Trust in Knowledge Talks – Launch Event

In-person event

Please join us at the launch event of the new Trust in Knowledge Talks seminar series – a research initiative supported by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research and the Research Portfolio at the University of Sydney.

Reproducibility, replicability, transparency and integrity are key attributes that enable excellence in research and research translation. Trust in Knowledge Talks promote these issues, as well as the sharing of ideas and approaches across disciplines, to enable discussion and collaboration on producing robust and reliable research across our university community.

In this inaugural Trust in Knowledge Talk hosted by Sydney Law School, guest speaker Professor Simine Vazire from the University of Melbourne asks: where are the self-correcting mechanisms in science?

About the talk

‘Where are the self-correcting mechanisms in science?’

We often hear the self-correcting mechanisms in science invoked as a reason to trust science, but it is not always clear what these mechanisms are. Some quality control mechanisms, such as peer review for journals, or vetting for textbooks or for public dissemination, have recently been found not to provide much of a safeguard against invalid claims.

Instead, I will argue that we should look for visible signs of a scientific community’s commitment to self-correction. These signs include transparency in the research and peer review process, investment in error detection and quality control, and an emphasis on calibration rather than popularisation. We should trust scientific claims more to the extent that they were produced by communities that have these hallmarks of credibility. Fields that are more transparent, rigorous, and calibrated should earn more trust. Meta-science can provide scientists and the public with valuable information in assessing the credibility of scientific fields.

The speaker

Professor Simine Vazire, Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne.

Simine is a board member of PLOS and the Berkeley Institute for Transparency in the Social Sciences, was a member of the US National Academy of Science study committee on replicability and reproducibility, and co-founded the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS). She is Editor in Chief of Collabra: Psychology and has served as editor at several other journals. She has two lines of research. One examines people’s self-knowledge of their personality and behaviour, and another examines the individual and institutional practices and norms in science, and the degree to which these norms encourage or impede self-correction and credibility.

Time: Thursday 19 May, 5-6pm (followed by a cocktail reception)
Venue: Sydney Law School, Law Foyer, level 2 (street level entrance), New Law Building F10, University of Sydney. 

This event is presented by the  University of Sydney Law School.