Talk:Knowledge crystal

Pitch at WIDE hackathon 26.-29.10.2018

This is the winning pitch of the New Frontiers track by team Knowledge Crystal (Jouni Tuomisto, Kaisa Haverinen, Teemu Rintala, Juha-Pekka Finnilä). Pitch presentations is here.

Hello.

Sherlock Holmes said that when you remove the impossible, what remains is the truth. We will apply this idea also to policy making.

2.5 M scientific articles are published every year. The problem is that this makes it difficult for a researcher to contribute in society. Their contribution is a drop in a sea. It is also a burden for a decision maker who wants to find the truth, and a great excuse for one who does not.

Our solution is a collaborative open science platform with knowledge crystals. A knowledge crystal is a web page that contains a policy-relevant research question. An answer is co-created on the platform. Relevant information is collected, everyone is heard and all arguments are carefully evaluated. Work goes on iteratively as new information becomes available, but you always have an answer that can be used in applications. Knowledge crystals are effective in ruling out hypotheses and policy ideas that do not hold against critique. A great thing is that the platform already exists and has been developed and used in THL for many years. It is called Opasnet. But it is too technical. People don't know how to participate.

During the next months we will do four things. We are collaborating with Helsinki about the Carbon Neutral Helsinki 2035 program and use knowledge crystals there. We will develop practical guidance for anyone who wants to contribute. We will recruit and train a core group of knowledge crystal facilitators. And we will launch public discussions about key policy questions. One question is: what are economically effective ways to increase carbon sinks in Finnish forests? And we will use service design to improve user experience in all of this.

We have a great team. Kaisa and Teemu come from Open Knowledge Finland and know a lot about co-creation and service design. Jiipee is an expert in IT learning. An I am Jouni, one of the developers of Opasnet.

The immediate value of this work is that we can shoot down bad policy ideas. This is the opposite of social media outrage method. The ultimate value is that this improves scientific and also political knowledge production and knowledge use. We get a better understanding with less time, less work and less hassle. In twenty years, this may replace the concept of original scientific article.

We need your help. We need twenty facilitators. Join us. Or spread the word. Tell your colleagues to join us. Test our platform. Comment our guidance.

Thank you.