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Публикация

Jeff Lockhart

I wrote about science funding, science reform, and anti-science agendas. scatter.wordpress.com/2026/07/31/s...

science funding and the cherry picking problemScience publishing–like all of science–requires money. There’s no getting around it, even with the open science movement. What appears free to many authors and readers still requires money and infr…scatter.wordpress.com
Обсуждение

12 прямых ответов · 71 сообщений

Berna Devezer

This is fantastic. I'm infuriated about the reviewer's intervention though. You are way more charitable than I would have been. This kind of censorship is too normalized in metascience.

Ответ для Berna Devezer
Philip N Cohen

I guess when editors cut sections of a paper they think aren't relevant you can call it censorship, but it's kind of a stretch. In this old paper I re-attached the conclusion the editor cut out and share it as one PDF - which feels great :) www.terpconnect.umd.edu/~pnc/gs04.pdf

www.terpconnect.umd.edu
Ответ для Philip N Cohen
Berna Devezer

I certainly think it is.

Ответ для Berna Devezer
Philip N Cohen

Ok! By this definition, censorship at the hands of academic editors is rampant.

Ответ для Philip N Cohen
Berna Devezer

Oh I don't disagree!

James Umbanhowar

Thank you for sharing. This is really interesting.

Pamela Oliver

good post, very informative.

Mark Histed

Jeff this is a phenomenal piece. Thank you.

Ответ для Mark Histed
Mark Histed

I have done some work on the political economy of the media, and dabbled in observing law and economics - how funders and owners have shaped these fields. More than anything, most practicing scientists have little to no idea about what you’re saying and the key thing is to share these ideas.

Ответ для Mark Histed
Jeff Lockhart

Yeah, science will always involve both funders and scientists, so thinking about the interactions is important.

bjkeefe

Before I start to read, let me just say: great graphic!

Philip N Cohen

Hi - I'm the besmirched reviewer. I could rehash the argument from memory, but it would be better to just post the reviews and the versions with which they are associated. I could post my reviews but I don't think I am allowed to post the early drafts of the paper. I hope you will.

Ответ для Philip N Cohen
Jeff Lockhart

I had a feeling. I didn't want to make this about the drama of our disagreement, though, and tried to focus on the substantive story about funding and the complex landscape of motives and incentives. FWIW, I think my writing on this is better because of your feedback.

Ответ для Philip N Cohen
Joe Bak-Coleman

I’ll admit I’m kinda curious if the partnership/tech dependency between socarxiv and the center for open science were disclosed to the editor as possible conflicts of interest during peer review.

Ответ для Joe Bak-Coleman
Philip N Cohen

Of course. If you're going to question my ethics I'm going to have to drag out the reviews and explain what is wrong here. Ugh

Ответ для Philip N Cohen
Joe Bak-Coleman

If funding of COS were discussed, I would think it’d be relevant to the extent that socarxiv depends on them for continued operation, setting aside any other aspects of the partnership.

Ответ для Joe Bak-Coleman
Joe Bak-Coleman

I don’t say this as a “question your ethics” bit, I am genuinely curious if you broached it and if the editor cared. I’ve been working on conflict of interest issues in tech and mapping the norms of reviewers and editors is hard.

Ответ для Joe Bak-Coleman
Philip N Cohen

It's a special issue on open science in sociology. We all know each other. (Fyi, this is literally you questioning my ethics. You are asking questions. About my ethics.)

Ответ для Philip N Cohen
Joe Bak-Coleman

In fairness, wild choice of reviewer on the editors part for this particular paper.

Ответ для Joe Bak-Coleman
Philip N Cohen

🙏🏼 please figure out how to get me fired from this unpaid job. I will pay you.

Ответ для Philip N Cohen
Joe Bak-Coleman

Oh I think you just decline the review and note the conflict of interest. It’s pretty easy.

Ответ для Joe Bak-Coleman
Philip N Cohen

Lol not the job of reviewer, running socarxiv

Ответ для Philip N Cohen
Philip N Cohen

(Jeff has something important to say about funders and open science. And the survey results in that paper are reasonable and I recommended publishing them. The former [a "section of the paper was my pet project"] just didn't belong in the latter. This was pretty obvious and not "censorship.")

Ответ для Philip N Cohen
Jeff Lockhart

I appreciate this. And so much of what you do in this space and in public sociology generally. We disagree occasionally, usually productively (for me anyway), and whether it belongs in the paper might be a spot we won't see the same.

Ответ для Jeff Lockhart
Philip N Cohen

Here is a simple test for that separate section lots of people (including me) want to include in empirical articles, but doesn't fit in lit review, theory, methods, results, or conclusions. If it could have been written unchanged regardless of the results, it belongs elsewhere. This one is classic.

Ответ для Philip N Cohen
Jeff Lockhart

The paper enumerates possible push and pull factors, many of them ethical questions scholars may have about open science. I think the funders is a possible factor to be enumerated with others. Your position wasn't consistently anti-funding-talk: you asked us to add it in for G&S/Sage/SWS. We did.

