Sociology of Science

Many cultures have had procedures to determine impartial truths of a matter thereby avoiding social conflicts. The procedures may not have been scientific, but the disembeddedness of the decision is a feature shared with that of research and science in modernity. The truth should not be determined by partial interests or by other institutional fields as religion, economy and politics. Democracy and the rule of law is essentially tied to the endeavor to separate institutional fields, allowing them to function according to their own internal criteria. Advisory research for political authorities cannot let the determination of truth decide by politicians or the local knowledge of interested parties. However, organized scientific scepticism should prevent researchers from believing that they are necessarily right. Robert Mertons institutional imperatives for science were in his day threatened by totalitarian regimes. Today they may face threat from relativism inside science and philosophy.

Abstract
Analyze the underlying ideas in texts and documents such as scientific policy is an objective that requires methods that not only identify the recurrence of words or terms but appropriate theoretical-methodological approaches to identify their meaning. Although positivism taught that science was objective, today we know, from a constructivist perspective, that this is only an objectivist or essentialist representation of nineteenth-century modern science, but that in other periods, science has meant different things and has been has associated with the most dissimilar objects. Based on these postulates of Moscovici and Farr, and in the most recent of Bauer and Gaskell and others, this work in its methodology shows how science and technology can be analyzed as source of representations, and in this way it identifies associations with the science and technology predominant in scientific policy documents clarifying their specific theoretical *
Doctor en Sociología de la PUCP Lima en 2018. Sociólogo, especialista en teorías y métodos de investigación en Sociología, licenciado en Literatura y magíster en Sociología por la Universidad del Valle, Colombia.

The art and craft of science advice is not innately known by those scientists who choose to step out of the lab or the university to engage with the world of policy. Despite a wealth of literature on the 'science of science advice', in nearly every situation there is no 'teacher' of science advice; it is a typical case of learning on the job. Within that context, the learning of scholars engaging in expert advice is always situated and can sometimes be transformative. To date, however, there has been no systematic, in-depth research into expert advisers' learning-instead focusing mostly on policymakers' and publics' learning about science. In this article, I suggest that such a research programme is timely and potentially a very fruitful line of inquiry for two mains reasons. First, in the case of environmental and climate issues-the focus of the paper-it has become ubiquitous to talk about the need for transformative change(s) towards sustainable futures. If scholars are going to advocate for and inform transformations beyond academia, then in doing so they ought to also take a harder look at how they themselves are transforming within. Specifically, the article illustrates how qualitative research on advisers' learning can contribute to our understanding of how experts are adapting to changing circumstances in science-policy interactions. Second, it is argued that research on advisers' learning can directly contribute to: (i) guidance for present and future advisers (especially early-career researchers wishing to engage with policy) and organisational learning in science-policy organisations; and (ii) improving policy-relevance of research and the design of impact evaluations for research funding (e.g. Research Excellence Framework). With the hope of stimulating (rather than closing off) innovative ideas, the article offers some ways of thinking through and carrying out such a research programme. As the nature of both science and policymaking continues to change, the learning experiences of expert advisers is a bountiful resource that has yet to be tapped into.

Efter att begreppet ’romanist’ analyserats diskuteras här den komparativa romanistikens ställning som disciplin och forskningsgemenskap i Sverige och internationellt. Slutsatsen är att den jämförande romanska språkvetenskapen har en mycket svag ställning i Sverige i dessa avseenden (§1). Detta till trots bedrivs komparativ romanistik i Sverige, om än i ringa omfattning. Som exempel presenteras därför här ett komparativt forskningsprojekt som behandlar villkorskonstruktioner i franska, italienska och spanska. Den traditionella komparativa lingvistiken är främst historiskt inriktad. Det här framlagda projektet illustrerar däremot en nyare typ av jämförande romansk språkforskning, som studerar ett hittills starkt underbeforskat kunskapsfält: syntaktiska konstruktioner och deras semantik och pragmatik i de moderna språken. Redogörelsen för projektet, som är relativt omfattande för att tydliggöra vad ett dylikt projekt kan innebära idag, vänder sig snarast till den lingvistiskt inriktade forskaren (§2). Avslutningsvis diskuteras den jämförande romanska språkvetenskapens position mellan den allmänna lingvistiken (enkannerligen språktypologin) och särspråksromanistiken, och vilket den komparativa romanistikens unika bidrag till språkforskningen kan vara i detta perspektiv (§3).

