Open Science: the Very Idea

Front matter

Frank Miedema

Open Science: the Very Idea

A Springer

Preface

First, I want to thank the readers for starting to read my book. Somehow it got your attention despite the daily tsunami of information, infotainment and entertainment that is thrown at you. Most of us are pressed for time, even in months of lockdown because of COVID-19, so I will keep this introduction short. I will do without the usual clever well-worded academic introduction, referring to Aristotle, Popper and Foucault. I will go straight to the relevant question any reader from academia, public or policy could ask with no need to be ashamed of:

Why a book about Open Science? It is a hype isn’t it? So, is there not a lot already written about it? Ok, it is a big thing in Europe, Australia, and even China it seems, but what about the USA and Canada, and are the Germans really in? I do recall, in the USA during the Obama administrations there was some action of Open Access and Open Data, and academics who started DORA in 2012 in San Francisco.

or

A book about Open Science? Open Access you mean? Does that start again? Wasn’t that the movement that, since the year 2000 had a few starts already, sympathetic but that just didn’t take of? Does the EU still believe in it? Really? Why?

In this book I address these questions, without any beating around the bush. It is truly amazing, that a way to do science and research, that for the majority of its practitioners and the public and policy makers makes a lot of sense, and which has been around for quite some time, has not been embraced to become common practice. To answer this question, we have to delve deep into the science of science and research. We have to understand ‘the idea of science’ that does exist in the plural. We have to analyse why in particular one of these concepts and its corresponding public image has been dominant practically since 1945 and what that has done to science and scientists. That philosophical/sociological idea has been the basis for the ideologic narrative with which science has been internally organized and is being used to claim a unique position, authority and funding for science. With this narrative, the scientific community promised that science would be there to the benefit of society, at least when her autonomy and neutrality are

Vii

Vili Preface respected. How come that although this legendary image and its narrative by the philosophers, historians and sociologists has no philosophical and timeless foundation, scientists apparently without knowing this demise of their Legend keep using that narrative? It may well be the fear, the insecurity that comes with the awareness that knowledge production in science is based not on a given metaphysical foundation, but rests on a firm social process of a community of inquirers that relentlessly criticize, question, debate what the best knowledge claims are. Knowing very well that the consensus reached may work well but is never absolute and may be replaced by better ones by this same process of inquiry called science. Having said this, we realize that, despite the commonly held views, the ‘method’ of the ‘hard’ sciences and that of the ‘soft’ social science and humanities may not be all that different after all!

In our present-day world of hyper-modernity, where knowledge is everywhere to be found and always contested by some, the process of the production of knowledge cannot be insulated from potential users and interested critical other parties. Clinging to the idea of a unique method for absolute truth and a foundation for science is understandable but a wrong reflex in debates with the public about its problems. Explaining how science really works and produces knowledge would be the best response.

In this book, I and you readers need to be totally frank about science, and we need to be ‘biting the bullet’ and bringing up several difficult issues. We need to discuss ‘therapeutic’ interventions required to opening up research and academia for transition to a more open science that works better for the world. You may wonder, ‘is the relationship with the public then the problem?’ It sure is, since I believe, with many colleagues, that scientists have a moral obligation to engage with the major societal problems and challenges of their time. I may seem very optimistic, but I am not naive, to think that the practice of Open Science will be a major improvement regarding the relationship between science and society in several critical ways.

In contrast to the critical questions, it appears that since 2016 the idea of Open Science has been adopted by many institutions and governments around the world and it is well possible that we have passed the tipping point of its global breakthrough. Life is never perfect, and as we know Open Science to function properly needs an Open Society, but this requirement is not universally fulfilled and needs the attention of academia. I clearly see an opportunity for a leading role of the Open Science approach of the EU, now the USA has lost a lot of its position as a world leader in science. I have touched upon the problem of geopolitics, for instance in relation to China, the new science superpower, as this is not specific for science but a general problem of democracy it is outside the scope of this book.

The good news is that in the heat of the catastrophic COVID-19 pandemic, with its unprecedented global threat to public health and our socio-economic life, we see

Preface ix the opening up of the different practices of science, publishing, data and biomaterial sharing, and doing research and in real time opening up to public, at national and international levels. It is argued here that science should always be done like that, as Open Science.

My Journey

This book results from my journey in science since the early 1970s. I had the opportunity of being at the bench of biochemistry laboratories of different knowledge institutions: in the Netherlands at The National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, the non-profit Blood Supply Foundation and two University Medical Centres, with a six months ‘sabbatical’ in 1994 at DNAX Research Institute, Palo Alto, CA. From 1975 on, I was intrigued by the social aspects of science. While in my academic development I discovered the practice of research, in parallel I discovered the science of science and developed an interest as a science observer. Ever since, while being totally engaged in research, at the same time I was a science observer and obsessively studied the many aspects of that social game called science. It is this dual experience and the broad view of science that has led to my writings and actions to improve science of which this book gives witness reporting from both tracks of my journey in science.

