Science of Science and Innovation Policy Principal Investigators' Conference Summary (2014) / Chapter Skim
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6 Perspectives on the Science of Science Policy
6 Perspectives on the Science of Science Policy
Pages 73-80
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From page 73... ...
Carolyn Nguyen expects there will be "a radical transformation of our individual relationships with technology -- computers -- and what we expect from them." She was asked to address upcoming trends in information technology research and the relationship between technology and policy, from the perspective of an executive at Microsoft Corporation. For her, one of the most important changes underway is a shift from computer systems that are driven by the technology itself to systems that are driven by the user.
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From page 74... ...
"Data is the fuel that drives all these powerful technologies," she commented, but there is also "tremendous potential for abuse." In Nguyen's view, this is a key policy issue. She suggested that the best way to achieve balance between the benefits and potential harm will be to establish a "complete data ecosystem" in which individual users, policy makers, industry, and researchers from many disciplines, including the social sciences, work together to develop policies that balance the needs of all of these stakeholders.
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From page 75... ...
BIG DATA, SCIENCE METRICS, AND SCIENCE POLICY Julia Lane, American Institutes for Research Julia Lane noted that countries and agencies around the world are using evidence to inform policy decisions about public expenditures in such areas in health and education. This is not the case for science.
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From page 76... ...
is to help build a data infrastructure that can be used by many science of science policy researchers." The core of that effort, she added, would be the capacity to obtain disambiguated data on individuals and to develop new text-mining approaches. This is a significant challenge, but computer scientists have been developing new ways to analyze and summarize text, Lane noted.
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From page 77... ...
The development of evidence as a shared social resource that can serve as a foundation for public participation in policy formation was thus a primary goal for SciREX. There are four elements to SciREX, according to Okamura: a policy-oriented investment investigation program, a research funding program funding similar to SciSIP, fundamental research and human resource development, and a data and information
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From page 78... ...
Irwin Feller, Pennsylvania State University and chair of the conference steering committee, cited the intellectual return NSF has gotten on its investment in these SciSIP-funded projects, and noted that "the real intellectual payoff is yet to come in larger research communities." He suggested that the dialogue that has begun among policy makers and researchers is a "great open invitation to the research community" to continue to tease out the policy implications of their work and how past work has influenced policy environments. For Feller, an important unresolved issue is how to address uncertainty about research findings.
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From page 79... ...
scientists were directly involved in preparing it. This would be an ideal SciSIP topic, he observed, but to influence policy makers, the SciSIP community will need stories based on social science research analysis to inform policy makers.
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