Reducing uncertainty

Uncertainty
cc: Scribblings of Light - https://www.flickr.com/photos/85542602@N00
1/3/2018OPEN SCIENCE AND THE CHEMISTRY LAB OF THE FUTURE

REDUCING UNCERTAINTY
THE RAISON D’ÊTRE FOR
OPEN SCIENCE
JEREMY G. FREY
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON
OPEN SCIENCE AND THE CHEMISTRY LAB OF THE FUTURE 1/3/2018

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ISS-
30_Ice_floes_along_the_Kamchatka_coastline.jpg
Reducing and
Managing
Uncertainty 1/3/2018OPEN SCIENCE AND THE CHEMISTRY LAB OF THE FUTURE
Science is a process of uncertainty
reduction, and no one study is almost
ever a definitive result on its own.
Nosek, quoted by Sample, Guardian, 2015

Vision
cc: haglundc - https://www.flickr.com/photos/86676407@N00
Digital Technoscape
How we investigate
Science
What we investigate

CHEMICAL RESEARCH AS SOCIAL MACHINES
• Social Machines are a characterization of technology-
enabled social systems, seen as computational entities
governed by both computational and social processes.
• …… that enable them to solve complex social and
computational problems in a decentralized fashion, at
large scale.

SCIENTIFIC MODELLING
A “SOCIAL MACHINE” OF EXPERIENCED
RESEARCHERS USING TECHNOLOGY

CELEBRITY SCIENCE (SCIENTISTS)
• In a very recent Guardian article, Devlin refers to psychology
replication study when discussing the influence of narcissism in
present-day science [Devlin, 2017].
• Citing Bruno Lemaitre, an immunologist, she says:
• The replication crisis in psychology and the life sciences, in which
“sexy” papers fail to stand up to closer scrutiny, can be blamed in
part on scientists being motivated by a need for attention and
authority as well as curiosity about the natural world, he said.

Open
cc: Stuck in Customs - https://www.flickr.com/photos/95572727@N00
Our expectation of openness is
that it should militate against
narcissism.

OPEN SCIENCE (NOT JUST OPEN ACCESS)
• Science has always been open, unlike the processes for
producing research and diffusing its results. [European
Commission, 2016, Horizon 2020]
• Science has to be “verifiable in practice” as well as “verifiable in
principle”. [Gezelter, 2009]
• Research materials represent an incredible investment in tacit
knowledge [Thaney, 2009]

HAS SCIENCE ALWAYS BEEN OPEN?
• The pre-Renaissance state as
the “dominant ethos of secrecy
in pursuit of 'Nature's secrets'”
[David, 2004].
• very much in the interest of a
patron for the reputation of
those he patronized to be
enhanced in this way, for their
fame augmented his own.
• A key change occurred when
sponsors unable themselves to
assess the worth of candidates
for patronage progressively
delegated the evaluation and
selection to the communities of
“fellow practitioners and
correspondents.” Scientists
looking for patronage had to
prove “their own credibility and
scientific status.”

THE THREE
FUNDAMENT
AL
PRINCIPLES
IN AN OPEN
SCIENCE
WORLD.
1/3/2018
OPEN SCIENCE AND THE CHEMISTRY LAB OF THE
FUTURE

OPEN SCIENCE
THOROUGH RECORDING REQUIRES CAREFUL ATTENTION TO A
NUMBER OF PRACTICES
• Transparency of the entire
process
• Obtainability of all relevant
data and supporting
information
• Capability for collaboration
and/or further contribution
Simplified schematic of the scientific process, in
which we note that each arrow is also a potential
source of uncertainty

REPRODUCIBILITY
• “More than 70% of researchers
have tried and failed to
reproduce another scientist's
experiments, and more than half
have failed to reproduce their
own experiments.”
• Baker, Nature, 2016
• Documenting the reasoning
behind the experiment or series
of experiments
• Cataloguing the equipment and
other resources used in each
experiment
• Capturing at source all the
metadata associated with the
results
• Preserving the data, metadata,
and other information in an
accessible form and in an

Faraday’s laboratory notebooks
are also remarkable in the amount
of detail that they give about the
design and setting up of
experiments, interspersed with
comments about their outcome
and thoughts of a more
philosophical kind. All are couched
in plain language, with many vivid
phrases of delightful spontaneity….
Peter Day, ‘The Philosopher’s Tree: A Selection of Michael
Faraday’s Writings’

OPEN COLLABORATION & UNCERTAINTY
• Put another way, the uncertainty felt by one person might well
be alleviated by another person “with the right expertise”.

‘“Interdisciplinary” is used to
describe - and praise –
courses, research projects, or
grant proposals, as routinely
as
“full bodied” is used to
describe
red wines.’

UNCERTAINTY CAN LEAD TO MANY QUESTIONS,
SOME LESS OBVIOUS THAN OTHERS:
• What do we already know?
• Who is working in this area, and
what are they doing?
• How was this result actually
obtained?
• What does this data mean: where is
the metadata?
• What is the provenance of this
finding?
• Why did they plan the experiment
that way?
• Returning to the words of
Donald Rumsfeld, “there are
things that we know we don't
know. But there are also
unknown unknowns.”

KNOW
N
UNKNOW
N
BLINDNESS
“In theory, there is no
difference
between theory and
practice.
But, in practice, there is.”
Unknown (possibly Yogi Berra)

Blind to our Blinndness
cc: Lead Beyond - https://www.flickr.com/photos/32493043@N00

Hooke an instrument maker and experimental demonstrator, had
a harsh opinion of the unwillingness or inability of tradesmen to
give adequate descriptions of materials and processes.
Robert Hooke

TRANSPARENCY
• Documenting the reasoning
behind the experiment or series
of experiments
• Cataloguing the equipment and
other resources used in each
experiment
• Capturing at source all the
metadata associated with the
results 1/3/2018OPEN SCIENCE AND THE CHEMISTRY LAB OF THE FUTURE

CLIMATEGATE’ AFFAIR
• ‘led to consequential demands for scientists to “show their working”
[Hulme, 2009].
• not be a retrospective activity: it should be an integral part of
planning and provenance recording.
• a regular confounding factor the tendency for people to postpone
recording their “working” and then rely on their memories [Yeo,
2014].
• Thesis writing by research students often involves dealing with the
consequences of having delayed the huge organizational effort until
the point of writing up.
• Delay embeds inaccuracies and uncertainties,

Templates are not
the answer

THE NARRATIVE
Skills we need
are story telling
skills not data
mining skills
Clive Humby
DE/2014 Keynote
What’s the story in
Balamory, wouldn't
you like to know

Proposed

PROBLEMS…..
DATA
PEOPLE
STANDARDS
COMMUNICATION
Ethnoscape
s
Mediascape
s
Technoscap
es
Finanscap
es
Ideoscape
s
Five dimensions of global cultural flow
Arjun Appadurai’s

UNAVAILABLE
INFORMATION
• Not just lots of data but why are many of
the structures unpublished so certainly
unavailable?
• The E-Crystals and E-Bank
Project looked at how to
address this issue
• Is making data available
the same as depositing
a copy with someone else?

DIFFICULTIES
STANDARDS - THE GRID!

TOO MUCH DATA
THE FUTURE OF BIG DATA: DISTILLING LESS
KNOWLEDGE PER BIT
• Where is the wisdom we have lost in
knowledge?
• Where is the knowledge we have lost
in information?
• T.S. Elliot, The Rock.
• Everything is in there, but everything
is too much. Entropy is maximized,
and the data ultimately becomes, as
Shakespeare put it, full of sound and
fury, signifying nothing.

SCIENTIFIC DISSEMINATION – A
LIMINAL PERIOD?
• Transition from ‘paper’ to ‘digital’
• Open Dissemination
• Open Peer Review
• Transparency & Impact
Liminal phase of a rite of passage:
Albert Anker's Die Ziviltrauung, "the
Civil Marriage," 1887

DISSEMINATION IS PART OF THE
RESEARCH
BUT BEWARE OF “ENGROOVED
BEHAVIOUR”
concept highlighted in teaching by
Paul Trowler
http://www.brad.ac.uk/sustainable-
universities/media/sustainableuniversities
/Keynote-Prof-Paul-Trowler.pdf
http://www.todayandtomorrow.net/2010/02/22/quarter-
mile-groove/

LAB OF THE FUTURE – TALK2LAB
OPEN SCIENCE AND THE CHEMISTRY LAB OF THE FUTURE
http://www.fineart-portugal.com/photo/186970/techno_scape
1/3/2018

1/3/2018
LabTrove Open Notebooks
Mat Todd’s Malaria Project
OPEN SCIENCE AND THE CHEMISTRY LAB OF THE FUTURE

MICRO-TEXT-MINING
• Digital Research Notebooks
• Text Mine at Source
• Publication@Source

WE MUST SPEED UP THE KNOWLEDGE DISCOVERY
PROCESS
• All I am saying is that
now is the time to
develop the technology
to deflect an asteroid
• We have 100 years left in
this planet - Hawkins

chemistry
cc: skycaptaintwo - https://www.flickr.com/photos/27304596@N00

FROM LAB TO PAPER TO GARBAGE CAN
New York Times
From Farm to Fridge to Garbage Can
Tara Parker-Pope 2010
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/01/from-farm-to-fridge-
to-garbage-can/
How much food does your family waste?
data research
group

Trust me Mort - no electronic communications
superhighway, no matter how vast and sophisticated,
will ever replace the art of the schmooze
Thank you for listening

The Uncertain
cc: zyON PT - https://www.flickr.com/photos/40916187@N00

The three Norns (Fates)
Past, Present and Future
Research in the Digital Era

Reducing uncertainty

Recommandé

Recommandé

Contenu connexe

Tendances

Tendances (12)

Similaire à Reducing uncertainty

Similaire à Reducing uncertainty (20)

Plus de Jeremy Frey

Plus de Jeremy Frey (11)

Dernier

Dernier (20)

Reducing uncertainty