RT @rmaruy: @jontreadway And this is the "center of gravity" shift as I perceived it between #metascience2023 and #Metascience2025. Again,….

(cross posted to Bluesky).

I had to leave early for family commitments, so missed the formal launch of the Metascience Alliance, but I look forward to hearing more, as well as more provocations and questions to come. Again, thanks to the organisers. It was excellent. #Metascience2025.

I think the latter. They get used interchangeably in some contexts, but many speakers made deliberate choices in their usage, and stuck to it. Different choices made by different research institutions is also notable. There is more to pick at here.

Finally, I don't not know if ‘metascience’, ‘meta-research’, ‘research on research’ and ‘science of science’ are truly synonyms or represent different things?.

There was also the strongly expressed desire to to move away from Bibliometrics as the main analytic tool of metascience. I wonder how much metascience interests or needs publishers?.

Publishers were conspicuous by their absence, with @PLOS and @bmj_latest as notable exceptions (apologies if I missed other folks. This is perhaps not surprising, given the expressed desire to disrupt publishing, and frustration with historic disruption attempts.

Librarians were generally conspicuous by their absence. This is really unusual for conferences I normally attend; it warrants remark and more thought.

(I additionally note that Tyler Cowen was in London on Tuesday but not to speak at the #Metascience2025. That was a missed opportunity).

‘A Vision for Metascience’ by Neilsen and Qu is referenced at twice in ‘A Year in Metascience’ (which I haven’t had a chance to read properly yet) but it’s not clear that it is much known by or much of an influence on those in attendance. I would like to see this change.

I am also struck by the idea that there are ‘Twitter’ and ‘Bluesky’ strands of ‘metascience’. This bears more thought, but I note that conference organisers, and the UK Metascience Unit, are doing a good job navigating and bringing these two strands together.

Per some interactions yesterday with @rmaruy, one might refer to the strand they represent as the ‘experimental’, ‘entrepreneurial’ or ‘tech-aligned’ strand.

I was glad to see @MattSClancy and @Convergent_FROs prominently featured. They represent a strand of metascience that is less well known by many attendees, but very important.

A multipolar, transactional, isolationist and just-plain-dumb geopolitical climate will change the questions policymakers ask. Metascience needs to anticipate and engage with this.

China’s scientific progress was discussed but was under-discussed. Europe’s relative lack of scientific progress was discussed but was under-discussed.

I’m still unsure on how coherent a grouping ‘Metascience’ represents, and whether the tensions between different strands will prove too great for it to retain efficacy long term. These were all very helpful conceptual insights for thinking about it.

Another speaker acknowledged the value of the ‘discourse coalition’ lens but contrasted it with a ‘practice coalition’, which metascience is emphatically not. (apologies, I can't credit anyone for these insights).

One speaker referred to Metascience as ‘successful branding’ to engage policy makers; another spoke of it ‘strategically forgetting’ well-established disciplines like STS and Philosophy of Science.

The concept of a ‘discourse coalition’ introduced early by James Wilsdon was resonant and captured what was going on the different threads. It stuck with me through different sessions.

The standard of contributions was very high, athough the multi-speaker plenaries and question format didn’t work that well overall, though. It diluted the impact of and dialogue with different contributors.