Responsible Metrics and Real Jiwasa - Does Science Measure Impact or Belonging to a Bubble?

Science can also become trapped in local optima. A local optimum appears when a system seems to be advancing, but is only rotating around the same language, the same indicators, the same CVs, the same citation groups, and the same criteria of prestige. A religious bubble calls this doctrine. A digital bubble calls it engagement. An ideology calls it coherence. Science may call it impact, impact factor, h-index, Qualis, productivity, or excellence. The visible effect is scientific production; the hidden cause may be bubble belonging without return to body-territory.

This is where Mariane’s Capta becomes fundamental. The BrainLatam2026 text revisits Mariane Lima de Souza and William B. Gomes to remind us that research does not live only from data, but from interpretation, context, language, and judgment; in it, data is what is given as evidence, while capta is what is taken as evidence. The decisive question becomes: what are we giving as evidence, and what are we taking as evidence? A citation may be data; but when the community decides that it represents relevance, it becomes capta. An impact factor may be data; but when it defines careers, funding, and authority, it becomes institutional capta.

This distinction changes the entire critique of scientific metrics. Science does not only measure data; it chooses what it will take as evidence of value. And if this choice happens inside a bubble, science may measure group belonging as if it were real impact. A group cites itself, attends the same conferences, occupies the same committees, advises the same students, and defines what counts as excellence. The system looks productive because it generates publications, networks, committees, grants, and indicators. But the cause that should orient science — improving the relationship between body, territory, technology, biome, health, education, and future — may disappear behind the CV.

Every concept is a reduction of reality. A concept organizes the world, but it also cuts the world. A model allows us to see, but it also prevents us from seeing. When a field of knowledge keeps rotating inside the same jargon, it may confuse internal precision with expanded truth. Classical physics was not useless; it had limits. Quantum physics did not emerge because classical physics served no purpose, but because certain phenomena no longer fit inside the previous conceptual local optimum. The same applies to neuroscience, psychology, economics, education, climatology, law, and public health: when reality escapes, it is not enough to publish more inside the same frame; another vocabulary must be opened.

The terms of the original peoples of the American continent should not enter as cultural ornament, but as technologies of conceptual exit. Tekoha, APUS, Nerope, Weichö, Yãy hã mĩy, body-territory, and Jiwasa are not decorative words to color articles. They are operators that force science to ask what its jargon has failed to capture. The metric asks how many citations. Body-territory asks who received something back. The CV asks where it was published. Tekoha asks where life improved. The indicator asks who recognized it. Real Jiwasa asks whether knowledge increased true belonging or merely reinforced an academic tribe.

But there is an even deeper cause behind the limits of research: the financial modulation of knowledge. Each science builds its jargon inside its own local optima, but these local optima do not exist in a vacuum. They are crossed by public budgets, foundations, scholarships, grants, funding agencies, rankings, ministerial priorities, private partnerships, and impact criteria defined before body-territory is even heard. Thus, one field stops speaking to another not only because of conceptual differences, but because each learns to survive inside its own funding funnel.

When the 0.01% capture the State, they do not control only credit, taxes, interest rates, public debt, and infrastructure. They also indirectly control the field of possible questions. By speaking of “fiscal responsibility,” this power turns scarcity into a moral virtue and pushes universities, laboratories, and researchers into permanent competition for resources. Science begins by asking “which grant funds this?” before asking “which pain of body-territory demands an answer?” The visible effect is scientific planning; the hidden cause is the subordination of public curiosity to the financial architecture of a captured State.

This logic appears strongly in Latin America. The International Science Council observed in 2026 that the region’s economic and political volatility weakens the stable funding needed for science, technology, and innovation. UNESCO had already pointed out that, during the commodities boom, investments in Latin America were directed mainly toward economic expansion, not toward strengthening scientific infrastructure, innovation, and risk-taking. The cause here is not merely “lack of money.” It is priority: when the State organizes budget, debt, and investment to sustain dominant economic flows, science begins to compete for leftovers instead of responding to the living needs of the territory.

The search for international grants deepens this funnel. A 2026 study on perceived barriers to accessing international research funding states that Latin American researchers often face lower success in international competitions, with obstacles such as complex procedures, limited institutional support, and differences between donor priorities and local challenges. This creates a financial capta: the scientific question becomes more valuable when it fits the language of the funder. Body-territory may ask for sanitation, school, biome, language, mental health, local agriculture, or community technology; but the call may ask for scalable innovation, global competitiveness, or alignment with external priorities.

This modulation produces a local optimum that cuts across all fields: the search for money above the search for return. Neuroscience looks for the grant. Education looks for the call. Health looks for the thematic program. Climatology looks for the fund. Engineering looks for the partnership. The humanities try to survive within the budget. Each field maintains its jargon, metric, and CV, but all are modulated by a prior question: who pays for this question to exist? When that question sits above the needs of the biome and body-territory, science can become technically advanced and causally diverted.

