A Scale to Measure Science Communication Training Effectiveness

The research describes efforts toward developing a valid and reliable scale used to assess science communication training effectiveness (SCTE) undertaken in conjunction with a 4-year project funded by the National Science Foundation. Results suggest that the SCTE scale possesses acceptable psychometric properties, specifically reliability and validity, with regard to responses from graduate students in science, technology, engineering, and math fields. While it cannot be concluded that the SCTE scale is the “be-all-end-all” tool, it may assist investigators in gauging success of science communication training efforts and by identifying aspects of the program that are working or that need improving.

The success of science-industry R&D cooperation. A fuzzy-set approach

Purpose: This study focuses on the causal mechanisms by which a series of organizational factors like commitment, communication, experience, dependence and trust collectively affect on the success of science-industry R&D cooperation. The purpose of this paper is to identify multiple paths of complex causal recipes that can lead to success of science-industry R&D cooperation. Design/methodology/approach: The study uses fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), a technique that provides a holistic view of the examined interrelationships, compared to traditional net effect approaches that assume symmetric and linear relationships among variables. Findings: Results indicate that different causal paths, exactly five configurations, explain success R&D contracts. Particularly, the findings reveal that the availability of commitment and communication are important, sufficient conditions because they appear in at least three of the five configurations that result from the analysis. In this way, a series of conclusions and implications have been obtained that can be very useful, both in the academic world and when trying to lead and manage cooperation agreements. Research implications: A comprehensive theoretical model was developed and tested that identifies the organizational factors of the success of science-industry R&D cooperation. The presented model and comprehensive research using fs/QCA allows to overcome the fragmentation of this specialized literature. Practical implications: The results contain a number of practical recommendations that can be useful in the conduct and management of cooperation agreements. During the establishing and developing contract stages, it is recommended to design managerial and organizational mechanisms that ensure a high degree of commitment and communication in combination with experience (configuration number 1) and/or with dependences (configuration number 4). Originality/value: Vital value of this paper is the use of fs/QCA, a technique that is an important novelty, at least in the field of R&D cooperation relationships between companies and research organizations. This method allows testing the configuration of conditions in relation to a specific outcome (e.g. success of science-industry R&D cooperation) in a way that is not possible using a linear additive approach.

Understanding Versus Being Certain

Understanding, rather than certainty, is the true aim of science. This is something that scientists and philosophers agree upon for good reasons. There are two main reasons for this. The first reason is that understanding is particularly valuable. It is widely acknowledged that understanding is a cognitive achievement that is even more valuable than knowledge. So, when aiming at understanding, science aims at an intellectual good that is very valuable. The second reason is that, as the aim of science, focusing on understanding instead of certainty provides a solid account of the success of science. If certainty were the aim of science, then science has not been very successful since it never achieves certainty. However, science has continually achieved deeper understanding of natural phenomena, so if understanding is the aim, science has been tremendously successful.

Are you a selective-realist dialetheist without knowing it?

Recently there has been a tendency on the part of some scientific realists to weaken their philosophical theses with respect to the success of science. Some of them have suggested that a satisfactorily realist standpoint should be a highly modest approach to scientific success , leaving many with the impression that scientific realism nowadays is nothing that we once thought it was. In light of that, the main concern of this paper is methodological, here I want to answer the question how far can we push the boundaries of our realist commitments and still be in control of our philosophical claims. In particular, I deal with the issue of how a certain type of weak version of selective realism will necessarily allow for true contradictions, dialetheias –even if that is not desirable. Here I argue that if one presents a very weak characterization of selective realism, one that is in line with contemporary projects, this type of realism will not forbid the possibility of things such as dialetheias. I also claim that, if that is the case, we face the following dilemma: or our general characterization of selective realism is mistaken or selective realists cannot provide a satisfactory explanation of why and how to forbid dialetheias in science

Scientific Realism and the No Miracles Argument

The No Miracles Argument (NMA) is perhaps the most prominent argument in the debate about scientific realism. It contends that the truth of our best scientific theories is the only hypothesis that does not make the astonishing predictive and explanatory success of science a mystery. However, the argument has been criticized from a Bayesian point of view as committing the base rate fallacy. We provide two Bayesian models (one related to the individual-theory-based NMA and one related to the frequency-based NMA) that respond to that objection. The first model takes into account the observed stability of mature scientific theories, the second the success frequency of theories within a scientific discipline. We conclude that the NMA can be used to defend the realist thesis and that its validity is a highly context-sensitive matter.

INNOPOLISES AND SCIENCE CITIES: A STRATEGY OF SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL BREAKTHROUGH AND «HUMAN FACTOR»

We consider the socio-humanitarian problems of the formation of innopolises and science cities in Russia in the XXI century, including the impact of socio-cultural preferences on the formation of these types of localizations. The key role of young scientists in achieving the success of science and education centers is stated. It is pointed out that the inhibiting factor here is the decline of work ethic and the realities of the labor market in the form of the insufficient prestige of a researcher in the professional preferences of young people.

Naturalism and the success of science

Methodological naturalism is usually regarded as compatible with a range of religious commitments on the part of scientific practitioners and it is typically assumed that methodological naturalism does not imply metaphysical naturalism. Against this, it has been argued that the cumulative success of the sciences, conducted in conformity with the principle of methodological naturalism, actually provides compelling evidence for the truth of metaphysical naturalism. In this article I assess the argument for naturalism from the history of science and suggest that it is deficient in a number of ways. There may be reasons for adopting naturalism, but the history of science is not the place to look for them.

Naturalism in social science

Naturalism is a term used in several ways. The more specific meanings of ‘naturalism’ in the philosophy of social sciences rest on the great popular authority acquired by modern scientific methods and forms of explanation in the wake of the seventeenth-century scientific revolution. For many of the thinkers of the European Enlightenment and their nineteenth-century followers the success of science in uncovering the laws governing the natural world was used as an argument for the extension of its methods into the study of morality, society, government and human mental life. Not only would this bring the benefit of consensus in these contested areas, but also it would provide a sound basis for ameliorative social reform. Among the most influential advocates of naturalism, in this sense, was the early nineteenth-century French philosopher Auguste Comte. The authority of the new mechanical science, even as an account of non-human nature, continued to be resisted by romantic philosophers. However, the more limited task of resisting the scientific ‘invasion’ of human self-understanding was taken up by the Neo-Kantian philosophers of the latter part of the nineteenth century, in Germany. Followers and associates of this tradition (such as Windelband, Rickert, Dilthey and others) insist that there is a radical gulf between scientific knowledge of nature, and the forms of understanding which are possible in the sphere of humanly created meanings and cultures. This view is argued for in several different ways. Sometimes a contrast is made between the regularities captured in laws of nature, on the one hand, and social rules, on the other. Sometimes human consciousness and self-understanding is opposed to the non-conscious ‘behaviour’ of non-human beings and objects, so that studying society is more like reading a book or having a conversation than it is like studying a chemical reaction.