Identifying the Core Challenges in Modern Scientific Research: Share Your Insights

Part of the COOL Research DAO Whitepaper discussion

Mélanie Chevance, Diederik Kruijssen, Steve Longmore

All posts in this series:
(1) Identifying the Core Challenges in Modern Scientific Research: Share Your Insights (this post)
(2) What are the Best Topical Areas for Decentralised Science?
(3) Breaking Down the Ivory Tower to Solve the Inaccessible Research Problem: Share Your Insights
(4) Building Bottom-Up Research Infrastructure To Solve The Hierarchical Organisation Problem: Share Your Insights
(5) Rethinking the Meaning and Exchange of Scientific Value to Solve the Economic Model Problem: Share Your Insights
(6) Forging a Hive Mind to Solve the Knowledge Transfer Problem: Share Your Insights

Scientific research is the engine for discovery. Science drives humanity towards satisfying our innate curiosity, answering existential questions, and overcoming the challenges we face. While the scientific method remains the key to success, the way in which science is conducted and organised has been largely unchanged since the scientific revolution many centuries ago. This makes scientific research inefficient and sometimes even dysfunctional within the context provided by the modern world.

Figure 1 identifies four fundamental problems that we have identified in the way in which scientific research is currently conducted and organised. Research products, communities, and funding are not commonly accessible to everyone. Research is organised hierarchically from the top down, with negative implications for funding, intellectual independence, and accessibility. Research contributions are not credited and rewarded fairly, reliably, efficiently, and sustainably. Research products and knowledge are not disseminated openly and efficiently, and the talent present in the community is not enabled to reach its full potential. Taken together, this social and organisational structure is obstructive to curiosity and discovery.

Figure 1: The four identified fundamental problems of current scientific research. Taken from the COOL Research DAO Whitepaper (Chevance, Kruijssen & Longmore, in prep.).

The Cosmic Origins Of Life (COOL) Research DAO aims to address these fundamental problems. It represents a case study of how to achieve meaningful solutions in a topical area that is ideally suited for pushing the boundaries of the scientific infrastructure. The astrophysics of our cosmic origins forms a natural topical area for pioneering the push towards an open, global research community, and we will motivate this topical choice further in a future post.

Across these four main problems, we have identified 18 key problems (13 of which are unique) that we believe are critical in shaping the future of scientific research. In the posts below, we briefly summarise each problem individually. We encourage you to upvote the problems you find most pressing and share your thoughts in the comments below on why you think they are crucial. We will later use this feedback to organise the discussion on the solutions proposed by COOL Research DAO. Thank you for sharing your thoughts! Your insights are invaluable in understanding the collective priorities of the research community and help shape the future of how scientific research is organised.

The four main problems under which the sub-problems fall are summarised as follows:

1) Inaccessible Research problem

Research-related activities, output, and dissemination are not openly accessible to the full range of social, economic, and geographic environments, obstructing the participation and contributions of interested and qualified potential members of the community.

Solving this problem would require a global research-oriented community that is openly accessible, irrespective of the social, economic, or geographic background of interested participants.

2) Hierarchical Organisation problem

Modern research is not organised bottom-up around human creativity and discovery, but is shaped from the top down and is often directed by non-scientific interests, which negatively impacts intellectual priorities, independence, and ownership.

Solving this problem would require a decentralised, bottom-up organisation that facilitates free-form interaction and collaboration between members and allows them to focus on creativity and discovery.

3) Economic Model problem

The economic model adopted by the modern academic system is incapable of adequately defining scientific value, recognising contributions, and directing the funding towards scientific discovery and dissemination. Additionally, the system exhibits major inefficiencies that cause a persistent drain of value and expertise from the ecosystem.

Solving this problem would require an openly accessible and diversified economic system built from the bottom up that adequately incentivises, recognises, and rewards contributions to scientific discovery and dissemination, and engages the entire community irrespective of their role or contributions.

4) Knowledge Transfer problem

The transfer and dissemination of knowledge in the modern academic system is highly inefficient, by adopting outdated publication formats, promoting a widespread duplication of effort, enforcing a mismatch between the training and skill sets of members and their actual (future) roles, and failing to retain built-up expertise.

Solving this problem would require a decentralised infrastructure for free-form, peer-to-peer collaboration, education, and the dissemination of knowledge, facilitating the connection, participation, and engagement of experts in their respective disciplines, independently of their professional status or background.

As explained above, we briefly summarise each sub-problem below. Please upvote the problems you find most pressing and share your thoughts in the comments below on why you think they are crucial. Thank you in advance for your feedback!

Identifying the Core Challenges in Modern Scientific Research: Share Your Insights

Identifying the Core Challenges in Modern Scientific Research: Share Your Insights

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