using knowledge
How does knowledge--scientific and otherwise--hook onto the world? CSID has several projects focusing on different aspects of this question.
NSF's Broader Impacts Criterion
CSID has the web's most extensive collection of resources examining the broader impacts criterion, as well as help for others to address the broader impacts of their research proposals. Preview our forthcoming special issue of Social Epistemology.
Peer Review
CAPR is our NSF funded research project aimed at studying the interdisciplinary nature of the peer review processes across 6 US and foreign public funding agencies, with particular focus on how different agencies attempt to integrate 'broader impacts' issues into the review of scientific proposals.
Interdisciplinary peer review may sound like an oxymoron: a "peer" is most often characterized in terms of shared disciplinary expertise. It may therefore seem odd that peer review is one of the major research areas for the Center of the Study of Interdisciplinarity. However, the existing system of peer review is under increasing stress, and many of the issues that have been raised concerning the use of peer review as a tool for research assessment can be traced to underlying assumptions regarding the nature, scope, and limits of disciplinary expertise.
CSIDs' Comparative Assessment of Peer Review (CAPR) CAPR is a three year, NSF funded research project aimed at studying the interdisciplinary nature of the peer review processes across 6 US and foreign public funding agencies, with particular focus on how different agencies attempt to integrate 'broader impacts' issues into the review of scientific proposals.
Climate Change
Beginning Fall 2008, CSID is being funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for three years to pursue research on the ethical and philosophical dimensions of climate change. Our research will ask how scientists and policy makers can become more sensitive to the cultural and philosophical dimensions of climate change issues. How do more refined data and improved computer models change the ethical dimensions of climate policy? How are the burdens and benefits of climate change likely to be distributed both nationally and internationally? How can governments, businesses, NGOs, and individuals better appreciate the ethical dimensions of scientific insights?
This project will also explore the interdisciplinary context of climate science-how different methods, perspectives, timelines, and interpretive frameworks are blended to create a holistic interpretation of use to policy makers and the public.