How should we promote transient diversity in science?

Abstract

Diversity of practice is widely recognized as crucial to scientific progress. If all scientists perform the same tests in their research, they might miss important insights that other tests would yield. If all scientists adhere to the same theories, they might fail to explore other options which, in turn, might be superior. But the mechanisms that lead to this sort of diversity can also generate epistemic harms when scientific communities fail to reach swift consensus on successful theories. In this paper, we draw on extant literature using network models to investigate diversity in science. We evaluate different mechanisms from the modeling literature that can promote transient diversity of practice, keeping in mind ethical and practical constraints posed by real epistemic communities. We ask: what are the best ways to promote an appropriate amount of diversity of practice in scientific communities?

Epistemic advantage on the margin: A network standpoint Epistemology

“…Thinking about how some of the assumptions can be relaxed is a worthwhile direction of future research. Moreover, as Wu and O'Connor (2021) recently notes, some of the network effects in the bandit model paradigm, such as the Zollman effect, are independently discovered in other modeling paradigms like the NK landscape model (Fang et al., 2010; Lazer & Friedman, 2007). It would be worthwhile to test if the marginalized group would end up with epistemic advantages as we apply one‐sided testimonial ignoration and devaluation to the NK landscape model.…”

Can Confirmation Bias Improve Group Learning?

“…Santana (2021) argues that stubbornness in science can have negative consequences, such as hurting public trust. Wu and O’Connor (2023) give an overview of the literature on transient diversity of beliefs in network models, and argue that in scientific communities there are better ways to ensure this diversity than to encourage actors to be stubborn. For example, centralized funding bodies can promote exploration across topics instead.…”

The Next Generation Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration: History, Philosophy, and Culture

“…For high stakes frontier research where it is important to be correct, it may be warranted to temporarily limit communication between team members. For instance, the limited communications between the imaging teams at the EHT may have epistemically benefited the final results [142,146]. 21 Moreover, there already is evidence regarding the benefits of including groups traditionally excluded from knowledge production; some local and Indigenous communities on EHT's sites would have relevant scientific knowledge that other team members do not (see [147] for collaboration with Indigenous communities).…”

“…Firstly, there are several mechanisms that can generate (transient) diversity. Of particular interest are modeling results [142] showing that the less connected the epistemic community is, the more likely it is to converge to the true belief-but the slower it is at doing so [132,[143][144][145]. For high stakes frontier research where it is important to be correct, it may be warranted to temporarily limit communication between team members.…”