On behalf of Max Tegmark and Anthony Aguirre, FQXi Directorate ---
In a previous post, we wrote about our plans for maintaining helpful, useful and interesting scientific discussion in our online forums. In this post, we want to discuss a second important institutional issue. This issue touches on the question of FQXi's reputation and what constitutes an endorsement by FQXi.
FQXi exists to serve the scientific community and the broader community interested in science, and not to serve FQXi in and of itself. Nevertheless, we at FQXi must pay attention to our reputation, since our reputation helps us serve our function as a supporter of research at the frontiers of physics. Along similar lines, FQXi cannot serve a positive purpose in the scientific community if its reputation is inappropriately leveraged to support a particular scientific opinion or agenda. We have heard concerns expressed from various people that certain activities and representations made by others may have damaged FQXi's reputation as well as its ability to effectively support its community.
Our strengthened forum policy gives one way for us to address this issue, by encouraging constructive scientific discussion. The following set of explanations provides another way for us to address this issue. These statements explain what constitutes an 'endorsement' by FQXi, in terms of Membership, Large Grants, and Mini-Grants.
1) Membership means that at least two independent Members nominated the person, and a review by FQXi agreed that the person has done strong work; OR that a review panel has awarded either a Large Grant or 1st, 2nd or 3rd essay contest prize.
2) A Large Grant (or essay contest prize) means that a panel of experts appointed by FQXi granted an award, and as such implies a peer-review process. FQXi reviews the recommendations of its panels for due diligence, but prefers not to second-guess the panels.
3) A Mini-Grant means that a Member submitted a small proposal appropriate to the funding program, and then basically got lucky -- Mini-Grants are chosen by a random lottery. We might in the future raise the bar on 'appropriate'; currently, however, a Mini-Grant does not mean a proposal has passed any serious peer-review process.
As corollaries of these facts, Membership does not imply endorsement of any particular research project, and financial support from FQXi does not alone imply endorsement of the supported work.
FQXi as an institution does not take on the job of an arbiter of scientific truth or validity. Rather, we hope to support an open, constructive, and collegial forum for the scientific process to play out. FQXi does, however, have the job of deciding on the basis of peer-review which projects merit our limited fiscal resources. It is important that we do this job carefully prior to grantmaking, and that we also keep careful track of how effectively projects spent the money.
A recent situation involving intense controversy surrounding the work of FQXi Member Joy Christian brought many of these considerations to our attention (though it is far from the only case to which the considerations apply). To study this issue, we convened a special panel composed of experts exquisitely qualified to read, understand, and evaluate both Christian's work, and the way discussion of the work has played out in the public sphere. This panel provided detailed reports to FQXi, and came to three unanimous conclusions:
a) Christian's work on Bell's theorem is flawed, and they would recommend against funding any research that is part of Christian's work on Bell's inequalities.
b) The recommendation in (a) does not reflect on the quality of Christian's work on any other topic.
c) The manner of discussion of Christian's work on FQXi's forum and elsewhere has been unfortunate, with an unacceptable lack of decorum. That discussion has also at times misleadingly suggested that FQXi endorses Christian's work on Bell's inequalities, and that this work has passed peer-review by FQXi.
The panel did not recommend any action on FQXi's part going beyond recommendation (a), and was split as to what degree its findings should be made public.
We felt that (with the panel's permission) making the panel's recommendations public, but not the panelists' identities or detailed reports, would be useful both for the scientific community interested in this controversy, and as a case-in-point for the discussion above.
Although we could in principle use this panel model in the future, we hope, frankly, to avoid it. Rather, we hope that public discussion of scientific matters on FQXi's forums and elsewhere will seek a more elevated level of discussion, accuracy and propriety that will avoid such a need, as does the vast majority of scientific discussion and even controversy that takes place in the FQXi community and elsewhere. We also hope that enforcement of our strengthened terms of use for the forums can prevent discussions of future scientific controversies from becoming uncivil.