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4 Progress in Science
Pages 67-94

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From page 67...
... The chapter first draws on contributions from the history and sociology of science to consider the nature of scientific progress and the paths that lead to realizing the potential scientific and societal outcomes of scientific activity. It considers indicators that might be used to assess progress toward these outcomes.
From page 68...
... . Many adherents to this hierarchical view place the natural sciences toward the top of the hierarchy and the social sciences toward the bottom.2 In this view, advances in the "higher" sciences, conceived in terms of findings, concepts, methodologies, or technologies that are thought to be fundamental, are held to flow down to the "lower" sciences, while the reverse flow rarely occurs.
From page 69...
... In evolutionary and competitive models, a possible function of science managers is to shape the environment that selects for ideas so as to propagate research that is judged to promote the agency's scientific and societal goals. Stephen Cole (1992)
From page 70...
... They also point to the need to differentiate between "vitality," as indicated by ferment at the frontier, and scientific progress as indicated by movement of knowledge from the frontier to the core.3 These findings suggest that the policy challenges for research managers making prospective judgments at the frontiers of research fields are quite similar across the sciences. NATURE OF SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS Scientific progress can be of various types -- discoveries of phenomena, theoretical explanations or syntheses, tests of theories or hypotheses, acceptance or rejection of hypotheses or theories by the relevant scientific communities, development of new measurement or analytic techniques, application of general theory to specific theoretical or practical problems, development of technologies or useful interventions to improve human health and well-being from scientific efforts, and so forth.
From page 71...
... The list is intended as a reminder to participants in science policy decisions that assess the progress of scientific fields of the variety of kinds of progress science can make. Recognizing that these broad categories overlap and also that they are interdependent, with each kind of progress having the potential to influence the others, directly or indirectly, the list is intended to simplify a very complex phenomenon to a manageable level.
From page 72...
... have yielded progress in the form of scientific advances of most of the above types. We cite only a few examples.
From page 73...
... No theory of scientific progress exists, or is on the horizon, that allows prediction of the future development of new scientific ideas or specifies how the different types of scientific progress influence each other -- although they clearly are interdependent. Rather, recent studies by historians of science and practicing scientists typically emphasize the uncertainty surrounding which of a series of findings emerging at any point in time will be determinative of the most productive path for future scientific inquiries and indeed of the ways in which these findings will be used.
From page 74...
... Despite the incompleteness of knowledge, the findings of earlier research remain a suggestive and potentially useful resource for practical research managers. They suggest a variety of state-of-knowledge propositions that are consistent with our collective experience on multiple advisory and review panels across several federal science agencies.
From page 75...
... To the extent that interdisciplinarity is important to scientific progress and for gaining the potential societal benefits of science, it is important for research managers to create favorable conditions for interdisciplinary contact and collaboration. In fact, for some time BSR has been seeking explicitly to promote both multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity (Suzman, 2004)
From page 76...
... Several conditions favorable to interdisciplinary collaboration can be affected by the actions of funders of research. For example, science agencies can encourage or require interdisciplinary collaboration in the research they support, support activities that specifically bring researchers together from different disciplines to address a problem of common interest, provide
From page 77...
... It is possible for funds to be offered but for researchers to fail to propose the kinds of interdisciplinary projects that were hoped for. Sometimes interdisciplinary efforts take hold, but they fail to produce important scientific advances or societal benefits.
From page 78...
... Research on science utilization, a field that was most vital in the 1970s and that has seen some revival recently, has examined the ways in which scientific results, particularly social science results, may be used, particularly in government decisions (for recent reviews, see Landry et al., 2003, and Romsdahl, 2005, for some classic treatments, see Caplan, 1976; Weiss,
From page 79...
... . Federal science program managers face the challenges of establishing causal linkages between past research program activities and societal impacts and of projecting societal impacts from current and planned research activities.
From page 80...
... In Chapter 5, we discuss a strategy for assessing science that recognizes this social context while also seeking an appropriate role for indicators and other analytic approaches. INDICATORS OF SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS Research managers understandably want early indicators of scientific progress to inform decisions that must be made before the above types of substantive progress can be definitively shown.
