Understanding the “Science of Science”

By Sheeva Azma

I attended the 2024 AAAS Annual Meeting as a press pass holder: a benefit of my membership in the National Association of Science Writers. I decided to attend every science policy session happening. I learned a lot that I am sharing in my 2024 AAAS annual meeting recap blogs here. Read all of my writing about various AAAS seminars and meetings I’ve attended here. Below I recap a session on “science of science,” which introspects on science as a human activity. Keep reading to learn about “science of science.”

Since we’ve been talking about not only science policy but also sociology of science a lot on our blog, I was excited for a session called “Assessing the Science of Science Policy After Two Decades.” I learned that introspecting on science as an enterprise is called “science of science” and doesn’t include just sociology but also the economics of science. I also discovered that there is no annual meeting on this subject, but rather, pockets of researchers at different institutions and at federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation that are dedicated to reflecting on “science of science.” I’m excited to help advance the conversation by blogging about the opportunities and challenges inherent in “science of science” research that I learned about at this session.

So, first things first, I should define “science of science:” it introspects and analyzes science as an activity. Did you know that “science of science” became a thing in the George W. Bush Administration? A guy named Jack Marburger became director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in 2001 under George W. Bush. Marburger called for a “social science” of science in a 2005 speech to AAAS. We’ve talked a lot about sociology of science on the blog; check out our articles here.

“How is science done?”

Kaye Husbands Fealing of the Georgia Institute of Technology, who specializes in science of science and innovation policy, the public value of research expenditures, and the underrepresentation of women in minorities in the STEM workforce, spoke first talking about the historical basis of the science of science research program, currently ongoing at the National Science Foundation. Husbands Fealing was the first director of the National Science Foundation Science of Science and Innovation Program. She began the seminar by discussing the early vision of social science of science, as detailed by Marburger in 2005 in a speech, though as Husbands Fealing stated, Marburger had been discussing the subject well before that. Understanding the science of science can be used to inform policy, for example, by helping create frameworks to increase participation and representation in STEM fields. It can also lead to new forms of STEM education and STEM workforce development to increase public participation in STEM. Impacts of social, behavioral, and economic aspects of science on policy are also part of “science of science,” according to Husbands Fealing.

In her comments, Husbands Fealing mentioned an NSF-funded project led by psychologist Chris Schunn at the University of Pittsburgh as an example of the introspective power of science of science: “Not just the policy side, but how is science done?” Schunn observed engineers in a room to see how they developed new innovations. His experiments revealed the ways analogy was being used in the scientific process. “We’re looking at everything from discovery, to the production of science, to the policymaking,  to communities of practice. We’re looking at the whole spectrum,” she stated.

The National Science Foundation funds science of science projects

Thomas Woodson has 15 years of experience working in science of science. He was formerly a professor at Stonybrook University and now the newest program director of Science of Science and Innovation Program at the National Science Foundation, studies how to help science better help society through improved diversity in STEM fields. As of this conference in February, he had been in his role for one month.

At NSF, he works on the science of science as a program within the directorate of the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE), in the Social and Economic Sciences (SES), of which science of science is one program. SES includes sociology, economics, law and science; there are “lots of cool directorates and programs, and science of science is one of them,” he stated. 

Woodson named some projects that NSF works on in the area of science of science. “What we do is in our name: discovery, communication, and impact,” he said. Examples of projects include studying collaboration of science teams; understanding theories and methods of fields; getting more people and different types of people involved in science; communicating science and dispelling misinformation; citizen science; looking at R&D outcomes and research outputs; and more. He discussed NSF-funded projects that examined women’s roles in the tech workforce, as well as reproducibility of science and “how science works.” On the communications side, NSF has funded projects looking at inequality in mistrust of science communication, and developing community-driven science communications strategies, especially for underserved audiences. It has also looked at tying in ethics and spirituality into discussions of science. NSF has also given a grant to study the use of science in governance.

Why is science of science research crucial for the scientific enterprise?

