Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ Open science, closed doors: The perils and potential of open science for research in practice

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

This is quite a good paper outlining four incompatibilities between the fundamental principles underlying open science practices and scientific progress through applied research. These incompatibilities are: limits on sharing of personal or proprietary data, inability to pre-register hypotheses to be tested in complex data sets (and hence, preference for theory-driven research), the demand for replication of specific cases, and evolving definitions of 'good science' (as "a study with clear hypotheses using standard, favored methodologies and having as much control as possible over the research process and outcomes"). The result, they argue, is a narrowing down of what can be published to trivial findings in areas of little importance, to the point that "textbook authors and journalists no longer rely on the research published in academic journals."

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
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Last Updated: May 08, 2024 2:44 p.m.

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