Seminar series Meta-science, methodology, and time Add to calendar 2025-10-15 12:00 2025-10-15 13:30 Europe/Rome Meta-science, methodology, and time Sala del Capitolo Badia Fiesolana YYYY-MM-DD Print Share: Share on Facebook Share on BlueSky Share on X Share on LinkedIn Send by email Scheduled dates Oct 15 2025 12:00 - 13:30 CEST Sala del Capitolo, Badia Fiesolana Organised by Department of Political and Social Sciences In the framework of the SPS departmental seminar series, this session features a talk by EUI Professors Kevin Munger. Traditional methodological research has tended to identify and provide solutions to specific threats to validity — towards the goal of making 'more perfect papers'. The chain of knowledge is only as strong as its weakest link, but the sociological imperative of methodology is to further refine the links which are already strongest. The dialectical move through the causal revolution invites a new crisis of 'external validity'. This is a contradiction in terms, especially when we consider temporal validity and the basic problem of induction. Meta-science shifts the unit of methodological inquiry up a level, allowing us to study the properties of bodies of knowledge ('literatures'), and to consider institutions of scientific practice (peer review, graduate training) as methods to be refined. At this level, questions about how to evaluate scientific progress must point forward and outward, to the world, rather than backwards and inwards, to the literature. In particular, the importance of the first and last links in the chain is emphasised: setting the academic agenda and making predictions about the future. Finally, we discuss how my research on social media makes this meta-scientific investigation inevitable. Related events