Finally, I have provided a broad and, in some cases, an in-depth background analysis of different aspects of science. Importantly, regarding the images of science that still distort our image and practice of science, most writers about the practice of science mention the problem but almost all refrain from such in-depth analysis. Almost all stay even further away from the directly connected discussion of the incentive and rewards systems because that unavoidably opens the black box, or rather the can of worms of academic politics, the game of reputation, power and money. Since, as I argue in Chap. 2, I believe that the obsolete philosophy and public image of science are the major cause of many problems in the practice of science, I went all out to present the major different arguments for the lack of foundation for the methods of empirical positivism, and its analytical foundational philosophy. I also dwell on the analyses of the problems of the practice of science in academia, since I do regard this in many ways an important and necessary step for the transition to Open Science. Finally, there is a lengthy description of the development, from early initiatives to finally the institutional start of Open Science in the research agenda of the European Union. I realize that most of you shall want to read selectively according to your main immediate interests. Therefore, I provide four distinct reading tracks below.

Preface

Four Recommended Reading Tracks

0. For the general concise view of science and society since 1945

1,

Chap. 1. Philosophy and sociology

If you are more interested and have read in the philosophical and sociological origins of our current ideas about science, Chaps. 2 and 4 will be serious reading but are highly recommended.

. A critique of science

If you want to grasp the more recent critical thinking about science, with analyses and arguments in the pre-Open Science time, then go for Chaps. 1, 3 and 6.

. New avenues

If you don’t want the diagnosis, but rather read about attempts and ideas how, by engaging with society, to improve the relationship of science with society, that is to be found in Chaps. 5, 6 and 7.

If you want an impression about early actions in the past 20 years and the more recent actions taken to promote Open Science, go to Chaps. 5 and 7, and for some of the local initiatives in Utrecht, I refer to Chap. 6.

Utrecht, The Netherlands Frank Miedema

Synopsis

Chapter 1 : Science and Society An Overview of the Problem

Science promised to society to contribute to the grand challenges of the United Nations, WHO, the EU agenda and national agendas for change and improvement of our life. It will be discussed how this social contract between science and society has developed since 1945. The first phase from 1945 till 1960 was characterized by autonomy, building on the successes of the natural sciences and engineering in World War II. In the second phase, the late 1960s till approximately 1980, government and the public lost trust and saw the downside of science and technology. The response from politics and the public was a call for societal and political responsible research inspired by broader socio-political developments in society. The third phase from 1980 till 2010 was built on the idea that science and technology would bring economic growth, which should make nations internationally competitive. There was also increasingly room for societal problems related to environment and sustainability, health and well-being. In this approach of the so-called knowledge economy, strong relations with government and the private sector were established characterized by short-term accountability, control from government and funders at the level of project output, using accordingly defined metrics and indicators. This model became firmly and globally institutionalized.

Within science, since 2010 among scientists there is growing frustration, mostly implicit but increasingly explicit disillusion of scientists, regarding governance, agenda setting in relation to the outside world and significant impact of the research. Science fails, it is felt, its promise to society to contribute to the quality of life as the system has adapted to the culture of new public management. Production of robust and significant results is mainly secondary to output relevant for an internal credit system for academic career advancement at the individual level. At the higher organizational level output and impact are focused on positions on international ranking lists which drive highly competitive social systems which results in a widely felt lack of alignment and shared value in the academic community.

xi xii Synopsis Chapter 2: Images of Science: A Reality Check

It will be argued that the dominant form of current academic science is based on ideas and concepts about science and research that date back to philosophy and sociology that was developed since the 1930s. It will be discussed how this philosophy and sociology of science has informed the ideas, myths and ideology about science held by the scientific community and still determines the popular view of science. It is even more amazing when we realize that these ideas are philosophically and sociologically untenable and since the 1970s were declared obsolete by major scholars in these same disciplines. To demonstrate this, I delve deep to discuss the distinct stages that scholars in philosophy, sociology and history of science since 1945 to 2000 have gone through to leave the analytical-positivistic philosophy behind. I will be focusing on developments of their thinking about major topics such as how scientific knowledge is produced, the scientific method, the status of scientific knowledge and the development of our ideas about ‘truth’ and the relation of our claims to reality. It will appear that the positivistic ideas about science producing absolute truth, about ‘the unique scientific method’, its formal logical approach and its timeless foundation as a guarantee for our value-free, objective knowledge were not tenable. I took the trouble to go into this deep to show how thoroughly the myth has been demystified in philosophy and sociology of science. You think after these 50 pages I am kicking a dead horse? Not at all! This scientific demystification has unfortunately not reached active scientists. The popular image of science and research is still largely based on that Legend. This is not without consequence as will be shown in Chap. 3. These images of science have shaped and in fact distorted the organizational structures and the interaction between its institutes and disciplines. It also affects the relationship of science with its stakeholders in society, its funders, the many publics private and public and policy makers in government. In short, it is about the growth of knowledge.

