Science in the Grey Zone is a podcast dedicated to explore error correction and the intricate pathways of the scientific publishing system.
In the first season, we brought insights and the discussion that took place during a roundtable recorded in July 2024 in Amsterdam during the quadrennial joint meeting of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) and the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S).
The roundtable on the obstacles to the self-correction of science in academia and industry brought together seven scholars who have been studying this issue for years, highlighting how errors in science are often part of larger, more complex systems. These systems not only produce and spread errors but can also perpetuate biases and distortions in scientific literature.
“Does science have a correction problem? This is the guiding question of the first episode of Science in the Grey Zone. We’ll be hearing Willem Halffman, Bart Penders, Nicole Nelson, Maarten Derksen, Maha Said, Sergio Sismondo, Nicolas Rasmussen, and Melina Antonakaki. Learn more about the speakers' credentials and the references mentioned in this episode below.
Speakers (listed in order of appearance)
Willem Halffman
Senior lecturer in Science & Technology Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands and associate member of the Centre for Science, Knowledge and Policy (SKAPE) at Edinburgh University.
Bart Penders
Associate Professor in ‘Biomedicine and Society’ at Maastricht University, Senior Fellowship at RWTH’s Käte Hamburger Kolleg ‘Cultures of Research’
Nicole Nelson
Associate Professor in the Department of Medical History and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Maarten Derksen
Associate Professor of the Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, University of Groningen
Maha Said
Postdoctoral researcher based in Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, cellular biologist. Implicated in the replication sub-project of the ERC Synergy Project NanoBubbles, which is the first formalized replication project in the nanobio-sciences;
Nicolas Rasmussen
Emeritus Professor at the University of New South Wales, Editor in Chief of the Journal of the History of Biology
Sergio Sismondo
Professor of Philosophy at Queen’s University, Canada, and editor of the journal Social Studies of Science
Melina Antonakaki
Ph.D. candidate in STS at the Technical University of Munich, developing a dissertation project exploring how visions and applications of regenerative biomedicine obtain social credibility in different political cultures; research on the scientific controversy and replication experiments of the STAP cell phenomenon.
References
Datasheet
This podcast has been financially supported by 'NanoBubbles: how, when and why does science fail to correct itself', a project that has received Synergy grant funding from the European Research Council (ERC), within the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme, grant agreement no. 951393.
