区块链与数字身份：一项科学趋势的解剖学

ANATOMY OF A SCIENTIFIC TREND Christophe GAIE, Markus MUECK&Jean LANGLOIS-BERTHELOT Blockchainis not a technological illusion. It constitutes an authenticinnovationin the field of distributed systems,introducing robustmechanisms for consensus, traceability and auditability without a singlecentral authority. To reduce blockchain to a mere trend would therefore bean analytical error. However, the rapid expansion of this technology into thefields of digital identity and law gave rise, between 2016 and 2021, to a Furthermore, this case raises a broader question: how can we distinguish, incontemporary research, between sustainable scientific improvement and A.BLOCKCHAIN:A SCIENTIFIC MOMENT The study of scientific and proto-scientific trends (emerging fields ofresearch) constitutes a major methodological challenge for understandingcontemporary knowledge production, particularly in technology-intensivefields. Far from being a marginal phenomena, these trends structureresearch agendas, direct funding flows, shape conceptual frameworks and (publications, overt interdisciplinarity, legal and philosophical references)withoutalways meeting the requirements of formalisation,empiricalvalidation or cumulativeness. Their success rests less on the robustness oftheir results than on their ability to crystallise social and institutionalexpectations around emerging technical objects1. Studying these dynamicsis essential because they produce a bibliometric inflation that obscures the The field combining blockchains, law and digital identity is a typical exampleof this type of dynamic, with numerous interdisciplinary publications2.Between 2016 and 2021, it exhibited all the hallmarks of a scientific fad: anexplosion of publications, lexical convergence around poorly establishedconcepts, a strong presence of predominantly normative interdisciplinarydiscourse, and an explicit promise of a technological overhaul of the social Analysis of the literature on blockchain and digital identity reveals a dynamictypical of a trend fad. Combined searches on Scopus and Web of ScienceCore Collection show limited growth between 2010 and 2015, followed by arapid surge between 2016 and 2019. On Scopus, the number of annual comparable peak observed in Web of Science between 2019 and 2020. Thissurge is closely correlated with media coverage of public blockchains and theemergence of the Web3 narrative. It is also accompanied by a shift in thedisciplinary focus. Articles with a predominantly legal, philosophical or socio-political focus have become the majority, whilst technical contributions Discursive redundancy is a prominent feature of this corpus. Analyses ofsemantic similarity reveal a high degree of lexical homogeneity aroundconcepts such as individual sovereignty, decentralisation and programmablefundamental rights. These concepts are rarely defined in operational terms.The result is a vast body of literature that offers little cumulative insight. Thedistribution of citations confirms this assessment, with around 5 to 6% ofpublications accounting for more than 50% of cumulative citations. This core Legally speaking, the promises associated with a blockchain-based digitalidentity clash with existing frameworks. Systems struggle to meet therequirements of accountability, challengeability and data protection. Thenotion of ‘programmable’ fundamental rights thus appears as a political identity as a regulatory instrument. This perspective breaks with the idealismof the current trend and refocuses the debate on effective decision-makingmechanisms. In truth, this scientific craze for blockchain is a classic case of atrend being taken up by related scientific disciplines at the expense of This phenomenon reflects a shift in the criteria for scientific legitimacy B.THE ISSUE OF THE COMMERCIALISATION OFSCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS The points made above raise a broader question: how should we judge thestandard and quality of a scientific publication? Indeed, we are seeing a shift in editorial practices, often at the expense ofscientific quality. The number of journals and conferences continues to grow.Some offer the possibility of publishing low-quality results in return forpayment, often without rigorous verification. In such cases, the scientificvalue is low or even non-existent. There are indicators for evaluating Another factor relates to the transformation of academic incentives. The pressure to publish, often summed up by the phrase‘publish orperish’,favours strategies of rapid production at the expense of work that is moremethodologically rigorous. In this context, quantity tends to become animplicit indicator of performance, which may encourage the fragmentation increase in the number of submissions and the availability of reviewers. Thisleads to greater heterogeneity in evaluation standards depending on Finally,digital visibility is playing an increasingly significant role.Dissemination platforms and alternative metrics (downloads