Big Science, Big Trouble? Understanding Conflict in and Around Big Science Projects and Networks

Abstract

Many Big Science projects and networks experience conflict. A plethora of disciplines have examined conflict causes in science collaboration and Big Science, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of why conflicts emerge. Yet, so far, there is no theoretical model that explains which mechanisms connect conflict cause and outbreak in Big Science. Drawing on interdisciplinary literature on science collaboration and Big Science as well as on scholarship on strategic action fields (SAFs), I address this blind spot by proposing a model that outlines which mechanisms induce and fuel conflict in Big Science projects and networks. Five interlinked mechanisms – attribution of threat or opportunity, mobilization of resources, coalition-building, boundary deactivation and innovative action – are central to it. Tracing these mechanisms in conflictual episodes which emerged in three typical, yet most-different, Big Science cases – the International Experimental Thermonuclear Reactor (ITER), the Human Brain Project (HBP) and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) – this study also provides a proof of concept for the model.

Flagship Afterthoughts: Could the Human Brain Project (HBP) Have Done Better?

“…Attracting and sustaining collaborations has been at the heart of the open calls of HBP (Lorents et al, 2023). Despite these efforts, monitored by ethnographic studies in social sciences (Mahfoud, 2018(Mahfoud, , 2021Aicardi and Mahfoud, 2022;Rüland, 2023), it remains unclear at the end of the project what type of community has emerged or been consolidated. To my knowledge, no quantitative independent social network study has been yet made, looking at the full longitudinal history of the HBP flagship, to analyze (1) the evolution of collaborative networks (to illustrate for instance a possible revitalization by open calls) and (2) the interpenetration of the different scientific fields.…”