It will throughout the book be accompanied by a narrative in which I will take my own intellectual and scientific journey from 1971 as a chemistry student who did a minor in the philosophy of science in academic year 1975-1976. Since then I followed the classical career path of a professional biochemist/ immunologist, as PhD student, post-doc, group leader, department head, director of a small research institute, to finally become dean and board member of a large university medical centre. Going through this professional sequence, I kept a persistent and ever stronger interest in the science of science. It is from the perspective of a true understanding of the practice of science in its various aspects that I will use specific authors a lot, but others much less or even neglect work of many scholars that to specialists in the different fields are considered important but are of little or no relevance for the daily practice of active researchers and most other actors in the field.

Synopsis xiii

Chapter 3: Science in Transition How Science Goes Wrong and What to Do About It

Science in Transition which started in 2013, is a small-scale Dutch initiative. It presented a systems approach, comprised of analyses and suggested actions, based on experience in academia. It was built on writings by early science watchers and most recent theoretical developments in philosophy, history and sociology of science and STS on the practice and politics of science. This chapter will include my personal experiences as one of the four Dutch founders of Science in Transition. I will discuss the message and the various forms of reception over the past 6 years by the different actors in the field, including administrators in university, academic societies and Ministries of Higher Education, Economic Affairs and Public Health but also from leadership in the private sector. I will report on my personal experience of how these myths and ideologies play out in the daily practice of 40 years of biomedical research in policy and decision making in lab meetings, at departments, at grant review committees of funders and in the Boardrooms and the offices of Deans, Vice Chancellors and Rectors.

It has in the previous chapters become clear that the ideology and ideals that we are brought up with are not valid and are not practiced; despite that even in 2020 they are still somehow ‘believed’ by most scientists and even by many science watchers and journalists and used in political correct rhetoric and policy making by science’s leadership. In that way these ideologies and beliefs mostly implicitly but sometimes even explicitly determine debates regarding the internal policy of science and science policy in the public arena. These include all-time classic themes like the uniqueness of science compared to any other societal activity; ethical superiority of science and scientists based on Mertonian norms; the vocational disinterested search for truth, autonomy; values and moral (political) neutrality; dominance of internal epistemic values; and unpredictability regards impact. These ideas have influenced debates about the ideal and hegemony of natural science; the hierarchy of basic over applied science; theoretical over technological research; and at a higher level in academic institutions and at the funders the widely held supremacy of STEM over SSH. This has directly determined the attitudes of scientists in the interaction with peers within the field, but also shaped the politics of science within science but also with policy makers and stakeholders from the public and private sector and interactions with popular media.

Science it was concluded was suboptimal because of growing problems with the quality and reproducibility of its published products due to failing quality control at several levels. Because of too little interactions with society during the phases of agenda setting and the actual process of knowledge production, its societal impact xiv Synopsis was limited which also relates to the lack of inclusiveness, multidisciplinarity and diversity in academia. Production of robust and significant results aiming at real-world problems is mainly secondary to academic output relevant for an internally driven incentive and reward system steering for academic career advancement at the individual level. Similarly, at the higher organizational and national level this reward system is skewed to types of output and impact focused on positions on international ranking lists. This incentive and reward system, with flawed use of metrics, drives a hyper-competitive social game in academia which results in a widely felt lack of alignment and little shared value in the academic community. Empirical data, most of it from within science and academia, showing these problems in different academic disciplines, countries and continents are published on a weekly basis since 2014. These critiques focus on the practices of scholarly publishing including Open Access and open data and, the adverse effects of the incentive and reward system. Images, ideologies and politics of science were exposed that insulate academia and science from society and its stakeholders, which distort the research agenda and subsequentially its societal and economic impact.

