Hans van Dijk

Martin Götz

Chris Hartgerink

Marino van Zelst

*You can also [open this content in
Hypergraph](hypergraph://8f694fbdf324cbb83deaecb4a82d13fbff817d8237726cbe0c3f0aa37c13ae11+6)
([Download Hypergraph](https://hypergraph.xyz/?ref=libscie.org)).*

------------------------------------------------------------------------

We are gathering a group of researchers from a diverse set of
disciplines to embark on an innovative research project investigating
the question "**Does power corrupt?**" We decided to focus on this
question because it is highly relevant in today's research and practice,
and although having engaged humanity for almost aeons, across
disciplines different answers can be found. Properly addressing this
question therefore requires pooling insights from various disciplines.

Many Paths is a collaborative research project where researchers work
together to address a research question. By providing the research
question "Does power corrupt?", there is a clear starting point. But how
it develops from there is entirely up to you. You may discuss with each
other how to proceed, start with providing an overview or review of the
relevant literature in your field of research, share insights from your
own studies, design and subsequently conduct a study, engage in a debate
or discussion, ask provoking questions -- you can contribute whatever
you think would help in addressing the research question. The platform
on which Many Paths will take place,
***[Hypergraph](http://hypergraph.xyz/?ref=libscie.org)***, is
distributed, so we will not steer, guide, or interfere in how you
collaboratively address the research question. However, in case of any
questions, you can of course contact us at <manypaths@libscie.org>.

In addition to our interest in a multidisciplinary answer to this
question, our endeavor serves as a demo for a new method of
communicating and discussing research, ***Hypergraph***. The current way
of communicating and discussing research requires researchers to design
and conduct a complete research study, analyze the data, write a
manuscript, undergo the peer review process, and finally publish the
article. As such, after having been carried out, products of research
projects typically come to light only after a rather long time - if at
all. To overcome this form of publishing \"after-the-fact\", the idea of
Hypergraph is that single research steps are communicated \"as-you-go\"
in the shape of research modules. These research modules can come in
various forms or shapes, such as theoretical perspectives, data,
analyses of data, reviews of/reflections on others\' contributions, or
any other way that would contribute to addressing the question of
interest.

As such, Hypergraph\'s infrastructure is well-suited to engage in a
collaborative, interdisciplinary research process. By focusing on the
question \"Does power corrupt?\", we hope that the collaboration among
experts from different disciplines will provide new insights, while also
providing a test case for the functionality of Hypergraph for such
research projects.

## What\'s in it for you? {#what-s-in-it-for-you}

We intend to write two papers that we will openly publish, and will be
first submitted to the [Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
(PNAS)](https://www.pnas.org/?ref=libscie.org):

1. A **content paper** summarizing the insights and conclusions from
 our collaborative discussion regarding the question \"Does power
 corrupt?\" For this paper, we will list everyone who actively
 participated in the project as a co-author. The order will be based
 on your contributions in a manner that will be specified prior to
 the start of the project.
2. A **method paper** focusing on the Many Paths method as a way of
 conducting interdisciplinary, collaborative research. For this
 paper, we will list everyone who actively participated in the
 project in the acknowledgements.

## What we ask of you

1. **Registration:** Indicate your interest by leaving your name and
 email address
 [here](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf_ZymrIWVBIgMIAoROfEARGiwLL4ssH6GBPzVS62rxbxSsIg/viewform?ref=libscie.org)
 before *March 31st 2021*.
2. **Training:** Follow a 90-minute online training on how to use
 Hypergraph between *April 1st - 30th 2021*.
3. **Research:** Contribute to the collaborative research project on
 \"Does power corrupt?\" by publishing research modules and reacting
 to other researchers\' research modules between *May 1st 2021 and
 April 30th 2022*.
4. **Manuscript:** Contribute to the research paper that we will draft
 on the insights and outcome of the Many Paths project regarding the
 question \"Does power corrupt?\" between *March 1st 2022 and July
 31st 2022*.

You can also open this content in Hypergraph (Download Hypergraph).

We are gathering a group of researchers from a diverse set of disciplines to embark on an innovative research project investigating the question “

 Does power corrupt?

” We decided to focus on this question because it is highly relevant in today’s research and practice, and although having engaged humanity for almost aeons, across disciplines different

How to get involved with Many Paths?

