Category Archives: Philosophy

Ethikrat vor Auflösung?

Das DÄ schreibt über die “Hängepartie für den Deutschen Ethikrat”

Der Deutsche Ethikrat bleibt vorerst arbeitsunfähig. … Entsprechend des Ethikratgesetzes muss die Hälfte der normalerweise 26 Ratsmitglieder von der Bundesre­gierung vorgeschlagen werden, die andere Hälfte vom Parlament. … Momentan sind lediglich vier Mitglieder im Ethikrat verblieben, deren Amtszeit noch nicht beendet ist: die Theologin Elisabeth Gräb-Schmidt, der Physiker Armin Grunwald, der Bioethiker und Philosoph Mark Schweda und die Philosophin und IT-Expertin Judith Simon. Ihnen gehe jetzt Arbeitszeit verloren, so Vetter. Da es bis zur Neuberufung des Rates keine Sitzungen gebe, müssten sie untätig warten, bis ihre neuen Kolleginnen und Kollegen berufen seien.

Ich fürchte, weder Bundesregierung noch Parlament hat allzu großes Interesse mehr an den Stellungnahmen, die oft reichlich apodiktisch herkamen und – trotz oder wegen des akademischem Backgrounds nahezu aller Mitglieder/innen – nicht immer so qualifiziert waren wie man:frau sich das gewünscht hätte. Statt mehr externe Experten einzubinden, gab es unzählige PR Alleingänge  der Vorsitzenden [vgl Dabrock, Buyx, u.v.a.m.]. Der Ethikrat steht sicher nicht vor der Auflösung – er ist immerhin gesetzlich legitimiert – aber als Gremium hat er an Bedeutung verloren.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 05.11.2025

Successful methods

Why was the Cambridge’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology so successful?

It was not by increasing administrative staff or new programme oriented funding research as many German research managers believe. It was by scientific (not primarily cultural) diversity

The LMB sets a coherent culture by promoting scientific diversity among its staff, encouraging the exchange of knowledge and ideas and valuing scientific synergies between different areas of research… It encourages the recruitment of groups with diverse but aligned interests that are complementary.

What did we do instead in Germany? We increased competition among groups and develop more hierarchical structures while the LMB is

promoting shared values and common aims helps researchers to feel part of the LMB community and proud to belong to it, fostering long-term loyalty. The LMB has always had a non-hierarchical structure — one in which emphasis lies in the quality of the argument, rather than in the status of the proponent.

So, indeed the incentives are different… While we laudate the number of external EU grants a group leader has been securing, LMB does the opposite

… resources are allocated in ways that encourage innovative collaboration between internal teams and divisions. For example, limits are set for research groups to bid for external grants, because these tend to have short-term, results-oriented requirements that might not align with the LMB’s longer-term ambitions.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 05.11.2025

Why do people become whistleblowers?

The former BMJ editor Richard Smith is writing about a new book by Carl Elliott “The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No” that is on backorder now. Most interesting  for me is not his book review but his own insights.

Over the years I’ve been rung by potential whistleblowers, and I say to them two uncomfortable things: you have a duty to act but you are likely to be badly damaged as a result… What I haven’t said to them but will now after reading Elliott’s book is that the damage you experience is likely to affect your whole life. It’s a matter of power: “doctors have it and their subjects don’t.” Elliott quotes John Pesando, a whistleblower in the Cincinnati case, who says “Every whistleblower is an amateur playing against professionals.” […]
Most of us don’t blow the whistle because we recognise where the power lies. The state, the university, our employer, or the professor will crush us. But some people do blow the whistle. What drives them? Elliott concludes that there is no whistleblower “type” but that they usually act for deeply held moral reasons. He invokes the somewhat old fashioned idea of “honour” as the best way to explain why they act. […]
An alternative explanation offered by political scientist Fred Alford is “narcissism moralised.” Perhaps that’s close to honour. When I think of whistleblowers I know I think of people with a much greater sense of right and wrong than most of us have. I could use words like “exaggerated” or even “pathological,” but I like the concept of honour. I certainly admire whistleblowers.

 

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 05.11.2025

Some observations about science administration

I’ve witnessed an ongoing expansion of science administration personnel at local, national, and international levels. What’s more concerning is that this administration is becoming increasingly disconnected from the day-to-day realities at the laboratory bench. This phenomenon is commonly referred to as Parkinson’s Law, first elucidated 1955 by C. Northcote Parkinson (not to be confused with James Parkinson).

In summary, employees like to talk to each other in the administration office, they want more subordinates (and not competitors from the lab) while even little work is expanded to fill the time available for its completion.

After Parkinson, the annual increase in staff, regardless of variations in workload, ranges from 5.2% to 6.6%. He even goes so far as to claim that core tasks could be completely eliminated without the administration shrinking as a result.

