eScience Institute - Data Then and Now Seminar: Luis Reyes-Galindo

Date/Time Date(s) - 05/06/2020 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Location eScience Institute WRF Data Science Studio 3910 15th Ave NE Seattle WA 98195

As part of the Data Then and Now seminar series, Luis Reyes-Galindo from Cardiff University will be presenting a lecture on the topic of openness in physics and danger of outsider interpretations titled “Outsider interpretations of open scientific data and their impact on policy.” Please join us on May 6th, 2020 from 4:00-5:00 PM in the Seminar Room of the WRF Data Science Studio. Throughout the science-policymaking landscape, ‘open’ has become a ubiquitous buzzword. After decades of political work to make open access the de jure standard for publicly-funded science, alongside the growing visibility of open and citizen science initiatives, open data is poised as the next big step in ‘opening up’ and accelerating science. Major initiatives such as the European Open Science Cloud, tied to a policy objective clearly aiming to ‘democratize’ science thoroughly, forecast a potential policy landscape of compulsorily open publicly-funded research data in the near future. In this talk I will argue that in order to understand the possible benefits (and drawbacks) of such open data initiatives, a deeper reflection is needed on what ought to be regarded as unambiguously legitimate interpretations of scientific data. To this end, I will present a controversial episode in gravitational wave physics to show the potential pitfalls of leaving data open to interpretation by outsiders to the scientific communities where the data is created. I will argue that without a proper understanding of consensus and dissent in science and what gives scientific interpretations their socio-epistemic legitimacy, outsider interpretations can have serious policy implications and further undermine scientific work of grave importance in the current environment of ‘post truth’ permeating politics worldwide.