Chapter 4: Science and Society: Pragmatism by Default

To rethink the relation between science and society and its current problems authorative scholars in the USA and Europe, but also around the globe, have since 1980 implicitly and increasingly explicitly gone back to the ideas of American pragmatism. Pragmatism as conceived by its founders Peirce, James and Dewey is known for its distinct philosophy/sociology of science and political theory. They argued that philosophy should not focus on theoretical esoteric problems with hair-splitting abstract debates of no interest to scientists because unrelated to their practice and problems in the real world. In a realistic philosophy of science, they did not accept foundationalism, dismissed the myth of given eternal principles, the unique “scientific method’, absolute truths or let alone a unifying theory. They saw science as a plural, thoroughly social activity that has to be directed to real-world problems and subsequent interventions and action. “Truth’ in their sense was related to the potential and possible impact of the proposition when turned in to action. Knowledge claims were regarded per definition a product of the community of inquirers, fallible and through continuous testing in action were to be improved. Until 1950, this was the most influential intellectual movement in the USA, but with very little impact in Europe. Because of the dominance of the analytic positivistic approach to the philosophy of science, after 1950 it lost its standing. After the demise of analytical philosophy, in the 1980s, there was a resurgence of pragmatism led by several so-called new or neo-pragmatists. Influential philosophers like Stephen Toulmin, Hillary Putnam and Philip Kitcher coming from the tradition of analytic philosophy

Synopsis Xv have written about their gradual conversion to pragmatism, for which in the early days they were frowned upon by esteemed colleagues. This movement gained traction first in the USA, in particular through works of Bernstein, Toulmin, Rorty, Putnam and Hacking, but also gained influence in Europe, early on through the works of Apel, Habermas and later Latour.

Chapter 5: Science in Social Contexts

Gradually since 1990 a growing number of critical analyses from within science have published on how science was organized as a system and discussing its problems, despite, or paradoxically because the growing size of its endeavour and its growing yearly output. Because of lack of openness with regard to sharing results of research, such as publications and data but in fact of all sorts of other products, science is felt by many to disappoint with respect to its societal impact, its contribution to the major problems humanity is facing in the current times. With the financial crisis, in analogy, also the crisis of the academic system as described in Chap. 3 was exposed and it seemed that similar systemic neoliberal economic mechanisms operated in these at first sight seemingly different industries. Most of these critiques appeared with increasing frequency since 2014 in formal scientific magazines and social media and reached the leadership of universities, government and funders. This awareness and support for the development of new ways of doing science, mostly intuitively and implicitly, but sometimes explicitly, is motivated by pragmatism aiming for societal progress and contribution to the good life.

To get to this next level we need the critical reflection on the practice of science as done in previous chapters in order to make systemic changes to several critical parts of the knowledge production chain. I will discuss the different analyses of interactions between science and society, in the social and political contexts with publics and politics that show where and how we could improve. The opening up of science and academia in matters of problem choice, data sharing and evaluation of research together with stakeholders from outside academia will help to increase the impact of science on society. It ideally should promote equality, inclusion and diversity of the research agendas. This, I will argue, requires an Open Society with Deweyan democracy and safe spaces for deliberations where a diversity of publics and their problems can be heard. In this transition we have to pay close and continuous attention to the many effects of power executed by agents in society and science that we know can distort these ‘ideal deliberations’ and undermine the ethics of these communications and possibly threaten the autonomy and freedom of research.

xvi Synopsis Chapter 6: Science in Transition Reduced to Practice

In the true spirit of Dewey and pragmatism, knowledge, insights and experience have to be translated into interventions and actions. Only when knowledge is ‘reduced to practice’, its social robustness and value will be determined. In light of the conclusions of the previous chapter, to be able to have more impact and to hold up our promise to society, we have to reflect who our science is organized and how it could be improved. From these reflections, several interventions in the practice of research have been proposed. When we, the Science in Transition Team, started to make public our critical accounts of the practice of science, I was ‘friendly advised’ by influential older scientists to first clean up the mess in my own institution, instead of pointing to others and to the system. As a matter of fact, that is what we have been doing at University Medical Centre Utrecht (UMC Utrecht) since 2009. In this chapter I present a brief outline of our actions ‘on the ground’ in UMC Utrecht, their receptions and some early actions to promote these activities abroad.

Chapter 7: Transition to Open Science

Many initiatives addressing different types of problems of the practice of science and research have been described or cited. Some were one-issue local actions, some took a broader approach at the national and some at EU level. Some stayed on, others faded after a few years. Many of the issues addressed by these movements and initiatives were part of the system of science and appeared to be systemically interdependent. This is how they converged and precipitated in the movement of Open Science, somewhere at the beginning of the second decade of this century. I discuss the major move that was made since 2015 in the EU to embrace the Open Science practice as the way science and research are being done in Europe. This elicited tensions at first foremost relate to uncertainty regarding scholarly publishing, of how and where we publish open access. But also, with respect to what immediate sharing of data and results in daily practice of researchers means, how we value and give credit for papers and published data sets. It thus poses the question of recognition and rewards, how, if at all, we must compare incomparable academic work, how we get credit and build reputations in this new open practice of science.