Argument This article explores historical sociology as a complementary source of knowledge for scientific research, considering barriers and facilitators to this work through reflections on one project. This project began as a study of the emergence and reception of the infant disorganized attachment classification, introduced in the 1980s by Ainsworth's student Mary Main, working with Judith Solomon. Elsewhere I have reported on the findings of collaborative work with attachment researchers, without giving full details of how this came about. Here, I will offer personal reflections arising from the process, and my work in what Hasok Chang has called history as "complementary science."

Since its introduction by Main and Solomon in 1990, the infant disorganised attachment classification has functioned as a predictor of mental health in developmental psychology research. It has also been used by practitioners as an indicator of inadequate parenting and developmental risk, at times with greater confidence than research would support. Although attachment disorganisation takes many forms, it is generally understood to reflect a child's experience of being repeatedly alarmed by their parent's behaviour. In this paper we analyse how the infant disorganised attachment classification has been stabilised and interpreted, reporting results from archival study, ethnographic observations at four training institutes for coding disorganised attachment, interviews with researchers, certified coders and clinicians, and focus groups with child welfare practitioners. Our analysis points to the role of power/knowledge disjunctures in hindering communication between key groups: Main and Solomon and their readers; the oral culture of coders and the written culture of published papers; the research community and practitioners. We highlight how understandings of disorganised attachment have been magnetised by a simplified image of a child fearful of his or her own parent.

Recently on this website, Prof. Bóid attacked me for using the linguistic term SCHWA (often also spelled SHWA) in an article on French pronunciation and poetry and the way both have been handled in (generative) linguistic theory.  This being a typical way that too many scholars behave, which in turn is part of an overall pattern of pathology in the way many academic disciplines function (which I have been talking about for decades but especially recently), we have here a perfect example of what is wrong, with moreover the solution being entirely obvious (perhaps more so than for some of the other abuses I have been talking about).

Les thérapies cognitives et comportementales (TCC) bénéficient depuis une dizaine d’années d’une reconnaissance médiatique grandissante auprès de patients à la recherche de psychothérapies brèves et efficaces. De plus, leur adoption en milieu hospitalier correspond à une forme d’innovation thérapeutique qui permettrait, notamment par l’application de protocoles précis, faciles à énoncer et à contrôler, d’homogénéiser les pratiques thérapeutiques d’un lieu à un autre, à l’instar de la médecine des preuves. Ces nouveaux outils constituent un tournant dans la conceptualisation du trouble psychique et contribuent à une biologisation de la psychiatrie. Comment les praticiens s’approprient-ils ces psychothérapies dans le cadre de leur activité ? L’objet de ce chapitre ne vise pas à fixer la définition des thérapies cognitives et comportementales ni la proportion qu’elles représentent dans le champ thérapeutique, mais plutôt à comprendre comment les praticiens s’emparent de ces thérapies et à mettre au jour le socle de repères qu’ils partagent et qui les différencient.

В статье рассматриваются основания проекта Бруно Латура по построению новой формы коллективности, в которой человеческие и нечеловеческие акторы смогут сосуществовать на равных основаниях. Адекватное инкорпорирование нечеловеческих акторов в коммуникацию становится возможным при условии, что их «пред- ставительством» занимается научное сообщество, чья миссия состоит в создании «артикуляционных аппаратов», позволяющих установить адекватное взаимодействие с человеческими акторами. Успешная реализация этого проекта позволит отказаться от парадигмы модерна, основанной на дуализме объекта и субъекта, мира вещей и социальной реальности. Отказ от дуализма модерна обеспечивает развитие сетей, определяющих условия возможности создания демократии, учредителем которой станет глобальный коллектив гетерогенных акторов. Развитие подобного проекта затрудняется скепсисом глобальных обскурантистских политических элит, препятствующим преодолению глобальных экологических, эпидемических и социальных кризисов в эпоху антропоцена. Ввиду этого ставится вопрос о статусе основанного Латуром критического проекта социологии науки и его использовании идеологией климатического скептицизма, нацеленного на дискредитацию научных учреждений, а следовательно, осложняющего отношения между научным сообществом и политическими элитами. Преодоление сложившегося кризиса видится в синтезе социологии науки и политической философии французского республиканизма. Построенная на таком синтезе концепция политической экологии должна стать идейным основанием нового общественного договора для будущего глобального коллектива.