Parkinson formulated this in the 1950s. In modern administrations, new terms have been introduced, such as Controlling, New Management Models, business indicators, etc. Often, the proportion of staff in these areas of work increases, while for the actual core tasks, staff remains stagnant or even decreases.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 05.11.2025

Facts Don’t Change Our Minds Unfortunately

James Clear adds the reason

Truth and accuracy are not the only things that matter to the human mind. Humans also seem to have a deep desire to belong … Humans are herd animals. We want to fit in, to bond with others, and to earn the respect and approval of our peers. Such inclinations are essential to our survival. For most of our evolutionary history, our ancestors lived in tribes. Becoming separated from the tribe—or worse, being cast out—was a death sentence.” … Convincing someone to change their mind is really the process of convincing them to change their tribe … If you want people to adopt your beliefs, you need to act more like a scout and less like a soldier. At the center of this approach is a question Tiago Forte poses beautifully, “Are you willing to not win in order to keep the conversation going?”

Hard to accept for a scientist but probably true.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 05.11.2025

The best paper in 2024

“Life is too short to be serious all time”, GILE Journal of Skills Development, Vol. 4 No. 1 (2024)

In this food for thought article, we introduce the ‘Donald Duck Phenomenon’ to consider ten of the more unconventional reasons for publishing in academia. These include
(i) symbolic immortality,
(ii) personal satisfaction,
(iii) a sense of pride,
(iv) serious leisure,
(v) cause credibility,
(vi) altruism,
(vii) collaboration with a friend or family member,
(viii) collaboration with a hero,
(ix) conflict or revenge, and
(x) for amusement.
The article was inspired by the lead author’s social media search for a co-author with the surname ‘Duck’. Through LinkedIn, the lead author, Associate Professor William E. Donald, who is based in the UK and specialises in Sustainable Careers and Human Resource Management, found a collaborator, Dr Nicholas Duck, who is based in Australia and specialises in Organisational Psychology. While the collaboration may appear to be somewhat ‘quackers’, per one of Donald Duck’s famous phrases “Life is too short to be serious all the time, so if you can’t laugh at yourself then call me… I’ll laugh at you, for you”. We hope that this article offers some interesting insights and acts as a way to stimulate conversation around unconventional reasons for publishing in academia.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 05.11.2025

At this point

James claims

At this point, I feel bleak at the prospect of typing them out again. The problems with overpublication, ‘publish or perish’ culture, abusive lab environments, analytical flexibility, p-hacking, clinical trial registration games, grant front-running, intellectual capture, nonsense journals, fake journals, peer review manipulation, moral entrepreneurship, etc. precede the present discussions of paper mills and active falsification/fabrication cases…
I have tried at least four times in my memory to write out and codify how I would start an institute to combat these problems. Specifically, a formal organization under a 501c3 structure designed to address the problem.

In Germany we have the IQWIQ, an independent Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care who examines the benefits and harms of medical interventions for patients. But they don’t care about all the medical nonsense studies around. And without PubPeer we wouldn’t even know the nonsense…

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 05.11.2025

The lifetime of the spectacular scientific result

Lior Pachter has an interesting observation

Low IQ scores predict excellence in data science

which goes back to an old article of Richard Guy extracting four major issues in interpreting data

  • Superficial similarities spawn spurious statements.
  • Capricious coincidences cause careless conjectures.
  • Early exceptions eclipse eventual essentials.
  • Initial irregularities inhibit incisive intuition.

Unfortunately this seems to describe the way we think and even worse – this is what the science system promotes: the spectacular, the unexpected, the fascinating news.

To continue his story, what is the lifetime of the spurious idea?  In many instances effects are declining rapidly for example in intelligence research. It took me some time to find the first paper that I remember – it was in 2001 that John & Despina wrote that the results of the first study correlate only modestly with subsequent research on the same association. This was confirmed in 2005

Of 49 highly cited original clinical research studies, 45 claimed that the intervention was effective. Of these, 7 (16%) were contradicted by subsequent studies, 7 others (16%) had found effects that were stronger than those of subsequent studies, 20 (44%) were replicated, and 11 (24%) remained largely unchallenged.

A scandal?  The list of failed studies is long, including all areas of biomedicine already back in 2015.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 05.11.2025

Wissenschaftler dürfen keine Aktivisten sein

Martin Schröder

Es tut der Wissenschaft nicht gut, wenn man probiert, sie auf politische Ziele festzulegen, selbst wenn diese weithin gesellschaftlich akzeptiert sind. Was ist die Alternative? Eine altmodische Idee von Max Weber. Sie heißt: Werturteilsfreiheit. Damit wollte Weber die Sozialwissenschaften gegen eine Vereinnahmung durch links und rechts bewahren. Wissenschaftler, so Weber, sollen erforschen, wie die Welt ist, nicht ihre Autorität nutzen, um anderen einzureden, wie die Welt sein sollte. Denn wo sich Werte widersprechen, kann man nicht wissenschaftlich entscheiden, welche richtiger sind. Forscherinnen und Forscher sollten sich deswegen aus politischen Diskussionen fernhalten.

oh ja, das hatte ich auch einmal im Ärzteblatt geschrieben was ich denn von Umweltepidemiologie halte, die vor 30 Jahren gegen und nun im Mainstream Nonsense Ergebnisse produziert.

Und nun auch in der neuesten ZEIT “warum eine Universität überhaupt eine politische Haltung hat”.

Also Positivismusstreit reloaded?

Nein, bestimmt nicht. Ohne einzelne Werturteile geht es natürlich nicht, sie sollten im Zweifel aber als “Conflicts of Interests” am Ende jedes wissenschaftlichen Artikels stehen. Wo die Tatsachen enden und wo die Interpretation anfängt.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 05.11.2025

Digital humanities

Eine interessante Neuschöpfung, die “Digital Humanities” – siehe eine Einführung der GH Wuppertal

Die Digital Humanities (DH) sind eine Brücken-, Schnittmengen- und Metadisziplin in Bezug auf die Geisteswissenschaften, die Informationswissenschaft und die angewandte Informatik. DH schlägt die Brücke von den Forschungsgegenständen, Fragestellungen und Methoden der geisteswissenschaftlichen Disziplinen zu ihrer formalen Bearbeitbarkeit mit digitalen (computergestützten, algorithmischen) Verfahren. Sie bildet eine Schnittmenge zwischen den Disziplinen soweit es die Entwicklung und Anwendung informatischer Lösungen für geisteswissenschaftliche Problemlagen betrifft.

und Bücher gibt es bereits ohne Ende dazu

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 05.11.2025

What is it like to be a bat?

Wikipedia citation

Thomas Nagel argues that while a human might be able to imagine what it is like to be a bat by taking “the bat’s point of view”, it would still be impossible “to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat“… While it is possible to imagine what it would be like to fly, navigate by sonar, hang upside down and eat insects like a bat, that is not the same as a bat’s perspective.

Animal consciousness is still terra incognita while I also assume that “humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness.“

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 05.11.2025

Why PROSPERO does not work for me

I am a big fan of study preregistration which includes also pre-registration of systematic reviews. PROSPERO is a perfect place for that as it

accepts registrations for systematic reviews, rapid reviews and umbrella reviews. PROSPERO does not accept scoping reviews or literature scans. Sibling PROSPERO sites registers systematic reviews of human studies and systematic reviews of animal studies.

So I wrote a protocol (basically the method section of the review), downloaded a few papers, constructed a score sheet and entered a few papers to see if my data collection scheme is complete and if my R program is running correctly.

But when I tried to enter the study into the preregistration form, it was no more possible if you read  the following notice carefully

Before completing a registration form, please check that your review is eligible for inclusion in PROSPERO

  • Registration should take place once the systematic review protocol has been finalised, but ideally before screening studies for inclusion begins. However, reviews are currently accepted for registration as long as they have not started data extraction.
  • Completed reviews should not be registered.
  • PROSPERO only accepts registration of systematic reviews with a health related outcome.
  • Cochrane reviews should not be registered individually (we are working towards uploading these electronically)

as it prohibits any data extraction.

So I believe, that most entries in PROSPERO are by authors with supranormal power who know how their data will look like in advance. Or are they simply ignoring the fact that data extraction may not have been started?

I any case, the database is slow and many records outdated while it seems that it is still stuck with COVID19 …

Screenshot 4-4-2024

 

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 05.11.2025

Verschwörungstheorie – exemplarisch vorgeführt

Die Fakten

Die Verschwörung

So erkennt man Verschwörungstheorien

1. Worum geht es?
Der Glaube, dass bestimmte Ereignisse oder Situationen heimlich hinter den Kulissen von mächtigen Kräften mit negativen Absichten manipuliert werden.

2. Verschwörungstheorien haben diese 6 Dinge gemeinsam
Eine angebliche, geheime Verschwörung.
Eine Gruppe von Verschwörern.
„Beweise“, die die Verschwörungstheorie zu stützen scheinen.
Sie suggerieren fälschlicherweise, dass nichts zufällig geschieht und dass es keine Zufälle gibt; Nichts ist so, wie es scheint und alles ist miteinander verbunden.
Sie teilen die Welt in Gut und Böse ein.
Sie machen Menschen und Gruppen zum Sündenbock.

3. Warum gedeihen sie?
Sie erscheinen oft als logische Erklärung von Ereignissen oder Situationen, die schwer zu verstehen sind und ein falsches Gefühl von Kontrolle und Entscheidungsfreiheit vermitteln. Dieses Bedürfnis nach Klarheit wird in Zeiten der Unsicherheit noch verstärkt.

4. Woher kommen sie?
Verschwörungstheorien beginnen oft mit einem Verdacht. Sie fragen, wer von dem Ereignis oder der Situation profitiert und identifizieren so die Verschwörer. Jeder „Beweis“ muss dann der Theorie entsprechen.

Wenn Verschwörungstheorien erst einmal Fuß gefasst haben, können sie sich schnell verbreiten. Sie sind schwer zu widerlegen, weil jeder, der es versucht, als Teil der Verschwörung angesehen wird.

5. Menschen verbreiten Verschwörungstheorien aus unterschiedlichen Gründen:
Die meisten glauben, dass sie wahr sind. Andere wollen Menschen aus politischen oder finanziellen Gründen gezielt provozieren, manipulieren oder ins Visier nehmen. Sie können aus vielen Quellen stammen wie Internet, Freunden, Verwandten.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 05.11.2025