Szymon Miłkoś

Pursuitworthiness accounts face a fundamental dilemma when confronting breakthrough experiments: investigations judged unworthy by current standards that, upon success, transform those very standards. I show how recent pursuitworthiness accounts exclude breakthroughs, undercutting scientific gain and stagnating our understanding of pursuitworthiness. The alternative, abandoning standards entirely, increases scientific waste and embraces nihilism. I demonstrate that attempts to mitigate this dilemma fail, and that its harms in scientific practice are real, severe, and compounding. I distinguish three modes of pursuitworthiness at the forefront of science: emergent (opaque intuitions), established (justified norms), and transformative (explicating emergent into established forms). I argue that transformative pursuitworthiness standards allow us to escape from the escalating dilemma into complementary advancement. While we cannot evaluate breakthrough experiments using established standards, we can evaluate how researchers explicate their opaque intuitions into justified norms. I propose a foundational transformative norm: prefer pursuits that document their explication practice, providing the evidence to advance pursuitworthiness itself. Finally, I suggest that this norm offers an independent mechanism for funding breakthrough experiments.

Academic publishing is both an indication of scientific contribution and a currency for career advancement. This dual role gives rise to a normative scientific conflict: Does the structural incentive to publish constitute a conflict of interest (COI) that ought to be disclosed? In this paper, we address this conflict through an action research approach, engaging collaboratively and reflexively to answer four related questions: (1) What evidence suggests that researchers face a (financial) COI when publishing? (2) What are the benefits and drawbacks of explicitly acknowledging that publications function as academic currency? (3) How should such conflicts be disclosed? (4) Do mechanisms such as pre-registration and registered reports resolve these concerns? This paper contends that while researchers are clearly incentivised to publish, this interest need not necessarily constitute a conflict or be explicitly disclosed. Treating this issue as a normative scientific conflict does reveal the need for a shift in how researchers understand and navigate the subjective, self-interested dimensions of their work. We propose four key responses: (1) integrating discussions of COIs and biases more extensively into undergraduate science education, (2) promoting greater reflexivity in everyday research practice (e.g., through reflexivity journals, peer-led audit groups, and the reintegration of discussions on the historicity and cultural nature of research into scientific publications), (3) critically investigating institutional incentives and journal policies, and (4) proactively adopting methodological safeguards such as pre-registration. By addressing this conflict through action research, we demonstrate how normative tensions in science can be made productive — supporting both critical reflection and structural improvement.