Freedom of science

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of “freedom of science” (“academic freedom”) for the advancement of society and mankind, which, however, is permanently endangered by powerful organisations, groups and individuals, who in pursuit of their one-sided interests are seeking to constrain information about the truth. As a broad term, freedom of science embraces freedom in research, learning, teaching and publication. All of these activities should be dedicated to identifying the truth and learning about the truth. Design/methodology/approach Three theoretical approaches are of importance for framing issues related to freedom of science, which in this paper are integrated into the framework of mindset agency theory: freedom is a value; “freedom” is claimed by agents who pursue specific interests (goals), which might constrain others; and individuals are agents who are interacting with each other within a social system – cooperation, ignorance or conflict. Findings Freedom as a value is at the core of intellectual autonomy. Intellectual autonomy is a necessary condition for innovation and advancement of knowledge. The observable modes of interaction/coexistence among researchers are influenced by individual research goals and by the researchers’ access to resources, which may be deliberately constrained by opponents or other researchers as competitors. Research limitations/implications For further research, which is beyond this paper, the authors can refer to: analyses of challenges of “academic freedom” – in terms of ethics, protection of individual human rights, political pressures and conflicts of interests; the issues of truth, i.e. the impact of fake news and creation of “alternate facts”; and the relation between academic freedom and employment (academic tenure) in present-day societies. Owing to lack of space, this paper cannot deal with the danger emerging from powerful organisations or powerful individuals, who are challenging freedom of science. Social implications If there is no freedom of science then social progress is constrained. If there is no access to right data, decisions will be wrong. Originality/value So far, a comprehensive cybernetic model was not published, which supports systems thinking about scholars and teachers (inter)acting in research organisations.

Understanding and improving the usefulness of conceptual systems: An Integrative Propositional Analysis‐based perspective on levels of structure and emergence

“…Understanding causality, emergence and perspectives through diagrams of theory provides benefits to those working at the highest level of human aspiration. For example, the idea that 'Liberty consists of being able to do anything that does not harm others: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of every man or woman has no bounds other than those that guarantee other members of society the enjoyment of these same rights' (The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789, cited in Fink, 2019). However, even well-intentioned individuals may harm others out of ignorance.…”

“…Emotions may be nested within our bodies and minds. Figure 1 provides one diagrammatic example; there, Fink (2019) shows individual scholars nested within research organization, nested in society and nested in the ecological environment.…”

“…Like individual people are nested within teams, teams within departments and departments within organizations, we can also think of knowledge maps (as a kind of conceptual system or theory) as nested within other knowledge maps. For example, a number of stakeholder F I G U R E 1 Scholars nested within universities, nested within society and nested within ecological environment (from Fink, 2019) groups within a city might collaborate to create a knowledge map showing the relationship between major problems they face (e.g., poverty, unemployment and homelessness). Although that high-level map might show some linkages between those issues, such a map might not be very useful for a team focused on feeding people on the street.…”

An effective and elastic blockchain-based provenance preserving solution for the open data

“…Open data platform and CKAN Dating back to history, when the first idea about the benefits of open scientific data, numerous researchers were aware that sharing studies contributes to humanity's growth (Fink, 2019). Simultaneously, the birth of the internet, free software ideals and the opensource project also produce so much shared data.…”