Towards convivial science

Sylvia Wenmackers

Welcome to our tour of the science factory. Above the entrance, you see our century-old motto: ‘publish or perish’. It reminds our knowledge workers to produce a steady stream of least publishable units to meet our key performance indicators. We’ve doubled the competition for funding and halved the success rates. So, we now destroy research time much more efficiently due to heaps of applications to be reviewed, high levels of bureaucracy, and stellar amounts of e-mail for spamferences. There is only one floor, but we installed an elevator for our researchers to practice their pitches. Now, all they talk about is ‘big science’, ‘breakthroughs’, and ‘excellence’ – much more cheerful than when they kept yammering on about the replication crisis. We used to end our tour at the library, but we had to dismiss our librarians after paying our bill to the academic publishers. Anyway, before you leave, please fill out our survey on the elusive notion of ‘work-life balance’. And don’t forget to cite your guide!

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Vladimir Rogozhin

Sylvia Wenmackers
Excellent research! A profound call to action to improve Science for the benefit of Humanity. Congratulations!

Alex

Well referenced and comprehensive - I'd like to use this essay as a reference-point for my own exploration, and thank you for introducing me to Caillé!

'...Caillé et al. (2014, p. 30) use ‘convivialism’ “to describe all
those elements in existing systems of belief, secular or religious, that help us identify principles
for enabling human beings simultaneously to compete and cooperate with one another, with a
shared concern to safeguard the world and in the full knowledge that we form part of that world
and that its natural resources are finite.” '

You and I touch on similar aspects, but I like the "conviviality" approach. I think there is somewhat of a parallel in Paul Ricoeur's idea of "solicitude", which forms the second consideration in his petite éthique ie "to aim to live with and for others in just institutions".

Amitabha Lahiri

Your essay was a joy to read! I have read several essays in this competition and I can safely say that very few essays are as well-written and well-argues as yours. There is only one thing about it that bothers me a little: what you suggest -- the convivial approach to scientific research -- requires a change in attitudes in our society, not only in the community of scientists, but also in the rest of the society which employs the scientists and draws upon their knowledge and skills. This seems to me rather utopian. What you suggest is a great ideal, but will we be able to achieve it in our lifetimes?

Amitabha Lahiri

In my essay "Efficient funding produces better science", I address the issue of funding in scientific research, something you also touch upon in your essay. Perhaps you will find it interesting and also give a rating?

Donatello Dolce

This is an interesting essay that highlights most of the problems of modern science sociology, proposing an alternative model based on Illich's "convivial" society and other interesting sociological models. It seems to describe well what I meant by "too much zeal is a hindrance to science" in my essay about arXiv. I invite you to read (and rate) it if you want to discover the most remarkable example of non-convivial science.

In fact arXiv is, in my opinion, the most striking example of the "two watershelds" idea. It started out bringing undoubted benefits but has now acquired a "radical monopoly" with its obscure, absolutely unscientific policies that bring centralization, bureaucratization, etc. arXiv is today a serious threat to the free dissemination of challenging ideas, especially in physics.