It is indeed believed that Open Science with its practice of responsible science will be a major contribution to address the dominant problems in science that we have analysed thus far, or at least will help to mitigate them. Open Science holds a promise to take science to the next phase as outlined in the previous chapters. That is not a romantic naive longing for the science that once was. It will be a truly novel, but realistic way of doing scientific inquiry according to the pragmatic narrative pointed out.

Synopsis xvii

I will conclude this chapter reporting some of my firsthand experiences, in Brussels and during visits to several EU member states in the course of a Mutual Learning Exercise, but also encounters in North America, South-East Asia and South Africa where we in the past years have discussed Open Science. We know science and scholarship have many forms and flavours and that wherever you go around the globe, there is not one scientific community. For me discussing the Transition to Open Science in the past four years was really a Learning Exercise, an amazing, mostly encouraging, but many times quite shocking, humbling and even sometimes saddening experience.

The Transition to Open Science, as can be anticipated from the analyses above, will not be trivial. The recent discussions have already shown that the transition to Open Science, even in different EU Member States, is a very different thing because of specific national, cultural and academic contexts.

Acknowledgements

The plan for writing this book originates from 2013, the time when we started Science in Transition. I had been writing essays and book reviews about science and had published some of them in English with Amsterdam University Press in 2012. With the start of the Science in Transition movement, we wrote and talked continuously about science in the broadest possible sense. During my seminars since then philosophy, sociology and politics of science were admixed with personal experiences that illuminated the analyses of how science works, has gone wrong and what to do about it. Rinze Benedictus, MSc in medical biology and long-term science writer, was from the start involved in Science in Transition and before that as staff member had been working with us on the UMCUtrecht 3.0 Strategy 2010-2015. From his dual experience he recognized the journalistic power of mixing theoretical analysis with personal experiences and urged me to write it up or, given my lack of free time, at least contract a professional science writer who could do that with/for me. An important ‘boost’ to Rinze’s ‘priming’ came unexpectedly from Daniel Sarewitz. As I describe in Chap. 6, during a breakfast meeting with Dan Sarewitz and Paul Wouters, in January 2017 at Washington DC, I told Dan the story of the organizational intervention at UMC Utrecht which prompted the change in our way of research evaluation later on. Sarewitz, being a successful writer himself, immediately said that I should write it up since it demonstrates how evaluations (‘metrics’ if you like) follow strategy. Against Rinze’s advice, I waited until March 2019 when I stepped down from the Executive Board of UMC Utrecht, trusting that the story I had to tell would still be relevant.

I am most grateful to the Board of UMC Utrecht and the Board of Utrecht University to jointly appoint me, per March 1, 2019, as chairperson of the UU Open Science Program which was an additional inspiration for me to write this book.

During the process of writing, but in fact since 1971, I was encouraged by frequent discussions with Siebren Miedema, my brother who is by four years my senior and emeritus professor in Educational Foundations and Religious Education.

The manuscript or parts of it have been read by Sarah de Rijcke, René von Schomberg, Anja Smit, Huub Dijstelbloem, Jerome Ravetz, Frank Huisman, Wijnand Mijnhardt, Gerard de Vries, Siebren Miedema, Rinze Benedictus and

XX Acknowledgements

Susanne van Weelden. The members of the Utrecht University Open Science Team, Judith de Haan, Tom Peijster, Suzanna Bloem and Sicco de Knecht I thank for daily discussions and support while I worked on the book.

I am indebted to Paul Wouters, Melanie Peters, Albert Meijer, Kees Schuyt, Floris Cohen, Stuart Blume, Barend van de Meulen, Paul Wouters, Hans Chang, Bas van Bavel, Ulli Dirnagl, Daniel Sarewitz, John Ioannidis, Steven Goodman, David Moher, members of the UU Ethics Institute (especially Marcus Duwell and Joel Anderson), Patrick Bossuyt, Lex Bouter, Joeri Tijdink, staff members of the Athena Institute VU (especially Jacqueline Broerse), the WTMC Graduate School (especially Anne Beaulieu), GEWINA (especially Martijn van de Meer), Margriet Schneider, Wim Kremer, Berent Prakken, Wilfrid Opheij, Anna Ridderinkhof and Arjan Miedema for support and critical constructive discussions and advice.

Contents

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