The Need for Synergy in Academic Policies: An Introduction to the Dialogue on Pre‐registration

There has been much debate on the need for preregistering experimental studies. Opinions differ with some people believing that “pre‐registration should be required—for us to believe the results of papers,” and others believing that “pre‐registration makes no difference to science and just adds work.” This research dialogue brings differing viewpoints together, in an open academic dialogue. Two target articles and two commentaries discuss what pre‐registration does for replicability of studies, and what cost it adds on authors and reviewers. Additionally, in my introduction to the research dialogue, I deliberate on the need for synergy between our journals, review teams, authors, and institutions, in order for any new policies on pre‐registration to be successfully adopted.     

On Not Confusing the Tree of Trustworthy Statistics with the Greater Forest of Good Science: A Comment on Simmons et al.’s Perspective on Pre‐registration

In this commentary on Simmons, Nelson, and Simonsohn (this issue), we examine their rationale for pre‐registration within the broader perspective of what good science is. We agree that there is potential benefit in a system of pre‐registration if implemented selectively. However, we believe that other tools of open science such as the full sharing of study materials and open access to underlying data, provide most of the same benefits—and more (i.e., the prevention of outright fraud)—without risking the potential adverse consequences of a system of pre‐registration. This is why we favor these other means of controlling type I error and fostering transparency. Direct replication, as opposed to conceptual replication, should be encouraged as well.     

Pre‐registration is a Game Changer. But,Like Random Assignment,it is Neither Necessary Nor Sufficient for Credible Science

We identify 15 claims Pham and Oh (2020) make to argue against pre‐registration. We agree with 7 of the claims, but think that none of them justify delaying the encouragement and adoption of pre‐registration. Moreover, while the claim they make in their title is correct—pre‐registration is neither necessary nor sufficient for a credible science—this is also true of many our science’s most valuable tools, such as random assignment. Indeed, both random assignment and pre‐registration lead to more credible research. Pre‐registration is a game changer.     

How Science Is a Resource and a Challenge for Religion: Perspective of a Theologian

Religion is characterized by the attempt to create a worldview, which is in effect the effort of worldbuilding. By this I mean that religion aims to focus on all of the elements that make up a person's world or a community's world and put those elements together in a manner that actually constructs a total picture that gives meaning and coherence to life. In this activity of worldbuilding, science and religion meet each other at the deepest level. Science makes a fundamental contribution to this worldbuilding effort and also poses a challenge. There are good grounds for this twofold role of science: (1) scientific knowledge is basic to any worldview in our time, and (2) science and its related technology engender new and often confusing experiences that require inclusion in any worldbuilding.
The challenge of science is that its contribution does not easily accommodate worldbuilding because of the factors of chance, indeterminacy, blind evolution, and heat death that are ascertained through scientific knowledge. Science is a resource for us in that the features of its knowledge can lend actuality and credibility to worldbuilding.
Religion needs science for its worldbuilding if its interpretations are to be credible and possess vivid actuality. Science needs religion because, unless its knowledge is incorporated into meaningful worldbuilding, science forfeits its standing as a humanistic enterprise and instead may count as an antihuman methodology and body of knowledge.     

The continuing need for disinterested research

For scientific knowledge to be trustworthy, it needs to be dissociated from material interests. Disinterested research also performs other important non-instrumental roles. In particular, academic science has traditionally provided society with reliable, imaginative public knowledge and independent, self-critical expertise. But this type of science is not compatible with the practice of instrumental research, which is typically proprietary, prosaic, pragmatic and partisan. With ever-increasing dependence on commercial or state funding, all modes of knowledge production are merging into a new, ‘post-academic’ research culture which is dominated by utilitarian goals. Growing concern about conflicts of interest is thus a symptom of deep-seated malaise in science and medicine. An expanded version of this paper was presented at an International Conference on “Conflict of Interest and its Significance in Science and Medicine” held in Warsaw, Poland on 5–6 April, 2002.     

"尿布与啤酒"对医学科研的启示

简单介绍了基于文本的揭示文献间关联的两种方法,即相关文献和非相关文献的知识发现的方法,并对这两种方法在医学科研中的作用进行了阐述.     

必须关注防止医学领域内的唯心科学观

对医学科学领域内存在的和某些一度充斥的唯心科学观的社会表现进行分析,从过程管理和科学方法论的重要性入手,提出防范学术腐败和发展医学科学的方法和措施,从教育和民生的角度探讨医务工作者和社会学家必须关注的医学领域内的唯心科学观,并举例说明医学工作者的科学道德自律和社会责任感的重要性。     

Dimensions in scales for measuring exploratory tendencies and stimulation levels in consumers: a cross‐cultural comparison of the USA and Spain

Current scales to assess the exploratory tendency are mainly composite measures of psychological characteristics of the consumers concerning their personality. The cultural environment in which they were developed and tested is also a major factor that could affect their validity across different cultural scenes. In this paper the relevant scales measuring exploratory tendencies are reviewed and compared in two different cultural settings: USA and Spain. The main conclusion is that the scales are not equally valid; nor do the items included in them have the same relevance in different cultural setting. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A (Post)Foundational Approach to the Philosophy of Science: Part II

Summary  This is a sequel to my paper, “Searching for a (Post)Foundational Approach to Philosophy of Science”, which appeared in an earlier issue of this Journal [Ginev 2001, Journal for General Philosophy of science 32, 27–37]. In the present paper I continue to scrutinize the possibility of a strong hermeneutics of scientific research. My aim is to defend the position of cognitive existentialism that combines the advocacy of science’s cognitive specificity and the rejection of any form of essentialism. A special attention will be paid to the notion of the thematizing project of scientific research.     

Loss Aversion,Intellectual Inertia,and a Call for a More Contrarian Science: A Reply to Simonson & Kivetz and Higgins & Liberman

Higgins and Liberman (2018) and Simonson and Kivetz (2018) offer scholarly and stimulating perspectives on loss aversion and the implications for the sociology of science of its acceptance as a virtual law of nature. In our view, Higgins and Liberman (2018) largely complement our conclusion that the empirical evidence does not support loss aversion. Moreover, in alignment with our call for a contextualized perspective, they provide an excellent discourse on how a more nuanced view of reference points and consumers’ regulatory focus enriches our understanding of the psychological impact of losses and gains. Simonson and Kivetz (2018) approached our perspective with skepticism, and, while they retain some skepticism, they express agreement on the larger point that loss aversion has been accepted too uncritically. Both commentaries point to a need for a critical reevaluation of prevailing paradigms. Here, we build on these perspectives, as well as our experience working on the topic of loss aversion, to call for structural changes to facilitate scholarly debate on science's status quo.     

Longing for Life Extension: Science Fiction and Late Life

Rejuvenescence has long been a topic of legend and medicine. As the body became the property of medical science, speculative fiction asked how fantastic experiments with bodies would affect the life course. In science fiction, medical breakthroughs promise or threaten to forestall or even reverse the decline from midlife through old age to senility and decrepitude. Responding to debates over evolution, eugenics, and scientific experimentation with human and animal subjects, rejuvenescence novels such as Bruce Sterling's Holy Fire (1996) ask readers whether they desire long life or heightened quality of life; the consolations of age or the hungers of youth; short-lived intensity or perpetual ennui.     

Science and Religion: Getting Ready for the Future

I explore three challenges for the current dialogue between science and religion: the challenges from hermeneutics, feminisms, and postmodernisms. Hermeneutics, defined as the practice and theory of interpretation and understanding, not only deals with questions of interpreting texts and data but also examines the role and use of language in religion and in science, but it should not stop there. Results of the post‐Kuhnian discussion are used to exemplify a wider range of hermeneutical issues, such as the ideological potential of scientific concepts, the dynamics of interdisciplinarity, and the significance of the socioeconomic situatedness of science and religion. Feminist research analyzes the consequences of the interplay of masculine, feminine, and gender typologies in religion and science. Examples from the history of science as well as current scientific conceptualizations indicate that beliefs in the inferiority of woman form part of our inherited scientific, religious, and metaphysical framework. It is argued that postmodernism in its most constructive form shares the best fruits of modernity, especially of the Enlightenment, while avoiding some of its most serious mistakes. In conclusion, reflecting on the three publics engaged in the dialogue between science and religion—academe, religious communities, and societies—I offer constructive suggestions and critical observations concerning the future of this dialogue.     

A Proposal for the Demarcation of Theory and Knowledge

Research communication in interdisciplinary research projects requires a way of demarcation of theory and knowledge that is easy to communicate, is inconsequential for the framework of concepts, results, and procedures within existing scientific disciplines, and abstains from trying to resolve the dispute between (neo)positivists and constructivists. A simple way of demarcation starts from the notion of language-independent and language-dependent reality. Currently, what passes for knowledge (“news”) and myth (“fake news”) depends, besides on sheer volume and frequency of the messages, increasingly on the internal consistency of (computer) language-dependent reality and decreasingly on language-independent reality. All language is instruction, and knowledge is to know which instructions (that is, theory) are predictive of a result, state, or situation in language-independent reality. Any theory that doesn’t reduce outcome space, or contains one or more empirically/physically impossible instructions, or produces wrong predictions, or falls short of demonstration is not knowledge.