RMZ Science Works

Model transfer—the use of models developed in one domain to address problems in another—is widespread in science. Yet it remains underexplored, both empirically and philosophically. In the first part of this talk, I outline some initial ideas about how we might systematically and empirically study model transfer. In the second part, I go more into detail and ask whether, and in what ways, model transfer can shape the impact trajectory of “sleeping beauty” papers—papers that “go unnoticed (‘sleep’) for a long time and then, almost suddenly, attract significant attention (‘are awakened by a prince’)” (van Raan 2004). I present preliminary results from a co-citation analysis conducted using computational methods and network-analytic tools. The analysis has two aims: (1) to identify sleeping beauty papers and (2) to examine how model transfer may contribute to their eventual surge in impact. I illustrate the approach with a case study of model transfer between economics and psychology, focusing on the uptake of economic models of temporal discounting.

Biobanken werden mehr und mehr zu einer allgegenwärtigen Infrastruktur in der Zoologie und anderen Biowissenschaften. Sie versprechen, materielle Forschungsdaten auf unbestimmte Zeit für künftige, noch offene, aber dennoch zu erwartende Zwecke aufzubewahren. Am Beispiel der Einrichtung einer physischen und digitalen Infrastruktur für gefrorene Proben tierischen Materials geht dieser Vortrag der Frage nach, wie die Zukunft die Vergangenheit vorwegnimmt und wie gefrorene Objekte entsprechend gestaltet werden. Indem ich die Biobank zwischen den alltäglichen Routinen der Konservierung in einem Forschungslabor und den "trockenen" und "nassen" Sammlungen von Naturkundemuseen verorte, argumentiere ich, dass eingefrorene Forschungsobjekte auf zwei verschiedene Arten konserviert werden müssen: Die Nichtverfügbarkeit von Kryo-Objekten in Kühllagern zwingt Forscher*innen dazu, physische Proben („Inhalte“) unabhängig von Metadaten („Kontext“) zu behandeln. Gleichzeitig aber müssen sie eine Verbindung zwischen ihnen aufrechterhalten, die ihre Wiedervereinigung nach dem Auftauen ermöglicht. Das Ergebnis ist ein gespaltenes Objekt, das ein Doppelleben zwischen Minusgraden und Raumtemperatur führt und nur durch die Oberfläche spezieller Kunststoffbehälter verbunden ist. Indem er der Herstellung von Kryo-Objekten nachgeht, versucht sich dieser Vortrag an einer Reflexion über Joanna Radins "geplanten Rückblick" als Praxis.

In April 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration that gathered over two hundred international scientists famously revealed the first empirical images of a black hole—a mysterious cosmic object thus far regarded ‘unseeable’. To create these revolutionary images that visualise the immediate surrounding of the black hole at the centre of the galaxy Messier 87, the EHT team used a constellation of seven radio telescopes that spanned the Earth and then spent two years algorithmically reconstructing empirically reliable images from the thus collected non-visual data. To obtain valid imaging results, the EHT team deployed multiple methodologies during the image reconstruction process, which all delivered sufficiently consistent results. Apart from revealing their final images to the public, the team also made their processed data and algorithms accessible to the public.
In 2022, five studies authored by scientists who were not members of the EHT team were published. Each study focused on reanalysing the publicly available EHT data, testing if they would obtain sufficiently similar images of the black hole. The stated purpose of these epistemic critiques was to verify the epistemic truth claims of the EHT’s final images of the black hole. The authors of each study thereby deployed different approaches. Some replicated the procedure developed by the EHT team; others developed alternative algorithmic techniques for reconstructing images from the EHT non-visual data. Four of the five critical reanalyses converged on their findings by obtaining images that were sufficiently similar to the initial EHT images published in 2019. One study diverged in their results and was subsequently criticised by the EHT team for its methodology.
As my paper will show, this circulation of the epistemic critique in the community of astrophysicists focused on imaging black holes is far more than a contrived academic exercise. Instead, it is of critical importance for the epistemological consolidation of the currently emerging research field of black hole imaging and, with its fine-grained methodological insights, has the potential to inform future EHT analyses and results. However, while the importance of critical replication studies for the community of specialists is difficult to overestimate, this type of discipline-specific epistemic critique remains highly hermetic. Since the implications and import of such a critique remain opaque for non-specialists, its circulation remains constrained to the members of the scientific community.

Two competing imaginaries inform the current wave of innovations in research publishing: one that perceives ‘the literature’ as a library of research accounts, and one that sees it as a gigantic database. While the library portrays acquiring knowledge as an act of reading texts informed by an understanding of their inter-textual setting, the database sees the literature as a collection of verified facts that can be extracted, or ‘mined’. Both imaginaries present different understandings of what the research literature is, of which knowledge is valued in that literature, how it should be curated and what it should be usable for. Using basic notions of socio-technical infrastructures and inspired by the work of Ricœur, we analyse how these imaginaries are at work in current publishing innovations, such as new tools for enriching text with tags for uniquely identified research entities, new publication platforms and formats such as micro-publications or mega-journals, or forms of meta-analysis. We highlight how both imaginaries can derail into phantasmagories and explore how reflecting on their premises can inform productive accommodations of both.

In aktuellen politischen Debatten etwa zur Klimapolitik oder zu Corona ist einmal mehr deutlich geworden, dass es sehr unterschiedliche Vorstellungen zur Rolle, zum Status und zur Geltung von Wissen und Expertise bei gesellschaftlichen Grundsatzfragen gibt. Zwei Extrempositionen markieren dabei den Korridor der aktuellen Debattenlandschaft: Es gibt einerseits die Verfechter:innen einer konsequent wissensbasierten Politik, verkörpert im Slogan “follow the sciences”, andererseits betont antiintellektuelle und wissenschaftsskeptische Positionen, verkörpert im Topos “alternativer Fakten” bei Trump und Co. Dieser Beitrag nimmt diese aktuellen Tendenzen einer wachsenden Politisierung von Wissen und Expertise wissenssoziologisch in den Blick. Diskutiert werden Grundlagen der Expertise-Forschung in der Soziologie und grundlegende normative Färbungen der Debatte. Entgegen der These einer problematischen “Epistemisierung des Politischen” (Bogner) wird hier dafür plädiert, gesellschaftliche Spannungslinien und dahinterstehende Wert-, Verteilungs- und Identitätskonflikte stärker in den Blick zu nehmen als bisher.