We continue here our critique not just of the Nitsch-Jakobson theory of the sandhi involving some Slavic plural imperative suffixes claimed by them and generations of (over)awed Slavists to be separate words but also of some methodologically parallel methodological abuses in Danish linguistics, and above the whole rotten state (yes that IS a Hamlet allusion) of a field where certain influential scholars get to say things that have NO basis for them and canNOT POSSIBLY be right and worse contradict facts that must have been and are widely known--and precisely because of this (Credo quia absurdum) are constantly repeated and even "improved" on.

Contemporary, technoscientific capitalism is characterized by the (re)configuration of a range of "things" (e.g., infrastructure, data, knowledge , bodies) as assets or capitalized property. Accumulation strategies have changed as a result of this assetization process. Rather than entre-preneurial strategies based on commodity production, technoscientific capitalism is increasingly underpinned by rentiership or the appropriation of value through ownership and control rights (e.g., intellectual property [IP]), monopoly conditions, and regulatory or market devices and practices (e.g., investment dispute courts, exclusivity agreements). While rentiership is often presented as a negative phenomenon (e.g., distorting markets, unearned income) in both neoclassical and Marxist political economy lit-eratures-and much in between-in this paper, I conceptualize rentiership as a technoeconomic practice and process framed by insights from science and technology studies (STS). So, rather than a problematic "side effect" of capitalism, the concept of rentiership enables us to understand how

TECHNOSCIENCE & SOCIETY BOOK SERIES

Series Editor: Kean Birch

Objectives

Our futures are highly uncertain in large part because of the changing relationship between technoscience and society: artificial intelligence holds enormous technoscientific promise, yet raises significant social and ethical questions with its development; personal data is supposed to be the ‘oil’ of the future, yet it’s exploitation threatens our privacy and identity; genomics, proteomics, and other omic sciences could contribute massively to improving healthcare, but their benefit depends on how they are deployed; and low-carbon technologies like electric cars are essential to solving climate change, although they also threaten to embed us further into problematic socio-technical systems. All these and much more underpin this new book series with its aims to do the following:

• Disseminate scholarly research on the relationship between technoscience and society;
• Focus on contemporary challenges arising from the changing relationship between technoscience and society;
• Attract new and emerging scholars using interdisciplinary approaches at the cutting edge of social scientific and humanistic studies of science, technology, and innovation;
• Reach new audiences for scholarly research on technoscience and society by producing accessible, though still rigorous, scholarly books.

[https://github.com/lanbufan/subFIELD.lab-Covid-19-pub-database]

Our goal is to provide (1)  an up-to-date and (2) comprehensive bibliometric database on covid-19 publications with daily updates [5, 391 cases as of today]. We consolidate and link Covid-19 related publications from more than four authoritative sources.  In other words, our database is building on a number of ongoing and important projects; World Health Organization's Global research on coronavirus disease (COVID-19), LitCovid and CORD-19.

At this point of the project, the process of automating the pipeline and data linking of those sources into one data frame is mostly done. But there is a lot of exciting work ahead if you are interested to join us. We envision this project as an open-source and collaborative project. The most pressing tasks to undertake are:

a. Building data pipelines to automate harvesting and parsing of publication full text [pdf] as this is the best sources of meta-data points [citations/references, names, inst. affiliations].

b. Building the first ever [to my knowledge], daily citations tracking of academic works. Covid-19 research is pumping literally 100s of publications daily, and therefore, traditional yearly citations tracking approaches are not suitable. I expand in details on that task in both the to-do.txt/page and methodology.txt/page.