Ispra, Italy, 3-4 March 2016
Each sector of science now has distinct
challenges of quality. For scientific research, it is reproducibility;
for application, consequences; for science advice, acceptability; and for the
autonomous ‘citizen’ and ‘DIY’ sciences, governance.
The workshop, organized by the Joint
Research Center of the European Commission, considered current challenges to
quality assurance in science and their effects on the trustworthiness of
science, as knowledge, in applications and in policy. The challenges originate
from the previous transformation from community-based ‘little’ science to
industrial-scale ‘big’ science, which had effects on research-incentives and
thus commitment and morale.
The present transformation, that we call
‘information-age’ science, has enabled new social practices and sources of
commitment to emerge, both within and outside of established science, that
offer new ways of resolving the challenges of quality assurance.
- For those involved in maintaining existing streams of production, application and advice, some key questions are: By what methodologies could the existing institutions accommodate to the new tendencies, for their mutual benefit?
- By what means, including dialogues and participation, could the new forms of practice be guided in the development of appropriate quality procedures?
The workshop was devoted to a review of
these new tendencies, and to communication among them, exploring amongst
others, how the insights of Post-Normal Science can contribute to their
understanding and way out. The scientific
committee was integrated by Alice Benessia, Anne Blanchard, Bruna De
Marchi, Silvio Funtowicz, Mario Giampietro, Ângela Guimarães Pereira, Zora
Kovacic, Simon Meisch, Jerome Ravetz, Andrea Saltelli, Roger Strand, Jeroen van
der Sluijs. The meeting gathered participants coming from a variety of regions
and institutions , who actively participated in vivid conversations and
debates. Cecilia Hidalgo presented and discussed a work titled ‘From truth to
credibility: changes in environmental knowledge authoritativeness’ in a session
devoted to the issue "Quality assurance by extended peer review".
Link of the workshop: