233047 SE Science in Crisis? Science for the Crisis? (2025S)

How can science contribute to addressing the socio-ecological polycrisis that humanity is currently facing? What kinds of knowledge are needed to fight or mitigate these crisis? These questions are currently discussed with some urgency both within science and in science policy.
However, a range of contributions also diagnose science itself to be in a polycrisis, a crisis that potentially inhibits its ability to make relevant contributions to socio-ecological challenges. Are the cultures and practices of contemporary scientific knowledge production capable to respond to the challenges posed? Which changes are needed to make science more relevant in the face of the current crisis?

In this seminar we will study and analyze these contemporary debates in in science, science policy and in social science fields that study research cultures and practices (including STS). We will analyze problem diagnoses and suggested solutions and critically reflect the relevance of STS approaches and contributions in these contexts.
For example, we will ask how researchers and research fields re-orient their work to address socio-ecological crisis, and which barriers they face in doing so. We will interrogate how researchers and other relevant actors such as policy maker define and enact the relevance of research under current conditions. And we will discuss different change movements within science and how they conceptualize problems and solutions in current scientific knowledge production.

Topics we may cover include, but are not limited to:

Problem diagnoses:
- Big data and AI – promise or deluge?
- Replication/validity crisis
- The “Slowing down” of progress in science
- Crisis in valuing scientific work
- P-Hacking, salami publishing, fraud
- mental health and purpose crisis
- science under attack by societal and political actors
- acceleration and the loss of time to adapt and reflect
- colonialist and capitalist cultures in science

Initiatives, measures and solutions:
- Inter- and transdisciplinarity / synthesis
- New policy and funding structures: e.g. co-creation, mission oriented research, responsible research and innovation
- Metascience experiments
- Open Science
- Changing Valuation Structures (e.g. COARA)

The seminar will be research-oriented. In the units in March, we will map and discuss relevant debates. Based on this mapping, student groups will choose a specific topic and assume responsibility for designing a flipped classroom session in May. In June we will wrap-up the course along its guiding questions and reflect on the relevance and potential of STS in this context.