Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T00:56:29.141Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Scientific Collaboration: Do Two Heads Need to Be More than Twice Better than One?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Thomas Boyer-Kassem  and
Cyrille Imbert
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Epistemic accounts of scientific collaboration usually assume that, one way or another, two heads really are more than twice better than one. We show that this hypothesis is unduly strong. We present a deliberately crude model with unfavorable hypotheses. We show that, even then, when the priority rule is applied, large differences in successfulness can emerge from small differences in efficiency, with sometimes increasing marginal returns. We emphasize that success is sensitive to the structure of competing communities. Our results suggest that purely epistemic explanations of the efficiency of collaborations are less plausible but have much more powerful socioepistemic versions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 82 , Issue 4 , October 2015 , pp. 667 - 688
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

Earlier versions of this article were presented at the workshops Epistemic Groups and Collaborative Research in Science and Modeling Epistemic and Scientific Groups: Interdisciplinary Perspectives in Nancy (France). We would like to thank the discussants for their helpful comments. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for their insightful reports. This work was supported by the MSH Lorraine (project Colexia); the Archives H. Poincaré, Université de Lorraine; and STL (UMR 8163, CNRS, and Université de Lille 1 and Lille 3, France).

References

Anderson, Katharine A. 2013. “The Formation of Collaboration Networks among Individuals with Heterogeneous Skills.” GSIA Working Papers, Carnegie Mellon University.Google Scholar
Batterman, Robert W. 2002. “Asymptotics and the Role of Minimal Models.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 53 (1): 21–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beaver, Donald deB, and Rosen, Richard. 1978. “Studies in Scientific Collaboration: Part I.” Scientometrics 1 (2): 65–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beaver, Donald deB, and Rosen, Richard 1979a. “Studies in Scientific Collaboration: Part II.” Scientometrics 1 (2): 133–49.Google Scholar
Beaver, Donald deB, and Rosen, Richard 1979b. “Studies in Scientific Collaboration: Part III.” Scientometrics 1 (3): 231–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyer, Thomas. 2014. “Is a Bird in the Hand Worth Two in the Bush? or, Whether Scientists Should Publish Intermediate Results.” Synthese 191:17–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Langhe, Rogier. 2014. “A Unified Model of the Division of Cognitive Labor.” Philosophy of Science 81 (3): 444–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fallis, Don. 2006. “The Epistemic Costs and Benefits of Collaboration.” Southern Journal of Philosophy 44:S197–S208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldman, Alvin. 1999. Knowledge in a Social World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hardwig, John. 1985. “Epistemic Dependence.” Journal of Philosophy 82 (7): 335–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kincaid, Harold. 1996. Philosophical Foundations of the Social Sciences: Analyzing Controversies in Social Research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kitcher, Philip. 1990. “The Division of Cognitive Labor.” Journal of Philosophy 87 (1): 5–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 1987. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Muldoon, Ryan. Forthcoming. “Diversity, Rationality and the Division of Cognitive Labor.” In Scientific Collaboration and Collective Knowledge, ed. T. Boyer-Kassem, C. Mayo-Wilson, and M. Weisberg. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Muldoon, Ryan, and Weisberg, Michael. 2011. “Robustness and Idealization in Models of Cognitive Labor.” Synthese 183 (2): 161–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rennie, Drummond, Flanagin, Annette, and Yank, Veronica. 2000. “The Contributions of Authors.” Journal of the American Medical Association 284 (1): 89–91.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schelling, Thomas. 1971. “Dynamic Models of Segregation.” Journal of Mathematical Sociology 1:143–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Solomon, Miriam. 1994. “Social Empiricism.” Noûs 28 (3): 325–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strevens, Michael. 2003. “The Role of the Priority Rule in Science.” Journal of Philosophy 100 (2): 55–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thagard, Paul. 2006. “How to Collaborate: Procedural Knowledge in the Cooperative Development of Science.” Southern Journal of Philosophy 44:177–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weisberg, Michael. 2007. “Three Kinds of Idealization.” Journal of Philosophy 104 (12): 639–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wray, K. Brad. 2002. “The Epistemic Significance of Collaborative Research.” Philosophy of Science 69 (1): 150–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wray, K. Brad 2006. “Scientific Authorship in the Age of Collaborative Research.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 37:505–14.Google Scholar
Wuchty, Stefan, Jones, Benjamin F., and Uzzi, Brian. 2007. “The Increasing Dominance of Teams in Production of Knowledge.” Science 316 (5827): 1036–39.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zollman, Kevin J. S. 2007. “The Communication Structure of Epistemic Communities.” Philosophy of Science 74:574–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zollman, Kevin J. S. 2010. “The Epistemic Benefit of Transient Diversity.” Erkenntnis 72:17–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar