{"id":582,"date":"2012-11-12T11:19:52","date_gmt":"2012-11-12T11:19:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rulesofreason.wordpress.com\/?p=582"},"modified":"2012-11-12T11:19:52","modified_gmt":"2012-11-12T11:19:52","slug":"science-is-like-sex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=582","title":{"rendered":"Science is like sex…"},"content":{"rendered":"

‘Science is like sex – it might have practical consequences but that’s not why you do it!’<\/p>\n

<\/strong>This seems to be a modified version of a quote<\/a> by the\u00a0physicist Richard Feynman that I heard last week at a meeting organized by the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research<\/a>\u00a0(the major research funding agency in the Netherlands). It kind of sums up the attitudes of natural scientists to the increasing pressures all researchers face to justify their grant applications in terms of the possible practical use (utilization, or valorization) of their research results. Which is totally fine by me. I perfectly understand that it is impossible to anticipate all the possible future practical consequences of fundmental research. On the other hand, I see no harm in forcing researchers to, at the very least, think about the possible real-world applications of their work. The current\u00a0equilibrium\u00a0\u00a0in which reflection on possible practical applications is required, but ‘utilization’ is neither necessary nor sufficient for getting a grant, seems like a good compromise.
\nOf course, I come from a field (public\u00a0administration) where demonstrating the scientific contribution is usually more difficult than showing the practical applicability of the results: so my view might be biased. I am not even sure what fundamental research in the social sciences looks like. Even rather esoteric work on non-cooperative game theory has been directly spurred by practical concerns related to the Cold War (and sponsored by the RAND<\/a> corporation) and has rather directly led to the design of real-world social instituions (like the networks for kidney exchange) which won Al Roth his recent Nobel prize<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘Science is like sex – it might have practical consequences but that’s not why you do it!’ This seems to be a modified version of a quote by the\u00a0physicist Richard Feynman that I heard last week at a meeting organized by the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research\u00a0(the major research funding agency in the Netherlands). It kind of sums up the attitudes of natural scientists to the increasing pressures all researchers face to justify their grant applications in terms of the possible practical use (utilization, or valorization) of their research results. Which is totally fine by me. I perfectly understand that it is impossible to anticipate all the possible future practical consequences of fundmental research. On the other hand, I see no harm in forcing researchers to, at the very least, think about the possible real-world applications of their work. The current\u00a0equilibrium\u00a0\u00a0in which reflection on possible practical applications is required, but ‘utilization’ is neither necessary nor sufficient for getting a grant, seems like a good compromise. Of course, I come from a field (public\u00a0administration) where demonstrating the scientific contribution is usually more difficult than showing the practical applicability of the results: so my view might be biased. I am not even sure what fundamental research in the social sciences looks like. Even rather esoteric work on non-cooperative game theory has been directly spurred by practical concerns related to the Cold War (and sponsored by the RAND corporation) and has rather directly led to the design of real-world social instituions (like the…<\/p>\n

Continue readingScience is like sex…<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[20,44],"tags":[281,581,585,586],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7g3hj-9o","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":331,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=331","url_meta":{"origin":582,"position":0},"title":"Explanation and the quest for 'significant' relationships. Part I","date":"February 17, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The ultimate goal of social science is causal explanation*. The\u00a0actual goal of most\u00a0academic research is to discover significant relationships between variables. The two goals are supposed to be strongly related - by discovering (the) significant effects of exogenous (independent) variables, one\u00a0accounts for\u00a0the outcome of interest.\u00a0In fact, the working assumption of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Causality"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":336,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=336","url_meta":{"origin":582,"position":1},"title":"Explanation and the quest for 'significant' relationships. Part II","date":"February 22, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"In Part I I argue that the search and discovery of statistically significant relationships does not amount to explanation and is often misplaced in the social sciences because the variables which are purported to have\u00a0effects\u00a0on the outcome cannot be manipulated. Just to make sure that my message is not misinterpreted\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Causality"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":724,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=724","url_meta":{"origin":582,"position":2},"title":"The failure of political science","date":"March 25, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Last week the American Senate\u00a0supported with a clear bi-partisan majority a decision to stop funding for political science research from the National Science Foundation. Of all disciplines, only political science has been singled out for the cuts and the money will go for cancer research instead. The decision is obviously\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Science politicisation"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=11","url_meta":{"origin":582,"position":3},"title":"Rules of Reason, Reasons of Rules","date":"October 6, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"This blog is about the uses of abuses of research on public policy and administration. It is about the Rules of Reason - the rules that guide the production of social science and that structure the design of academic research. But it is also about the Reasons of Rules -\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mission statement"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":282,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=282","url_meta":{"origin":582,"position":4},"title":"Writing with the rear-view mirror","date":"February 2, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Social science research is supposed to work like this: 1) You want to explain a certain case or a class of phenomena; 2) You develop a theory and derive a set of hypotheses; 3) You test the hypotheses with data; 4) You conclude about the plausibility of\u00a0the theory; 5) You\u00a0write\u00a0a\u00a0paper\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academic publishing"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":436,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=436","url_meta":{"origin":582,"position":5},"title":"Models in Political Science","date":"April 9, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Inside Higher Ed has a good interview with David Primo and Kevin Clarke on their new book A Model Discipline: Political Science and the Logic of Representations.\u00a0 The book and the interview criticize the hypothetico-deductive tradition in social science: The actual research was prompted by a student who asked, \"Why\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Observational studies"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}