Barbara Osimani
Marche Polytechnic University
As a response to the so called “reproducibility crisis” and, more generally, to a crisis of trust towards the scientific enterprise (Edwards and Roy 2017, Vazire 2017), various initiatives have been promoted in the direction of fostering transparency of scientific procedures and honest evidence disclosure. The Open Science Movement, the AllTrials Campaign, and Sense about Science, to name but a few, are putting efforts into both identifying scientific misconduct and its sources, and proposing possible solutions. These generally involve developing tools to identify methodological flaws as a deterrent to cheating and invoking stricter and stricter norms for open policies (accessible data, codes, and research protocols), and transparency (e.g. pre-registration of trials).
The appeal to introducing, and strengthening already established, monitoring systems stems from the awareness that incentives to bias scientific results affect the process of knowledge acquisition and disclosure, both at the level of individual scientists working in a more and more competitive market, and at the level of institutions (academy and industry), having strong conflicts of interests in the production and delivery of scientific knowledge. Hence, contrary to the traditional optimism expressed by some philosophers with respect to the self correcting capacity of science (Kitcher 1993, Solomon 1992, Hull 2001), methodologists do not show an equal dose of confidence in the power of an “invisible hand” (Smaldino and McElreath 2016).
This talk offers an overview of the diagnoses and possible solutions currently advanced in order to improve the reliability of scientific evidence. In particular, it contrasts currently advanced remedies with the contribution of game-theoretic perspectives on the topic, suggesting that such remedies may be useless or even backfire, because of various interacting dimensions at play in evidence collection, interpretation and disclosure in strategic environments.
“What’s freedom for? To know eternity”. Theodore Roethke.
Time: September 13th, 16:45 – 18:15
Location: HS E.002, online
SOPhiA 2026 