Hi, I'm Severin de Wit, host of the TrustTalk podcast, where we dive deep into the fascinating world of trust. With a genuine passion for understanding the foundations and nuances of trust, I am dedicated to uncovering its secrets and sharing compelling stories that illuminate its profound impact. Join me on this captivating journey as we explore the transformative power of trust. Subscribe now and become part of the TrustTalk community
Hi, I'm Severin de Wit, host of the TrustTalk podcast, where we dive deep into the fascinating world of trust. With a genuine passion for understanding the foundations and nuances of trust, I am dedicated to uncovering its secrets and sharing compelling stories that illuminate its profound impact. Join me on this captivating journey as we explore the transformative power of trust. Subscribe now and become part of the TrustTalk community
He believes that there are major economic and political interests that fuel the denial of science. In his opinion, we should focus not only on the symptoms but also on the deeper underlying structures that allow denialism to thrive. To maintain trust in science, scientists should actively address issues like science publications that become more focused on ranking and commercialization rather than the content of the research or industry-sponsored research.
ChatGPT, the Effect on Teaching and Science
When talking about ChatGPT, he advocates soul searching about what is the purpose of the texts we produce in science, asking ourselves, why do we produce it in the way that we produce it? Why is it valuable to write, understand, read, to critically reflect? And what is it that the machine can do and what is it that it can’t do?
(…) we should separate the issue of research and teaching. So first and foremost, universities and institutes of higher education that are involved in teaching, they will face an issue of students handing in AI-improved texts and materials. And there’s a real soul searching about what is the purpose of the texts we produce in science if we have such tools. I think that’s actually a good debate. We should be asking ourselves, why do we produce it in the way that we produce it? Why is it valuable to write, understand, to read, to critically reflect? And what is it that the machine can do and what is it that it can’t do? So that’s a good discussion. But that’s going to hit scientists more from the teaching side. From the research side, there have been some studies done that at least if you give people abstracts and small summaries of papers, then you can fool some people even in their fields of expertise. But then it becomes pretty clear quite soon onwards that there is no real knowledge behind it, it’s just the prediction of what would be probably a good paper. So I do see, however, the speed at which these “stochastic parrots”, as they have been called, produce any type of output as potentially dangerous. So put simply, the speed at which fake science can be produced is enhancing, and if this speed comes to a system that prioritizes people having lots of output so people get rewards for writing lots of papers, here you have a tool that helps people write lots of papers. You put these two dynamics together, that’s a recipe for a lot of problems.
About Science Papers behind Publishing companies’paywalls
About paywalls for scientific publications, he stresses the need for everyone to participate and contribute to the global pursuit of science and not solely rely on Sci-Hub and the work of people like Alexandra Elbakyan, who founded it and who did a lot of good for science while doing illegal things.
(…) there’s a huge mismatch between the science that we need and we need to read accessibly and we also we need to publish it accessibly. It’s not just about reading, it’s also usually authors have to pay in order to get their articles printed, even in the most prestigious journal especially that’s a problem if you’re from the Global South or if you’re from an institution generally that doesn’t have funds to publish research. So generally, of course, knowledge should be free, or at least it should be possible for everyone to participate and contribute to the global pursuit of science. But that’s not possible, and we have to rely on these illegal sites like Sci-Hub and for instance, have to rely on the work of people like Alexandra Elbakyan, who founded it and who did a lot of good for science while doing illegal things, right? And that says more about how our global system of science is problematic and less about Sci-Hub or these illegal sites.
Extended Peer Review of Science papers needed
(…) I’m more a fan of this concept of “extended peer community” that comes from the post-normal science theorists. Basically what it means is that we have problems today from digitalisation to climate change that even transcends our traditional research methods, because decisions are urgent, values are being debated, worldviews conflict, even traditional research methods are not enough. So we need broader communities, we need to increase the size of who counts as a relevant person of critique, of knowledge, involve all stakeholders, involve different people who hold different world views, and involve a broader community than just the scientific peer community. (…)
Listen to the podcast Interview with subtitles on the TrustTalk YouTube channel
Transcript of the Interview
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The Covid pandemic has learned us that we have to rely on science, at the same time when scientists appear in public they are often criticized and mistrusted. In this interview, Roberto Gronda, philosopher of science at the University of Pisa (Italy) explains why this is: operating as a scientist in the context of a university or laboratory renders more trust than a scientist doing consultancy where the scientist has to show more qualifications, like being media savvy. A lot of scientists work in big groups, so they need to trust each other because they do not have all the skills necessary to assess every bit of knowledge. The old idea is that there is a scientist who has enough skills to build everything from scratch, to know everything about his field of research to be completely autonomous from all the other people. That’s not possible anymore. So lay people need to trust a scientist. But the relationship between laypeople and scientists is a relationship of inequality. As for what knowledge is concerned, there is no chance that laypeople can know things better than scientists in their field of research. There are two different reasons to trust scientists, the first one is that there are ontological reasons, so we believe that scientists are reliable in the sense that they are behaving right, they are not trying to cheat us, and they are good at their work, and not corrupted or driven by personal interests. Another ground for trust is institutional. Scientists work in institutions and the institutions are tools that check their credibility each time so they are constantly checked.
When scientists are working in their lab, they are protected somehow from all things outside. So there is kind of a shield around them. On the contrary, when they have to deal with a public problem, they are into the wild. They are in, they are dealing with something which really matters to people. And so the kind of detachment that they can have while they are in the lab disappears. And so things are really more difficult, more complicated. And the scientists when they work, when they work as scientific experts need to take into account much more aspects of the situation. And so they have to develop some other skills. They it is not enough for them to be good scientists. For instance, they should be able to communicate with the public to be patient with them, sometimes to understand what kind of language should they use. For instance, they should also understand what people expect from them. So why the reason why sometimes they are misunderstood so easily, and that’s all part of a set of skills that need to be developed if you want to take all public problems.
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