The plenary by Cassidy Sugimoto and the accompanying contributions were excellent. The talks from Sabine Leonelli, Marin Dacos and Ludo Waltman were very enjoyable and memorable for different reasons.

The standard of contributions was very high, athough the multi-speaker plenaries and question format didn’t work that well overall, though. It diluted the impact of and dialogue with different contributors.

The concept of a ‘discourse coalition’ introduced early by James Wilsdon was resonant and captured what was going on the different threads. It stuck with me through different sessions.

One speaker referred to Metascience as ‘successful branding’ to engage policy makers; another spoke of it ‘strategically forgetting’ well-established disciplines like STS and Philosophy of Science.

Another speaker acknowledged the value of the ‘discourse coalition’ lens but contrasted it with a ‘practice coalition’, which metascience is emphatically not. (apologies, I can't credit anyone for these insights)

I’m still unsure on how coherent a grouping ‘Metascience’ represents, and whether the tensions between different strands will prove too great for it to retain efficacy long term. These were all very helpful conceptual insights for thinking about it.

China’s scientific progress was discussed but was under-discussed. Europe’s relative lack of scientific progress was discussed but was under-discussed.

A multipolar, transactional, isolationist and just-plain-dumb geopolitical climate will change the questions policymakers ask. Metascience needs to anticipate and engage with this.