Word.ws English Dictionary

adversarial collaboration

adversarial collaboration noun: any of a class of study designs in which scientists with conflicting theories work together with others who are neutral or agnostic about those theories, and this team runs an experiment to test the theories empirically and thus find out whether one of the theories is contradicted by the evidence found.

Noun

adversarial collaboration (usually uncountable, plural adversarial collaborations)

  1. (idiomatic, usually) Any of a class of study designs in which scientists with conflicting theories work together with others who are neutral or agnostic about those theories, and this team runs an experiment to test the theories empirically and thus find out whether one of the theories is contradicted by the evidence found.
    • Dr. Melloni and a group of like-minded scientists began drawing up plans for their study in 2018. They wanted to try an approach known as adversarial collaboration, in which scientists with opposing theories join forces with neutral researchers. The team chose two theories to test. One, called...2025 April 30, Carl Zimmer, “Two Theories of Consciousness Faced Off. The Ref Took a Beating. What makes humans conscious? Scientists disagree, strongly, as one group of peacemakers discovered the...
  2. (countable, usually) An instance of such a study.
    • Although adversarial collaborations might feel like an unnecessary constraint in the short term, it will likely improve research in the long run (Ellemers et al., 2020). If your hypothesis is correct, it likely will win out in an adversarial collaboration. If it is incorrect, likely it will...2022, Cory J. Clark, Nathan Honeycutt, and Lee Jussim, “Chapter 3: Replicability and the Psychology of Science”, in William O'Donohue, Akihiko Masuda, Scott Lilienfeld, editors, Avoiding Questionable...

Examples of adversarial collaboration in a sentence

  • They wanted to try an approach known as adversarial collaboration, in which scientists with opposing theories join forces with neutral researchers.2025 April 30, Carl Zimmer, “Two Theories of Consciousness Faced Off. The Ref Took a Beating. What makes humans conscious? Scientists...
  • Although adversarial collaborations might feel like an unnecessary constraint in the short term, it will likely improve research in the long run (Ellemers et al., 2020).2022, Cory J. Clark, Nathan Honeycutt, and Lee Jussim, “Chapter 3: Replicability and the Psychology of Science”, in William O'Donohue...

Forms of adversarial collaboration

pluraladversarial collaborations

Questions about adversarial collaboration

What does adversarial collaboration mean?
Adversarial collaboration means any of a class of study designs in which scientists with conflicting theories work together with others who are neutral or agnostic about those theories, and this team runs an experiment to test the theories empirically and thus find out whether one of the theories is contradicted by the evidence found.
How do you use adversarial collaboration in a sentence?
They wanted to try an approach known as adversarial collaboration, in which scientists with opposing theories join forces with neutral researchers.
What part of speech is adversarial collaboration?
Adversarial collaboration is a noun.
What is the plural of adversarial collaboration?
The plural of adversarial collaboration is adversarial collaborations.

Words near adversarial collaboration in the dictionary

  1. advermation
  2. Adversane
  3. adversant
  4. adversaria
  5. adversarial
  6. adversarial collaboration
  7. adversarial collaborations
  8. adversarial stylometry
  9. adversarial system
  10. adversarial systems
  11. adversariality

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: adversarial collaboration (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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