How, when and why science fails to correct itself : an ERC seminar

On Friday 8 July, NanoBubbles PI Raphaël Lévy along with team members Frédérique Bordignon and YJ Erden gave a thourough presentation of the project, as part of a seminar organised by the European Research Council (ERC).

This presentation aimed to introduce the premises of the project starting  to where we currently stand.

Before discussing the project itself, the speakers gave a quick overview of the different steps that led to “correcting science”. In order to carry out this process, it is important to work within the science and technology studies framework. This interdisciplinary field contains controversy studies, namely historical and sociological studies of disagreements in science. Besides, existing papers attempt to explain why and how some scientists ans firms promote ignorance. This framework is also essential to understand to persistence of error and failures of self-correction, as well as how promises and hypes end, or how they are adjusted and corrected.

Furthermore,  digital methods must be used notably to automatically screen scientific publications, in order to detect unreliable or odd results, to track claims and counter-claims and to study citations. This is where team member and co-speaker Frédérique Bordignon intervenes, as she carries out the scientometrics and text analysis work in NanoBubbles.

The achievement of science correction must be carried out according to specific ethical aims. Indeed, good and rigorous science must be ensured through effective methods of correction. This requires rigorous and transparent ethical approaches and procedures.                                                           Moreover, correcting science has also brought ethical reflections to light – this encapsulates part of team member and co-speaker YJ Erden’s work within the project. Several activities and outputs were put in place to put these reflections into practice, as indicated during the seminar.

In order to discuss the specific activities within NanoBubbles, speakers gave a general view of our activities and, more specifically, the many synergies in the project. Some of the sub-projects are post-publication peer review, correction practices, scientific publishing etc.

Watch the video above for more details on NanoBubbles’ history and current activities.