From page 81...
... . Since 1990 the growth in nano S&T articles has been remarkable, and now exceeds 2.5 percent of all science and engineering articles." Major scientific advances are often marked by flurries of research activity, and many observers expect that such indications of research vitality presage major progress in science and applications.
From page 82...
... But the resource allocation challenge for a research manager, given multiple alternative fields whose aggregate claims for support exceed his or her program budget, is to make the correct interpretation of research vitality prospectively: that is, to project whether the field will be judged in hindsight to have produced valuable contributions or to have been no more than a fad or an intellectual dead-end. Another trajectory of research is problematic for research managers who would use vitality as an indicator of future potential.
From page 83...
... These warnings become increasingly important as technical advances in data retrieval and mining make it easier to create and access quantitative indicators of research vitality and as precepts of performance assessment increase pressures on research managers to use quantitative indicators to assess the progress and value of the research they support. Indicators of Societal Impact A variety of events may indicate that scientific activities have generated results that are likely to have practical value, even though such value may not (yet)
From page 84...
... Some of these potential indicators are readily quantifiable, so, like bibliometric indicators, they are attractive means by which science managers can document the value of their programs. But as with quantitative indicators of research vitality, the meaning of quantitative indicators of societal impact is subject to differing interpretations.
From page 85...
... A convenient means of documenting contemporary thinking on the factors that contribute to scientific advances is to examine the series of "benchmarking" studies of the international standing of U.S. science in the fields of materials science, mathematics, and immunology made by panels of scientists under the auspices of the National Academies' Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (COSEPUP)
From page 86...
... Supply of Researchers The number, creativity, and age distribution of researchers in a field together affect the pace of scientific progress in the field. Numbers are important to the extent that the ability to generate scientific advances is randomly distributed through a population of comparably trained researchers.
From page 87...
... Requests for proposals directed toward specific scientific, technological, and societal objectives; initiatives supporting collaborative, interdisciplinary modes of inquiry organized as centers rather than as single principal investigator projects; and use of selection criteria in addition to scientific merit are by now well-established parts of the research programs of federal science agencies, including NIH and the National Science Foundation.9 A recurrent issue for federal science managers and for scientific communities is the relative rate of return to alternative arrangements, such as funding mechanisms. Making such comparisons is challenging.
From page 88...
... science: adequate and sustainable funding; multiple, decentralized, funding streams; strong reliance on investigator-initiated proposals selected through competitive, merit-based review; coupling basic research with graduate education; and supplementary funding for capital-intensive modes of inquiry, interdisciplinary collaboration, targeted research objectives, and translation of basic research findings into clinical practice or technological innovations. Still, these principles may not provide wise guidance for the support of behavioral and social science research on aging, for three reasons.
From page 89...
... IMPLICATIONS FOR DECISION MAKING 1. No theory exists that can reliably predict which research activities are most likely to lead to scientific advances or to societal benefit.
From page 90...
... . Research managers might consider the findings of such studies in making choices about what kinds of organizations to support, especially in efforts to promote scientific innovation.
From page 91...
... It identified organizational characteristics that facilitate or hamper the making of major discoveries, suggesting some directions that research organizations might take if they want to maintain or increase their likelihood of nurturing major discoveries. The characteristics are • Organizational autonomy (the capacity to make decisions according to criteria the organization develops "independently of external disciplinary norms and governing authorities")
From page 92...
... Supporting such research requires special efforts and skills of research managers but holds the promise of yielding major advances that would not come from business-as-usual science.
From page 93...
... . may also be less likely to embrace new ideas, particularly if they assess such a course as being particularly risky." Thus, a graying scientific community affects the rate of scientific innovation directly by being less productive and indirectly by being slow to accept new ideas as they emerge.
From page 94...
... From time to time, institutes conduct internal program reviews or appoint external review panels, but these ad hoc assessments are usually done in response to a perception that the program is no longer effective or appropriate rather than as part of a regular evaluation process. Most of these reviews rely on the judgment of experts rather than systematically collected objective data, although some formal program evaluations have been performed by outside firms using such data" (Institute of Medicine, 2004:121)


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