adversarial collaborations

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...