// NATURE NEWS — SPAZIO & SCIENZA
Metascience should be a source of evidence, not a means of control
Efforts to apply metascience to research funding must put evidence and scientists front and centre.Credit: Alamy
The European Research Council made headlines last month when the news broke that those applying for one of its core grants had only a 5% chance of success. Partly as a result of applicants using artificial intelligence, the ratio of submissions to grants at the European Union’s premier science funder is now so skewed as to be little more than a lottery. Some funders are already using lotteries to select grant recipients, viewing these as a fairer way to allocate funding.
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This is not a coincidence. The idea of distributing certain types of grant randomly has been tested experimentally over a number of years. It’s one example of how the field of metascience — the study of the practice of science itself — is having a real-world impact.
Metascience is not new. The world’s oldest journal devoted to the study of science, Nauka Polska, based in Poland, was founded in 1918 and is still publishing. Nature frequently reports on metascience, invites researchers to share their opinions and publishes primary science in the field. A set of studies released in April, for example, investigated the reproducibility, replicability and robustness of research in the social and behavioural sciences1–4. Developments in research funding, research organization, communication and evaluation are all aspects of metascience.
Metascience is also used by governments to support policy and funding decisions. In the past few years, a number of governments have established and funded metascience research units, as detailed in Seize the Meta Moment, a review by an international group of researchers and policymakers that was published last week by the Research on Research Institute in London (see go.nature.com/4z7pdt1). The author list includes members of some of these government-funded metascience units.
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In one sense, this is positive, an example of policymakers seeking solutions informed by research. But the review’s authors point out that political attention also introduces risks — namely that the discipline could be misused to serve government agendas or to justify decisions that are not supported by a consensus of the evidence. They acknowledge that metascience will, to some extent, always be political, but that this should be acknowledged. And they urge politicians to use metascience as a learning tool and a source of evidence, but not as a means of controlling researchers.
In the United States, the Office of Science and Technology Policy has tasked all federal science agencies with establishing metascience capabilities. This was outlined in a July report, Science: A New Golden Age, which criticized excessive bureaucracy and slowness in US science, and embraced the idea of accelerating grant-awarding processes (see go.nature.com/3uj6pf5). One concern is that the US administration could use metascience to push through major changes, such as funding cuts, support for higher-risk research or the adoption of AI, without engaging the broader scientific community.
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