How do we move from vast, fragmented bodies of information to wiser collective action? In this episode, geoscientist and author Brian Gregory introduces information ecology: a way of understanding information not simply as data or a technical resource, but as a living process shaped by perception, interpretation, values, and context.

We discuss entropy and coherence in public knowledge, his AMIE framework for adaptive environmental management, and why an intermediate integrative layer is essential between specialist research and real-world decisions. Brian also reflects on holons, transdisciplinarity, AI’s emerging role in synthesis, and the ethical importance of making assumptions and information pathways explicit.

The conversation then turns to his book, Down to Earth: A Way of Being, written in the wake of a lung transplant and triple-bypass surgery. Drawing on Earth history, evolution, and philosophy, Brian offers an accessible account of how uncertainty, interconnection, and our own life narratives can become sources of meaning.

Resources:

• Nardi, B. A., & O'Day, V. (2000). Information ecologies: Using technology with heart. Mit Press.
• Eddy, B. G., Hearn, B., Luther, J. E., van Zyll de Jong, M., Bowers, W., Parsons, R., ... & Wheeler, B. (2014). An information ecology approach to science–policy integration in adaptive management of social-ecological systems. Ecology and society, 19(3).

• Gregory, B. (2025). Down to Earth: A way of being.

• Koestler, A. (1968). The ghost in the machine.
• Raei, M. (2026). The Five Dimensions (5D) Metatheory: An Uncommitted Analytical Framework Introduction. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22934728

What would it take for educational research to serve both truth and welfare? In this episode, Jean-Luc Patry (professor emeritus of educational research, University of Salzburg) traces a lifelong project organized around a single hierarchy: good theories require good metatheories, theories must be studied with adequate methods, and no amount of statistical sophistication can rescue a weak theory or a poor assessment. He introduces VaKE (Values and Knowledge Education), a constructivist, collaborative method that pairs inquiry-based knowledge acquisition with dilemma-driven moral argumentation — targeting not which values learners hold but how they justify preferring one over another. Patry describes VaKE's implementation across more than a dozen countries, its viability from roughly age ten upward, and its extension into business education, where students are often surprised that values bear on business at all. The conversation then turns to situation specificity and its consequences for replication, to critical multiplism as a response to the deficits of any single method, and to the frequently collapsed distinction between superordinate object theories and genuine metatheories. Patry closes with MaaKE (Moral Action and Knowledge Education), the group's move from moral cognition toward moral behavior.

Resources

• Patry, J. L. (2025). Walking the Talk: Is-Ought as Transdisciplinarity and as a Trans-Domain Approach for Researchers, Teachers, and Students. Journal for the Philosophical Study of Education, 5, 59-83.
• Patry, J. L., Weyringer, S., & Weinberger, A. (2007). Combining values and knowledge education. In Values education and lifelong learning: Principles, policies, programmes (pp. 160-179). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.
• Patry, J. L. (2011). Methodological consequences of situation specificity: Biases in assessments. Frontiers in Psychology, 2, 18.
• Patry, J. L. (2013). Beyond multiple methods: Critical multiplism on all levels. International Journal of Multiple Research Approaches, 7(1), 50-65.

In this episode of Epistemic Alchemy, Mohammed Raei speaks with neuroscientist Dr. Björn Brembs about the limits of journal prestige, impact factors, and conventional peer review. Brembs explains why high-status publication venues may not reliably signal higher-quality research, how editorial selection can privilege novelty and perceived interest over methodological rigor, and why the growing demand for peer review has created an unsustainable burden across science.

The conversation then turns toward alternatives: selective and post-publication review, transparent version histories, replication as an ongoing trust marker, and open, decentralized infrastructure that captures data, code, methods, and research outputs by default. They also explore how AI could help researchers navigate complexity, detect patterns across distributed knowledge, and create more accessible forms of scholarly communication. At stake is not merely a better publishing system, but a more communal, resilient, and knowledge-generating model of scholarship.

Resources:

• Dr. Brems Blog: https://bjoern.brembs.net/
• Brembs B, Button K, Munafò M. Deep impact: unintended consequences of journal rank. Front Hum Neurosci. 2013 Jun 24;7:291. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00291. PMID: 23805088; PMCID: PMC3690355.
• Raei, M. (2026). Reviewer-Induced Drift and the Architectural Role of Editors in Peer Review. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21790687