Ответ для Philip N Cohen
Pat Savage

Without weighing in on the substantive debate about whether or not this is "censorship", I wish the journal implemented "transparent" peer review (one of my favourite parts of open science; cf. www.nature.com/articles/d41...) so we could all read the reviews/responses and judge for ourselves!

Transparent peer review to be extended to all of Nature’s research papersFrom today, all new submissions to Nature that are published will be accompanied by referees’ reports and author responses — to illuminate the process of producing rigorous science.www.nature.com
Ответ для Pat Savage
Philip N Cohen

💯

Ответ для Pat Savage
The Neurocritic

It’s not really transparent if the reviewers aren’t identified. But it should make the arrogant asshole reviewers more circumspect about writing derogatory comments about the authors, e.g.

Ответ для The Neurocritic
Philip N Cohen

Main benefit of open review may be reining in the pernicious gatekeeping by people like me.

Jeff Lockhart

I will say I think we need serious empirical research on the growth and cooptation of the current science reform movement as a scientific social movement. In the first draft, we initially just wanted to point out that feminists might reasonably wonder about outside interests with big donor funding.

Ответ для Jeff Lockhart
Ответ для Jeff Lockhart
Jeff Lockhart

I think we need a setup like Luciana de Souza Leão & Gil Eyal had with RCTs, where they ask why earlier attempts to popularize them didn't take off the same way link.springer.com/article/10.1...

The rise of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in international development in historical perspective - Theory and SocietyThis article brings a historical perspective to explain the recent dissemination of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) as the new “gold standard” method to assess international development projects. ...link.springer.com
Ответ для Jeff Lockhart
Jeff Lockhart

Panofsky's (and colleagues) work on how the far right takes up the artefacts of science in order to suit racist and sometimes violent ends can be instructive, too. Many geneticists weren't on board with how their work was taken up by outside interests.

Ответ для Jeff Lockhart
Jeff Lockhart

Hicks has a great paper for thinking about how some of these virtues have been fought over among scientists and with outside interests in the past. journals.publishing.umich.edu/ptpbio/artic...

When Virtues are Vices: 'Anti-Science' Epistemic Values in Environmental PoliticsSince at least the mid-2000s, political commentators, environmental advocates, and scientists have raised concerns about an “anti-science” approach to environmental policymaking in conservative govern...journals.publishing.umich.edu
Ответ для Jeff Lockhart
Jeff Lockhart

(btw, I'm not tagging these people because I don't want to pull them into tense conversations, so please don't drag them in, but they do good work and you should go follow them.)

Ответ для Jeff Lockhart
Jeff Lockhart

Back on my BS, my sense of the science reform movement (its virtues and its warts) is that the dynamics and pathologies are very different from the battles over sex and race essentialism that I wrote my dissertation on.

Ответ для Jeff Lockhart
Needhi Bhalla 💅🏽

If you’re inclined, I’d be interested in why you think that. I see some commonalities, especially in the funding sources, but am less well-versed in the history

Ответ для Needhi Bhalla 💅🏽
Jeff Lockhart

I think one big difference is the scholars & funders are more aligned in bioessentialism debates than in science reform debates. But they may have similarities in other ways.

Ответ для Jeff Lockhart
Needhi Bhalla 💅🏽

Thank you! And thanks for the blog piece. It made some important conceptual connections that needed to be explicitly stated

Ответ для Jeff Lockhart
Richard J Hewitt

Publishing preprints on sites like SocArXiv can be negatively viewed by non-open traditional journals (treated as prior publication - this has happened to me) Might this also be a relevant factor? Ie disadvantaged groups prefer conservative journals because they feel less able to take risks?

Ответ для Richard J Hewitt
Jeff Lockhart

It is certainly a factor that might explain some of our findings in the G&S paper. We did some analyses to look at whether scholars delay posting preprints until after the paper is accepted/published, but we found no difference in posting timelines on average.

Jonathan Howard

Arnold also funded this disinformation super spreader

OHSU physician awarded $2 million to investigate health care practices that 'don’t work'Vinay Prasad, M.D., M.P.H., has been awarded a $2 million grant to support an effort to uncover treatments and tests that are contradicted by reliable evidence. The three-year project calls for sharin...news.ohsu.edu
Ответ для Jonathan Howard
Jeff Lockhart

*sigh*

Saloni

"Stuart Buck, for his part, is now executive director of a Trump-linked think tank" ? Where is this from? If you meant Paragon Health Institute, he doesn't work there and writing a report ≠ being executive director. None of the links you cite say that, but anyway- substack.com/@stuartbuck

Ответ для Saloni
Jeff Lockhart

Thanks for the correction! I've fixed the post. He's exec dir at the good science project, and author for paragon.

Ответ для Jeff Lockhart
Saloni

It's still wrong though - that seems to be the one report he's written for them, not plural.

Ответ для Saloni
Saloni

FWIW I find that section misleading because a lot of his writing is critical of the Trump admin's actions on science newsletter.goodscienceproject.org/p/nsf-should... newsletter.goodscienceproject.org/p/inexplicab... newsletter.goodscienceproject.org/p/when-is-do...

