Dear fellow researcher,
At Swarmcheck, most of us come from academia, and half of us still work there (don’t take our word for it - here is our team). What we love is the openness, the thoroughness and the quality of the scientific discourse. What we do not love is how inefficient, irrational and powerless to enact change academia can sometimes be. You know the structural problems we are talking about.
Do these problems sound familiar?
The journal system and the peer-review process need reform
The grant system and tenure procedures have their own pathologies and skewed incentives
Science, including social science and philosophy, has problems with communicating and popularizing its findings; and given the enormity of the body of knowledge we have now accumulated, it has problems with updating itself on its own discoveries.
As an expert on your very issue, how often do you see long debunked myths circulated as truths, or the wrong interpretation of the oft-cited article perpetuated by somebody with a feebler grasp of that particular author’s scholarship?
How tired are you of relitigating debates that have long been decided, while important research questions are neglected?
Now, imagine…
If a debunked paper or a falsified hypothesis were instantly flagged in every discussion in which they were ever used the moment the paper falsifying them was published, with the outcome of these discussions being instantly adjusted.
Imagine being able to send somebody a link to an accessible, quick-to-read explanation perfected by many different experts, instead of having to craft your own explanation every single time.
Finally, imagine scholars' methodological, intellectual and philosophical commitments being registered across all the discussions in which they ever took part, so that the (in)consistency of their claims is a matter of easily accessible record, their position changes are described and explained, and switching one’s position just to win a debate is impossible.
Imagine being able to very quickly communicate the particulars of your position to a colleague, or learning theirs in minutes or even seconds.
Now imagine this applied to public life as well.
What we can offer now
conduct internal discussions in an anonymous, equitable, merit-based manner, and record agreed solutions and their rationales in an accessible medium
illustrate complex debates and logical relationships on a single argument-graph
access a growing library of such discussions for reference
improve your logical reasoning and proper argumentation abilities in a rapid feedback environment
The capabilities we aim to develop
fact-checking via distributed argumentation
auto-translated argument-graphs in various languages (PL-ENG for starters)
tools for systematically enhancing collective intelligence of experts (delphi method estimations combined with argument mapping)
What we are looking for/who could help us
use and test Swarmcheck with your team or community, get us much needed feedback
expert groups looking for innovative tools for cooperation
help us add new argument maps to our growing library
tech-companies looking to co-develop discursive tools
AI-safety and AI-ethics focused organizations (policy and technology)
media organizations willing to map evidence for and against a given conclusion in real time
What kind of projects we are interested in
fact-checking and fake news identification
peer review reform/enhancement - harnessing collective intelligence for a faster, friendlier, more competent and more open peer review process
academia-society knowledge transfer
mapping the state of public/expert debate on key policy issues
scientific publications based on collective intelligence of experts
