For Yet Better Science

Science is evolving. New tools and ideas are changing how discovery happens. Science Better is a collection of interviews with the vanguard — a repository of their best ideas and personal research habits.

During the coming year I will be exploring different career and project opportunities that could contribute to improving the scientific research system. As a first step I here make an attempt to formulate more clearly what “better science” could look like. On an abstract level, there seem to be two competing worldviews around. One is a consequentialist, welfarist, aim and the other is focused on the intrinsic value of knowledge.   

Reproducibility has long been a tenet of science but has been challenging to achieve—we learned this the hard way when our old approaches proved inadequate to efficiently reproduce our own work. Here we describe how several free software tools have fundamentally upgraded our approach to collaborative research, making our entire workflow more transparent and streamlined. By describing specific tools and how we incrementally began using them for the Ocean Health Index project, we hope to encourage others in the scientific community to do the same—so we can all produce better science in less time.  

Disclaimer:  This is a gross generalization of what science is about; science is actually much more complex than how it is described here, but this will give you a basic background if you need it.  

Gender bias in science has resulted in drug tests that treat the female body as an aberration, and search algorithms that perpetuate discrimination, but the solution is simple: increase the numbers of women working in the field and support the girls hoping to join them one day.   

A researcher from Notre Dame advises that we should move past the excitement and examine how virtual reality could enhance the efficiency of scientists. However, in order to harness these advantages, researchers need to carefully strategize and sidestep possible drawbacks.  

Engineering organisms leading to the restoration of extinct species like dodos and dinosaurs is an impulsive idea with less clarity on its potential benefits.