This year I attended the annual AAAS meeting in Denver, and one of the recurring themes of the conference was “meta-science”, that is, science that studies the scientific process itself.
For example, one presenter spoke about how readers of citations in scientific papers frequently make assumptions about the quality and content of the cited paper based on the journal its published in - in other words, the “journal name” in a citation is a unreliable signal. When the experimenters established an institute-wide policy of omitting journal names in citations, they discovered a number of positive benefits.
More broadly, it’s recognized that the nature of modern scientific institutions, in which scientific careers hinge on (a) getting published in the most prestigious journals, and (b) chasing after grant money, can create perverse incentives which don’t always result in the best science. These incentive structures are themselves the subject of scientific inquiry.
The work of thinkers like Thomas Kuhn can also be considered a kind of “meta-science”.
The vast majority of science in science fiction concerns the products, rather than the process, of science. Even in the latter case, it’s usually about some scientific development in a particular field, such as the invention of atomic energy.
So, the question is, are there any stories about meta-science? For example, stories which speculate on how the scientific community might be organized and supported differently than it is today?
The stories in Van Vogt’s “Voyage of the Space Beagle” focus on a protagonist who uses his field of ‘nexialism’ to combine the various fields of scientific enquiry to solve vexing problems. However, this approach is still about the product of a ‘meta-science’ rather than the process.
I can’t speak to talin’s intent—but magic systems are sometimes depicted as a coherent fictional science. I imagine there could be stories involving a relevant “scientific” process:
Sanderson makes an express distinction between “soft” and “hard” magic for purposes of world building and creating magic systems in fictional settings. The terminology of hard and soft originate from hard and soft sciences, which lends itself towards hard science fiction and soft science fiction…
Hard magic systems follow specific rules, the magic is controlled and explained to the reader in the narrative detailing the mechanics behind the way the magic ‘works’ and can be used for building settings that revolve around the magic system.
The reason I asked the question is because I want to understand (or at least speculate) on how we can improve the institution of science, how we can do things better. So magic would be out-of-scope (both for my question, and I think for TASAT in general, given that one purpose of TASAT is to provide decision makers with ideas that they can use in their own brainstorming as they attempt to solve real-world problems).
Here’s an example of what I would consider meta-scientific thinking: there has recently been suggestions about cash bounties for discovering mistakes, cheats, or lack of reproducibility in scientific papers. However, most scientists don’t want cash payouts, they want long careers, which means getting noticed - so perhaps we’re structuring the incentives wrong?
The biggest thing which might be done is an improvement of the educational system and how education is approached — the best school I ever attended had a unique approach which I wish could be adopted elsewhere: classes were divided between academic and social, social classes were attended at one’s age-level (homeroom, phys. ed., social studies), while academic classes were attended at one’s ability level (with a 4 grade cap through 8th grade, I was a 4th grader attending 8th grade courses). For the older students, some teachers were accredited as faculty at a local college and one could take college courses, where necessary students went to the college, or professors from the college came to the school to teach. It was not unknown for students to be awarded 4 year degrees along with their high school diplomas when they graduated.
Part of the difficulty here is that most of the day-to-day activities of a working scientist these days are essentially bureaucratic - writing reports, publishing in journals, getting grant money and so on. Only rarely do actual “Eureka!” moments occur. This is not very exciting material to write about in fiction.
One fictional example I can think of is Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Science in the Capitol” series, in which the characters all work for the NSF. By design, the NSF isn’t permitted to dictate research directions, but relies on external scientific institutions to come up with grant proposals. Yet faced with a global climate crisis, the characters try to come up with a plan for putting their thumb on the scale in a way which doesn’t break the rules.
I think some of the books by Stephen Baxter are relevant to your question. Karl Popper’s formulation of disprovable theories is also a necessary condition. And finally Stephen Pinker’s Rationality book touches on answers. In particular, Pinker explains humanist enlightenment and the origins of scientific method.
Leiber’s “The Creature from the Cleveland Depths” has a device that helps people think better - which has the effect of improving science faster. There’s also Vinge’s Win a Nobel Prize!, and Disch’s novel “Camp Concentration” both of which are about improving human ability - as applied in particular to science.
Pohl has a story (Speed Trap) about a scientist who invents a better way for scientists to communicate with each other, as a way to promote scientific progress, too.
And I wrote “Better than Stealing” about how the wrong approach to alternate universes could hamper scientific progress – but the right approach could help.