Misty Heggeness is an economist at the University of Kansas and author of SWIFTYNOMICS 101 which looks at the economics of Taylor Swift. Heggeness spent 12 years working in the federal government in various roles, including as a senior labor economist at the National Institutes of Health. She talked about what it means that we invest in science of science research and introspect on the practice of science in this way. She shared three slides talking about this.

Her first slide talked about why science of science is useful for scientists and the broader scientific enterprise. When people in the science of science field have been able to access data, they can focus on demographic trends, and understand information about the scientific community such as scientists’ pathways, as well as barriers, and specific to biomedical science, the ways in which policies help or hinder scientists and the advancement of science. This becomes very meaningful for the scientific community, she stated.

Secondly, she noted, science of science is a way to evaluate research outcomes, including how those outcomes relate to scientists’ career outcomes. She mentioned her research looking at the Yellow Berets, a program at NIH that trained physicians to engage in biomedical research thinking during the Vietnam War. Her research examined what impact the Yellow Beret program had for these researchers, both for their own careers as well as the larger impact on the scientific community.

Lastly, she has studied the impact of research training funding on career trajectories and one’s ability to stay in science. “We have an abstract idea of paylines and how the process works…but when you can…look at the data, sometimes you come up with different conclusions.” 

Heggeness concluded that science of science is important both for individual researchers and the entire scientific community. Science of science can inform policy “now and into the future,” stated Heggeness.

Examples of “science of science” research questions

As far as the things you can learn from studying the science of science, Woodson and Heggeness named a few:

• Metrics: How do you measure science? Who is publishing what? Is US doing more science than China? What does “more” even mean when it comes to science? 
• Looking at the human structure of science: How does science work? What do scientists actually do?
• Participatory science: In what ways can we boost public participation of science?
• Public-facing science communication: How can we communicate science in a way that makes sense to people?
• Broader impacts: How do you understand the broader impacts of science? What does “broader impacts” even mean? Is it K-12 outreach? is it working at museums?
• Policy: How do science policymakers implement policies to encourage more broader impacts?
• Funding: Who is applying for grants? Whose research is getting funded? How can we encourage groups of people who are not applying to grants to participate more?

How has the science of science resulted in policy?

Woodson stated that hiring, promotion, and tenure is huge in understanding science of science, as is increasing the number and diversity of people in science programs: “We want those people from square states to excel and succeed, from low-income communities, Black and brown communities…”

For the next pandemic, science of science seeks to understand COVID messaging and how to talk to people in the next crisis.

Policymakers must be careful in policy implementations, Heggeness stated. She talked about using data to reflect on ways research can help inform policy, especially with regards to how women live their lives. She gave the example about the one-year addition to the tenure clock for new parents: if someone got pregnant, at some point, they’d have a one-year extension on their tenure. However, the policy was implemented in a gender-neutral way, and not just for women. That meant, if you had a child, whether you were a woman or man, you could get a one-year extension. Women benefitted because they could produce publications while taking care of their new baby. Men benefitted even more since it accelerated their publication process, since they were working, rather than being on maternity leave. “If we wouldn’t have done that research…we would have never known that a policy that was meant to help women stay in the field was actually differentially benefitting men.”

Not all policy implementations have met this same fate. Husbands Fealing talked about a household-to-household study in Dallas about energy use in low-income families during COVID, which impacted how the energy policy was developed. The study was funded through NSF as well as other funding sources. Another example was an NSF-funded study that measured the impact of scientific funding, which led to a platform which could be used in the policymaking process. Developing this infrastructure for policy alongside the science is important, says Husbands Fealing. Another NSF-funded project led by Lisa Cook looked at the racial and gender breakdown of people who obtained patents.

Creating a community of practice for “science of science” remains a priority

A session attendee bemoaned the fact that there is no centralized conference, seminars, etc., for science of science. What does that social aspect of the community mean for science of science research, he asked? According to Husbands Fealing, “developing a community of practice” is on the list of objectives for science of science. “It needs to be developed, but it’s very difficult.”

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