This seminal essay by Michael Nielsen and Kanjun Qiu argues that we must now treat the social processes of science—how research is funded, reviewed, hired, published and coordinated—as a design space for radical improvement.
It introduces the concept of metascience as both a research field and a practical discipline: one that experiments with new institutional models, funding systems, and coordination mechanisms to unlock latent scientific potential.
The piece invites exploration of novel prototypes (for example “capital that learns” or high-variance grants) and to address serious bottlenecks (centralized power, network effects, cultural inertia) that slow down system-level change.