Spirited Away

At first sight the fields of magic and science do not have much of an overlap. This notion however is completely untrue for the fairly long period between 1860 and 1930. A surprisingly high number of scientists and inventors of this time were fascinated by spiritualism and believed in the existence of paranormal forces. Marie Curie for example regarded mediumistic séances as "scientific experiments" and thought it possible to discover in spiritualism the source of an unknown energy that would reveal the secret of radioactivity. Thomas Ava Edison for his part announced an extension to his phonograph in 1921 that would extract thoughts and feelings from dead bodies in order to store and play them back. He claimed that this was possible due the existence of "life units" - tiny energy particles that are the scientifically proved equivalent to the human soul Away from ideological judgment these examples illuminate an interesting crossover between the utopian vision of a boundless technology that helps to reveal even more mysteries of the immaterial world and an anti-modernist thought-space that is filled and nourished by ghost stories, an animistic world outlook and a dazzling array of esoteric philosophies. In this context the praxis of the commercial magical show plays a very interesting and intermediate roll that connects and correlates these two assumed opposite spheres

Peer review of grant applications in biology and medicine. Reliability, fairness, and validity

This paper examines the peer review procedure of a national science funding organization (Swiss National Science Foundation) by means of the three most frequently studied criteria reliability, fairness, and validity. The analyzed data consists of 496 applications for project-based funding from biology and medicine from the year 1998. Overall reliability is found to be fair with an intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.41 with sizeable differences between biology (0.45) and medicine (0.20). Multiple logistic regression models reveal only scientific performance indicators as significant predictors of the funding decision while all potential sources of bias (gender, age, nationality, and academic status of the applicant, requested amount of funding, and institutional surrounding) are non-significant predictors. Bibliometric analysis provides evidence that the decisions of a public funding organization for basic project-based research are in line with the future publication success of applicants. The paper also argues for an expansion of approaches and methodologies in peer review research by increasingly focusing on process rather than outcome and by including a more diverse set of methods e.g. content analysis. Such an expansion will be necessary to advance peer review research beyond the abundantly treated questions of reliability, fairness, and validit

Science Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry? Apologies for Scientific Misconduct

Retractions of journal articles exclude fraudulent or erroneous research from legitimate science and perform boundary work. Analyzing retractions from different disciplines and focusing on their apologetic aspects, we find that these apologies shift between openly addressing emotional, normative, and social themes and concealing them in a more scientific style of communication. Their boundary work remains highly ambivalent: They alternate between scientific and nonscientific forms of speaking, portray unstable patterns of control and coercion, and avoid drawing a boundary between legitimate and nonlegitimate science. In line with the hypothetical nature of scientific knowledge, retractions thus leave boundary making to the future.Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung https://doi.org/10.13039/501100002347Peer Reviewe

The lottery in Babylon—On the role of chance in scientific success

Peer Reviewe

Cycles of invisibility: The limits of transparency in dealing with scientific misconduct

Sanctions for plagiarism, falsification and fabrication in research are primarily symbolic. This paper investigates sanctions for scientific misconduct and their preceding investigation processes as visible and legitimate symbols. Using three different data sources (retraction notices, expert interviews, and a survey of scientists), we show that sanctions for scientific misconduct operate within a cycle of visibility, in which sanctions are highly visible, while investigation and decision-making procedures remain mostly invisible. This corresponds to high levels of acceptance of sanctions in the scientific community, but a low acceptance of the respective authorities. Such a punitiveness in turn exacerbates confidentiality concerns, so that authorities become even more secretive. We argue that punitiveness towards scientific misconduct is driven by such a cycle of invisibility.Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung https://doi.org/10.13039/501100002347Peer Reviewe

Theories of Valuation - Building Blocks for Conceptualizing Valuation between Practice and Structure

Phenomena of attributing value to objects, practices, and people, and of assessing their value have become a popular subject in sociological research. Classification, among other valuation practices, represents a central topic in these studies. Thus, the sociology of valuation is emerging as a new field that, however, lacks common ground in theorizing about its subject even though preoccupation with valuation has a long-standing history in sociology. Authors such as Durkheim, Simmel, and Dewey have interpreted valuation as more than a specific localizable phenomenon, in that valuation is a constitutive element of the fundament of the social. Discussing classical approaches to valuation and relating them to current sociological work, we identify key concepts within different theoretical approaches that need to be taken into account when theorizing valuation. We suggest five building blocks - valuation practices, value structures, valuation infrastructure, valuation situations, and reflexivity of valuation - theories of valuation need to consider for coming to terms with the multi-faceted empirical studies in the sociology of valuation

