleck, L. (1986). The Problem of epistemology. Cognition and fact. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science. 87: 79–112. (Original work published 1936)
Flink, T., & Peter, T. (2018). Excellence and frontier research as travelling concepts in science policymaking. Minerva, 56(4), 431-452.
Foucault, M. (2001). The order of things. Routledge. (Original work published 1966)
Foucault, M. (1972). Archaeology of knowledge. Pantheon.
Gadamer, H. G. (2004). Truth and method. 2nd edition. Continuum. (Original work published 1960)
Gardner, J. W. (1968). No easy victories. The American Statistician, 22(1), 14-16.
Gieryn, T. F. (1999). Cultural boundaries of science: Credibility on the line. University of Chicago Press.
Götz, N. (2015). ‘Moral economy’: its conceptual history and analytical prospects. Journal of Global Ethics, 11(2), 147-162.
Habermas, J. (1968). Technik und Wissenschaft als ‘Ideologie’. Suhrkamp.
Hannam, J. (2009). God's philosophers: How the Medieval world laid the foundations of modern science. Icon Books Ltd.
Hannam, J. (2011). The genesis of science: How the Christian Middle Ages launched the scientific revolution. Regnery Publishing.
HEFCE (2007, March 6). Research Excellence Framework, 2007/34. https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100303171159/http:/www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/circlets/2007/cl06_07/
HEFCE (2011, March 1). Decisions on Assessing Impact. https://www.ref.ac.uk/2014/pubs/2011-01/
HEFCE (2015, January 23). REF 2014 – Key facts. https://www.ref.ac.uk/2014/pubs/keyfacts/
HEFCE (2019, January 1). Guidance on Submissions. https://www.ref.ac.uk/publications/guidance-on-submissions-201901/
Hegel, G. W. F. (1979). The phenomenology of spirit. Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1807)
Hicks, D. (2012). Performance-based university research funding systems. Research policy, 41(2), 251-261.
Hicks, D., & Holbrook, J. B. (2020). A Cartography of Philosophy’s Engagement with Society. Minerva, 58(1), 25-45.
HM Treasury (2006, December 6). Investing in Britain’s Potential, Pre-Budget Report, Cm 6984. HMSO. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/investing-in-britains-potential-building-our-long-term-future-pre-budget-report-december-2006
Holbrook, J. B. (2017). The future of the impact agenda depends on the revaluation of academic freedom. Nature: Palgrave Communications, 3 (39) 1–9.
Hoyningen-Huene, P. (2013). Systematicity: The nature of science. Oxford University Press.
Ingold, T. (2020). On building a university for the common good. Philosophy and Theory in Higher Education, 2(1), 45–68.
Irwin, R. (2007). The neoliberal state, environmental pragmatism, and its discontents. Environmental Politics, 16(4), 643-658.
Jones, N. L., Cooke, J., & Holliday, J. (2021). Making occupational therapy research visible: amplifying and elevating the contribution and impacts. British Journal of Occupational Therapy.
Kaufmann, M. T. (2003, February 24 ). Robert K. Merton: Versatile sociologist and father of the Focus Group, dies at 92. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/24/nyregion/robert-k-merton-versatile-sociologist-and-father-of-the-focus-group-dies-at-92.html.
Kidd, I. J., Chubb, J., & Forstenzer, J. (2021). Epistemic corruption and the research impact agenda. Theory and Research in Education, 19(2), 148-167.
Kohler, R. E. (1994). Lords of the fly: Drosophila genetics and the experimental life. University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (2008). Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago press.
Lambert, H. (2019, August 21). The great university con: How the British degree lost its value. New Statesman, 2019-08-21. https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/education/2019/08/great-university-con-how-british-degree-lost-its-value
Lamont, M. (2009). How professors think. Harvard University Press.
Latour, B. (1988). Science in action: How to follow engineers and scientists through society. Harvard University Press.
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford University Press.
Latour, B. (2013). An inquiry into modes of existence: An anthropology of the moderns. Harvard University Press.
Lauronen, J. P. (2020). The dilemmas and uncertainties in assessing the societal impact of research. Science and Public Policy, 47(2), 207-218.
Law, J., & Urry, J. (2004). Enacting the social. Economy and Society, 33 (3), 390-410.
Law, J. (2004). After method: Mess in social science research. Routledge.
Livingstone-Banks, M. (2020, July 3). No more Pathways to Impact: how impact is being embedded into research grant proposals. University of Oxford. https://www.mpls.ox.ac.uk/public-engagement/latest/no-more-pathways-to-impact-how-impact-is-being-embedded-into-research-grant-proposals.
Luhmann, N. (1992). What is communication?. Communication Theory, 2 (3), 251-259.
Luhmann, N. (2002). Das Erziehungssystem der Gesellschaft. Suhrkamp. (Original work published 1978)
Macfarlane, B. (2019). The neoliberal academic: Illustrating shifting academic norms in an age of hyper-performativity. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 1-10.
MacKenzie, D. (2009). Material markets: How economic agents are constructed. Oxford University Press.
Martin, B. R. (2011). The Research Excellence Framework and the ‘impact agenda’: are we creating a Frankenstein monster?. Research evaluation, 20(3), 247-254.
McCabe, A., Osegowitsch, T., Parker, R., & Cox, S. (2021). Knowledge co-production in academic-practitioner research collaboration: An expanded perspective on power. Management Learning.
Merton, R. K. (1973). The sociology of science: Theoretical and empirical investigations. University of Chicago Press.
Messner, C., & Brügger, A. (2015). Nazis by Kraut: A playful application of moral self-licensing. Psychology, 6, 1144-1149.
Mol, A. (2002). The body multiple: Ontology in medical practice. Duke University Press.
Moosa, I. A. (2018). Publish or perish: Perceived benefits versus unintended consequences. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Nietzsche, F. (2009). On the Future of our Educational Institutions. The Project Gutenberg EBook. (Original work published 1872)
Pinker, S., & Prince, A. (2002). The nature of human concepts: Evidence from an unusual source. In The nature of concepts: Evolution, structure and representation. Ed. Van Loocke, p. 8-51. Routledge.
Pinker, S. (2015). The sense of style: The thinking person's guide to writing in the 21st century. Penguin Books.
Pinker, S. (2018). Enlightenment now: The case for reason, science, humanism, and progress. Penguin Books.
Polanyi, M. (2000). The republic of science: Its political and economic theory. Minerva, 38(1), 1-32. (Original work published 1962)
Popper, K. R. (1962). Conjectures and refutations: The growth of scientific knowledge. Basic Books.
Porter, R. (1977). The making of geology: Earth science in Britain 1660-1815. Cambridge University Press.
Reed, M. S. (2018). The research impact handbook (2nd ed.). Fast Track Impact Ltd.
Sayer, D. (2014). Rank hypocrisies: The insult of the REF. Sage.
Shapin, S. (2010). Never pure: Historical studies of science as if it was produced by people with bodies, situated in time, space, culture, and society, and struggling for credibility and authority. John Hopkins University Press.
Shields, R., & Watermeyer, R. (2020). Competing institutional logics in universities in the United Kingdom: schism in the church of reason. Studies in Higher Education, 45(1), 3-17.
Smith, S., Ward, V., & House, A. (2011). ‘Impact’in the proposals for the UK's Research Excellence Framework: Shifting the boundaries of academic autonomy. Research Policy, 40(10), 1369-1379.
Stahl, B. C., Chatfield, K., Ten Holter, C., & Brem, A. (2019). Ethics in corporate research and development: can responsible research and innovation approaches aid sustainability?. Journal of Cleaner Production, 239, 118044.
Star, S., & Griesemer, J. (1989). Institutional ecology, 'translations' and boundary objects: Amateurs and professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907–39. Social Studies of Science, 19(3), 387-420.
Strathern, M. (2000). The tyranny of transparency. British educational research journal, 26(3), 309-321.
Sztompka, P. (2007). Trust in science: Robert K. Merton's inspirations. Journal of Classical Sociology, 7(2), 211-220.
Ten Holter, C. (2020). The repository, the researcher, and the REF: “It's just compliance, compliance, compliance”. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 46(1), 102079.
Tribe, J., & Liburd, J. J. (2016). The tourism knowledge system. Annals of tourism research, 57, 44-61.
Tribe, J. (2010). Tribes, territories and networks in the tourism academy. Annals of tourism research, 37(1), 7-33.
University of Oxford, (2021, August 10). Research impact. http://www.ox.ac.uk/research/research-impact.
Warry, P. (2006). Increasing the Economic Impact of Research Councils. Department for Business.
Watermeyer, R. (2019). Competitive accountability in academic life: The struggle for social impact and public legitimacy. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Watermeyer, R., & Chubb, J. (2019). Evaluating ‘impact’in the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF): liminality, looseness and new modalities of scholarly distinction. Studies in Higher Education, 44(9), 1554-1566.
Weingart, P. (1999). Scientific expertise and political accountability: paradoxes of science in politics. Science and public policy, 26(3), 151-161.
Williams, K., & Grant, J. (2018). A comparative review of how the policy and procedures to assess research impact evolved in Australia and the UK. Research Evaluation, 27(2), 93-105.
Wittgenstein, L. (1986). Philosophical investigations 3rd edition. Basil Blackwell Ltd. (Original work published 1953)
Woit, P. (2006). Not even wrong: The failure of string theory and the search for unity in physical law. Basic Books.
Woolcott, G., Keast, R., & Pickernell, D. (2020). Deep impact: re-conceptualising university research impact using human cultural accumulation theory. Studies in higher education, 45(6), 1197-1216.
Wouters, P., Thelwall, M., Kousha, K., Waltman, L., de Rijcke, S., Rushforth, A., & Franssen, T. (2015). The metric tide. Literature review. Supplementary report I to the independent review of the role of metrics in research assessment and management. HEFCE.
Wróblewska, N. (2021). Research impact evaluation and academic discourse. Nature: Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 8(1), 1-12.
Pobrania
Opublikowane
Jak cytować
Numer
Dział
Licencja
Prawa autorskie (c) 2021 Rene Brauer, Mirek Dymitrow, Filipe Worsdell, John Walsh
![Creative Commons License](http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/4.0/88x31.png)
Utwór dostępny jest na licencji Creative Commons Uznanie autorstwa 4.0 Międzynarodowe.
CC-BY
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. All authors agree for publishing their email adresses, affiliations and short bio statements with their articles during the submission process.