4: Scopes and Scapes of Science: Between Global Reforms and Local Confrontations
Sven Ulpts and Alexander SchniedermannÂ
Science studies scholars have joined places of knowledge generation (labs) around the world for decades: by turning towards the micro perspective on science (Knorr-Cetina, 1999), they have illuminated the diverse practices, values, and social configurations that shape epistemic cultures in various disciplines and sites. They uncovered how science largely lacks any form of centrality, top-down governance, or level from which generalizations about what science is or isn’t can be made comfortably.
Yet recent trends seem to challenge this perspective by emphasizing the general over the local: Metascience and science reform movements promote new global narratives of discovery, values such as transparency and replicability, as well as standards and guidelines for scientific practice and assessment on a general level. Moreover, reform measures target implementation at the level of science publishers or national and international funding schemes (Nosek et al., 2015; Moher et al., 2020). Yet, these general movements are rooted in idealized versions of the epistemic culture of some psychological and biomedical sciences, thereby inheriting local epistemic modes of these communities (Peterson & Panofsky, 2023). Likewise, the digital transformation towards open science and the success of large-scale research infrastructures must be attentive towards disciplinary idiosyncrasies and local contingencies (Leonelli, 2023), while requiring central modes of funding, development and governance in order to be manageable (Borgman et al., 2016).
We invite contributions as oral presentations that investigate relationships, tensions, confrontations, or forms of engagement between the local and global levels of defining acceptable research practices, values, and goals of science or valid forms of knowledge. We specifically would like to explore from multiple theoretical and methodological perspectives how this confrontation between global science reform endeavors and the local research communities with their diverse epistemic cultures plays out in practice and discourse. Additionally, we value reflections and perspectives from within STS regarding a) how the field relates to trends like replicability, Open Science, and the digital infrastructure of science, and b) how STS tackles the apparent dilemma between developing macro knowledge about science and arrive at fruitful forms of generalization, on the one hand, while also being attentive to epistemic diversity and local contingencies of science, on the other. The aim of the track is to develop a nuanced understanding with a conceptual and methodological toolbox that confronts or bridges speaking about science in general with the complexities and contingencies of everyday science.
Keywords: metascience, epistemic diversity, science reform, open science, digital infrastructure