Data Loam: The Future of Knowledge Systems

This was a two year collaborative research project funded by the Austrian Research Science Foundation [FWF-PEEK]. Data Loam was designed as a multi-faceted arts-based approach to one of the more intractable and urgent problems facing our contemporary digital environment today: the massive proliferation of data, and with it, a particularly nuanced set of complexities confronting our national libraries, universities, research labs as well non-academic cultural institutions and industry-oriented environments. The urgency of the problem circled around three areas: archiving (what to archive and how), accessibility (how to ensure that knowledges systems would remain, intrinsically, ‘open’ in the face of ever-increasing data) and experimental (enabling creativity, intelligence, curiosity, diversity and risk to remain as fundamental to our way of life). In so doing, Data Loam rejected the entrenched paradigm of indexicality as the only method capable of articulating the ‘how’, ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘when’ of our contemporary world as the 'internet of things'. This meant rejecting also the entrenched Cold War 'binaric systematizing that tended to promote apocalyptic narratives of technology pitting ‘man’ against ‘machine’, and in so doing, taking as given the end of freedom, rule of law, governance and indeed humanity itself. Instead, Data Loam took as its starting point precisely the unruly materiality of information, with its the massive proliferation, messy logics, oddly cathected derivatives of circulation and exchange, navigational gaming, multi-dimensional visualities, crypto-economies, block-chain equivalences, and complexly sutured arenas of cultural difference. Rather than trying to compartmentalise, frame, cut-down, or force into silos or pockets of information, Data Loam foreground this exponential explosion of Big Data. It did so, first and foremost, by putting art-based research and practice at its core, emphasising the logics of sense, planes of immanence, feedback loops, multi-dimensionality, entanglement, and diffraction. Data Loam was able to reach its main goal: the articulation of how data becomes self-organised and can produce a kind of open self-governance that relies of the mass proliferation of information. On a practical level, this included developing an algorithm that could enable a new lexicographical search and tag organising system. Perhaps most significantly, »Data Loam« answered the question of ‘how’ correlations ‘matter’; that is to say, how correlations generate matter, and in so doing enable heterogeneous and local dimensionalities that ‘in-form’ aesthetic-ethical-political ecosystems. The project was linked with teaching /studio work with the MA students at the University of Applied Arts and the PHD students at the RCA (Entanglement Research Group). It was connected with RIAT (Vienna) and was rolled out in various exhibitions in Berlin, Vienna, Singapore, New Zealand and London. National libraries included: The British Library, the Austrian National Library, The German Federal Archive, the Humboldt University (Institute for Library and information Science), and Tisch School of Arts (NYU)

The Rise of the Guest Editor—Discontinuities of Editorship in Scholarly Publishing

Scholarly publishing lives on traditioned terminology that gives meaning to subjects such as authors, inhouse editors and external guest editors, artifacts such as articles, journals, special issues, and collected editions, or practices of acquisition, selection, and review. These subjects, artifacts, and practices ground the constitution of scholarly discourse. And yet, the meaning ascribed to each of these terms shifts, blurs, or is disguised as publishing culture shifts, which becomes manifest in new digital publishing technology, new forms of publishing management, and new forms of scholarly knowledge production. As a result, we may come to over- or underestimate changes in scholarly communication based on traditioned but shifting terminology. In this article, we discuss instances of scholarly publishing whose meaning shifted. We showcase the cultural shift that becomes manifest in the new, prolific guest editor. Though the term suggests an established subject, this editorial role crystallizes a new cultural setting of loosened discourse communities and temporal structures, a blurring of publishing genres and, ultimately, the foundations of academic knowledge production.Peer Reviewe

Serum proteome profiling identifies novel and powerful markers of cystic fibrosis liver disease.

Cystic Fibrosis associated liver disease (CFLD) develops in approximately 30% of CF patients. However, routine sensitive diagnostic tools for CFLD are lacking. Within this study, we aimed to identify new experimental biomarkers for the detection of CFLD. 45 CF patients were included in the study and received transient elastography. Differential regulation of 220 different serum proteins was assessed in a subgroup of patients with and without CFLD. Most interesting candidate proteins were further quantified and validated by ELISA in the whole patient cohort. To assess a potential relation of biomarker expression to the degree of hepatic fibrosis, serum biomarkers were further determined in 18 HCV patients where liver histology was available. 43 serum proteins differed at least 2-fold in patients with CFLD compared to those without liver disease as identified in proteome profiling. In ELISA quantifications, TIMP-4 and Endoglin were significantly up-regulated in patients with CFLD as diagnosed by clinical guidelines or increased liver stiffness. Pentraxin-3 was significantly decreased in patients with CFLD. Serum TIMP-4 and Endoglin showed highest values in HCV patients with liver cirrhosis compared to those with fibrosis but without cirrhosis. At a cut-off value of 6.3 kPa, transient elastography compassed a very high diagnostic accuracy and specificity for the detection of CFLD. Among the biomarkers, TIMP-4 and Endoglin exhibited a high diagnostic accuracy for CFLD. Diagnostic sensitivities and negative predictive values were increased when elastography and TIMP-4 and Endoglin were combined for the detection of CFLD. Serum TIMP-4 and Endoglin are increased in CFLD and their expression correlates with hepatic staging. Determination of TIMP-4 and Endoglin together with transient elastography can increase the sensitivity for the non-invasive diagnosis of CFLD