*You can also [open this content in
Hypergraph](hypergraph://4faae28c5f61d90d8cd04a545b4814daa719c01b6e03e14dae33f986edf69208+17)
([Download Hypergraph](http://hypergraph.xyz/?ref=libscie.org)).*

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Research articles depict a destination, but not its journey. The journey
is the messy middle that not everybody wants to know, but [this garden
of forking paths has substantial consequences for
results](http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/ForkingPaths.pdf?ref=libscie.org).
Because information often gets relegated to supplemental materials or is
[unavailable upon
request](https://doi.org/10.1186/s13041-020-0552-2?ref=libscie.org), we
often cannot know the actual research journey even if we wanted to.

The messy middle contains some of the most valuable lessons for
research. Reagents that did not interact with compounds as expected,
flaws in reasoning that seemed obvious only afterwards, assumptions left
unarticulated, irreproducible results in previous work, tacit knowledge
that is not obvious and non-trivial if missed.

Our research journeys are still relatively solitary, even in the
interconnected age of the Web. This makes the messy middle more obscure
than it has to. How often do we interact with people outside our direct
peers in our projects? How often do we collaborate with people outside
our field and learn from one another? How often do we invite radically
different perspectives for fresh insights? To a certain extent we do,
but not nearly as much as we would like. The hurdles are too high.

What could happen if we were without disciplinary bounds and could
collaborate as we meet in our research journeys?

That is why we're starting the Many Paths project: To unearth the messy
middle and have researchers meet without disciplinary bounds. We learned
a lot from our respective research journeys, and we would not be the
same researchers without them. We met as statisticians, psychologists,
meta-researchers, and organisation scientists and learned from each
other. We are hungry to facilitate more of these interactions with more
researchers from more fields. We are curious to see what comes of messy
research journeys, requiring U-turns, and where we collaborate in near
real time. By publishing only the end results of our solitary journeys
in research articles, we are erasing the work and the learnings from the
record.

Taking inspiration from large research collaborations, the Many Paths
project sets out to investigate one research question with researchers
from various fields, document the journeys taken and the paths forsaken,
to better understand the research process.

Many Paths invites researchers who\'ve published on power and corruption
from all fields to theorise, analyse, and study the research question
\"Does power corrupt?\" This includes political scientists interacting
with philosophy scholars interacting with organisation scientists, to
figure out how we could begin to answer this age old question when
combining current day knowledge across disciplines.

We count on the journey being messy, and it will be documented step by
step with [Hypergraph](http://hypergraph.xyz/?ref=libscie.org). Its
as-you-go documentation of all research steps is fit for this kind of
project, as it allows for self-organization in a structured way. The
research journey might go down the wrong roads, discover new paths, and
backtrack --- but we will document it in order to better understand how
the journey develops.

Find out how to get involved in the Many Paths project in [our next
post](https://libscie.org/p/990893a4-8e8c-4ac7-a2c8-5ec6e4b83cb9/) or
send an email to the project team at <manypaths@libscie.org>. Some of
our personal motivations to set up this project are included below:

> Discovering knowledge is a collective endeavor. Yet, the current
> approach to and particularly the current publication of science render
> it an individual game -- Hypergraph and Many Paths can help bring much
> needed change to the scientific system. \[Martin Götz\]

> It makes little sense that researchers compete and try to do the same
> thing individually. By cooperating, much more can be accomplished, and
> Many Paths can show that. \[Hans van Dijk\]

> Large projects like Many Labs have been managed top-down, whereas
> self-managed collaboration might prove a viable alternative. With Many
> Paths and Hypergraph, it is a first to actually try this at such a
> scale. \[Chris Hartgerink\]

> Science proliferates when structures and incentives are geared towards
> collaboration, decentralization, and increased autonomy for
> researchers. Many Paths is a project that integrates these important
> aspects of the scientific endeavour. \[Marino van Zelst\]

You can also open this content in Hypergraph (Download Hypergraph).

Research articles depict a destination, but not its journey. The journey is the messy middle that not everybody wants to know, but this garden of forking paths has substantial consequences for results. Because information often gets relegated to supplemental materials or is unavailable upon request, we often cannot know the actual research journey even if we wanted to.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

How to get involved with Many Paths?

Why we're starting Many Paths