Feb 11, 2011 10:53 GMT  ·  By
The researchers' findings are described in the February 11, 2011 issue of the journal Science
   The researchers' findings are described in the February 11, 2011 issue of the journal Science

The newest field of research to catch on roots in the international scientific community deals with examining research and knowledge themselves. In other words, its goal is to obtain more knowledge about knowledge. This concept is called metaknowledge.

It is very similar to metacognition, the process through which we think, and then think about the fact that we just thought. In short, metacognition is represented by thoughts about thoughts. Similarly, metaknowledge deals with knowing more about knowledge itself.

The emerging field has got many investigators riled up. The experts say that applying a scientific approach to this field of study may result in a great potential for new discoveries, that would not become a reality otherwise.

University of Chicago assistant professor of sociology James Evans and postdoctoral scholar Jacob Foster are the authors of a new analysis on the subject, which is published in a perspectives article.

The work appears in the February 11 issue of the top journal Science. Their research into metaknowledge was sponsored by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), an organization that is very interested in this type of research.

The team says that uncovering hidden scientific biases could help refine the results obtained by many fields of research, with potentially groundbreaking consequences. At the same time, identifying so-called “ghost theories” may reduce workload and eliminate false leads.

Researchers could also find it easier to focus on the task at hand if they understand the broader context of their research in more detail. Studying all of these aspects falls within the boundaries of this new field of research.

“We review the expanding scope of metaknowledge research, which uncovers regularities in scientific claims and infers the beliefs, preferences, research tools and strategies behind those regularities,” the authors of the analysis write.

“Metaknowledge research also investigates the effect of knowledge context on content. Teams and collaboration networks, institutional prestige and new technologies all shape the substance and direction of research,” they say.

“There is evidence from the metaknowledge that embedding research in the private or public sector modulates its path,” Evans and Foster write.

“Company projects tend to eschew dogma in an important hunt for commercial breakthroughs, leading to rapid but unsystematic accumulation of knowledge, whereas public research focuses on the careful accumulation of consistent results,” the researchers conclude.