NSF Shouldn't Fire So Many PeopleWithin the science community, there is understandably a lot of consternation over the cancellation of research grants.newsletter.goodscienceproject.org
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Jeff Lockhart

I was generous to Nosek when I said he publicly opposed some of the current admins policies (not enough imo), I should/will extend the same generosity here. But that paragon report is, uh, not ideal.

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Joe Bak-Coleman

Of course, Everyone deserves one little report for a far right think tank hellbent on making people die of curable diseases by stripping them of already meager access to healthcare.

Ответ для Joe Bak-Coleman
Joe Bak-Coleman

You spend a moment wondering why there is this connection between evidence based medicine folks and groups tasked with stripping access to healthcare from poor people and then it becomes totally obvious.

Ответ для Saloni
Ben Hanowell

I don’t like meta-scientific ideas being bent toward partisan ends. But I also don’t like incendiary claims that fail basic fact checks by someone whose ability to fact check I trust.

Nervous Two Buttons GIFALT: Nervous Two Buttons GIFstatic.klipy.com
Liam McHugh-Russell

Great piece! Isn't there some good modeling of the ways that private science funding can distort outcomes even if scientists have a good faith interest in truth discovery? I thought @lastpositivist.bsky.social had published on this but it's not in his published research

Ответ для Liam McHugh-Russell
Jeff Lockhart

Probably multiple pathways, and they don't necessarily require the scholars to be doing bad work or have bad intentions.

Paul Harland

Makes you reflect on what may, should and doesn't make it to the ethics and disclosure sections in any paper (but especially a critical ethics one). Takes me back to my protracted unfair unreading of your gamification paper, @svennyholm.bsky.social - on a far-off back burner @davidgunkel.bsky.social

Ответ для Paul Harland
Paul Harland

Having said that, one line in it - "people with no expertise will be wrong most of the time when they think they know better than a consensus of experts" - instinctively feels wrong to me, can't put my finger on why! 😉

Ответ для Paul Harland
Jeff Lockhart

lol. It is a real head trip what the current era has done to my thoughts about the proper role of expert authority.

Ответ для Jeff Lockhart
Paul Harland

I used to love old Twitter, but now Bluesky and even LinkedIn (common factor being, avoiding X) for the opportunity given to over-opinionated amateurs like me by gracious academics to argue back at them 'cos it sounded good to me at the time. At considerable length! (Sorry/thanks, Sven and David.)

Ответ для Paul Harland
Jeff Lockhart

We professor folks aren't magic oracles - we disagree and fight all the time. (I love to study those conflicts!) Engaging each other and the public are critical to doing good work. But also, there is value in spending a whole career trying to know an area which we disregard at our own risk.

Ответ для Jeff Lockhart
Mark Histed

Re: expert authority, I tend to think that the best we can do is to protect a free and fair marketplace of ideas and let that work out to consensus. Like democratic contestation, it will sometimes be wrong but it is better than alternatives.

Ответ для Mark Histed
Mark Histed

contrast to Merchants of Doubt strategies, billionaire investment in thinktanks (eg Powell memo, the role of Hoover, Cato hiring libertarian media scholars, AIER, Bradley, FIRE being part of SPN... we could go on). @jwlockhart.bsky.social wld you follow me for a msg, please?

Ответ для Mark Histed
Jeff Lockhart

This is how we get quacks and grifters. Medical certification for example is a good thing.

Ответ для Jeff Lockhart
Paul Harland

Mind you, there can be a certification marketplace.

Ответ для Paul Harland
Jeff Lockhart

This is where that goes bsky.app/profile/prop...

ProPublica

Regulators have linked Mark McAfee’s raw dairy farm to more than a dozen recalls and outbreaks that left hundreds of people ill. “I’ve put a couple kids in the hospital,” McAfee said. “But here’s the thing: I’m a pioneer.”

Ответ для Jeff Lockhart
Paul Harland

Good reporting and pertinent example of the relationship between a marketplace of dodgy products and a marketplace of dodgy ideas. Also demonstrates the risk of shopping for regulations between states in the US. (But in the UK, lives can still be endangered in gaps between loosely overlapping laws.)

Ответ для Jeff Lockhart
Mark Histed

We can describe medical certification as a way that institutions certify scientific consensus. The medical professional associations do this: first clinicians try things, then studies are done, then committees at the prof societies review them, then issue clinical practice guidelines.

Ответ для Mark Histed
Mark Histed

In other words, we want a free and fair marketplace of ideas within science (and academia), and then institutions reinforce (certify, in a broad sense) scientific consensus to prevent quacks and grifters. Both sides of that process are now under attack.

Ответ для Mark Histed
Jeff Lockhart

Oh, yeah, this is closer to what I think. Within science, though, there are also some ideas that we should have an easier time killing off (e.g. physiognomy) than we have had.

Ответ для Jeff Lockhart
Paul Harland

Oddly, one could say that in my education, various jobs and miscellaneous side-interests, I've always been studying the same thing. The difficulty is in knowing what that thing is! And perhaps that also applies to you professor folks?