International reforms in scientific evaluation try to face part of this problem. In 2025, DORA launched a practical guide for research organizations to implement responsible assessment, defending more holistic practices, diversity of outputs, and cultural change in research evaluation. A 2026 systematic review on responsible metrics in Latin America shows that regional production on the topic remains smaller and irregular, but strongly aligned with open science and open access; the study argues for strengthening applied research on responsible assessment in the region. These movements matter, but they may still become another local optimum if they only replace metric bureaucracy with narrative bureaucracy.

Alberto Baccini warns that CoARA will not save science from the “tyranny of administrative evaluation” if quality and impact continue to be defined by governments, evaluation institutions, and restricted groups of experts without broad public deliberation. This critique brings the debate closer to Real Jiwasa: it is not enough to replace quantitative metrics with impact narratives if the affected community still has no voice. Capta changes clothes, but it continues to be taken inside the same circle of power. Responsible assessment must ask not only “what was the impact?” but “who had the right to say that this was impact?”

The inclusion of Indigenous languages shows another limit of scientific local optima. A 2024 survey on natural language processing for Indigenous Latin American languages highlights the marginalization of these communities in technological advances and the need for innovation that respects community perspectives. Another 2024 paper on AI for revitalizing Indigenous languages discusses experiences with communities in Brazil and proposes alternative development cycles based on community engagement. When a language is left outside technique, an entire world is left outside the metric. When an original term does not enter the concept, the reality it opens may remain invisible to the laboratory.

Responsible science therefore needs a metric of return. Not only “how many citations?”, but “which territory understood?”. Not only “which journal?”, but “which community gained a tool?”. Not only “which impact factor?”, but “which public policy improved?”. Not only “which dataset?”, but “who could use it?”. Not only “which innovation?”, but “which body stopped suffering?”. Not only “which theory?”, but “which local optimum was overcome?”. Without these questions, science can become an elegant sect: sophisticated, peer-reviewed, statistically robust, but metabolically closed.

This does not mean abandoning metrics. Metrics are useful when they know they are reductions. The problem begins when the reduction becomes official reality. Every metric needs ontological humility: it measures something, not everything. The h-index measures citation circulation, not wisdom. The impact factor measures editorial behavior, not territorial transformation. Publication measures production, not necessarily return. A science with Real Jiwasa would use metrics as instruments, but never as sovereigns. The sovereign must be the expanded body-territory: people, biome, language, memory, care, technology, and future.

The final question is simple: does science measure impact or belonging to a bubble? If the metric increases the CV but does not increase return, it is a local optimum. If jargon protects the group but does not open reality, it is a bubble. If the grant funds the question before the territory speaks, science has already been modulated. Mariane’s Capta shows that evidence is never only data; it is data taken in context. The terms of original peoples help break the prison because they force science to think with territory, ancestry, body, vital flow, transformative imitation, and real belonging. The New Scientific World will not be born only from more papers; it will be born when science measures less of its own vanity and more of the life it is able to return.

Selected references after 2021

BrainLatam2026 — “Evidencia e Interpretación” — 2026

Revisits the concept of data and capta from Mariane Lima de Souza and William B. Gomes and applies this distinction to body-territory, DNA Intelligence, AI, and the reading of evidence in research.

Daniela Oyarzún-Cristi, Álvaro Cabezas-Clavijo, and Alicia Moreno-Delgado — “How is Latin America engaging with responsible metrics?” — 2026

Supports the regional analysis of responsible metrics in Latin America, showing lower and irregular regional production, as well as the need for applied research in responsible assessment.

DORA — “A Practical Guide to Implementing Responsible Research Assessment at Research Performing Organizations” — 2025

Supports the critique of narrow indicator use and the defense of more holistic, inclusive, and culturally transformative practices in research evaluation.

Alberto Baccini — “CoARA will not save science from the tyranny of administrative evaluation” — 2024

Supports the critique that evaluation reforms may remain trapped in administration if quality and impact are defined by institutions and experts without broad public deliberation.

International Science Council — “Funding the future of science in Latin America” — 2026

Supports the layer on economic and political instability in Latin America as a factor that weakens stable funding for science, technology, and innovation.

UNESCO Science Report — Latin America chapter — 2021

Supports the critique that investments during the commodities boom were historically oriented toward economic expansion rather than strengthening scientific infrastructure, innovation, and risk-taking.

J. Formoso et al. — “Perceived barriers for accessing international research funding” — 2026

Supports the critique of the international funding funnel, including complex procedures, limited institutional support, and misalignment between donor priorities and local challenges.

Atnafu Lambebo Tonja et al. — “NLP Progress in Indigenous Latin American Languages” — 2024

Supports the critique of the marginalization of Indigenous Latin American languages in technological progress and defends innovation that respects community perspectives.

Claudio Pinhanez et al. — “Harnessing the Power of Artificial Intelligence to Vitalize Endangered Indigenous Languages” — 2024

Supports the importance of alternative AI development cycles with community engagement, especially for documentation and revitalization of Indigenous languages in Brazil.

SPARC Open — “Lessons from Redalyc’s Organic Rise as a Model of Diamond Open Access” — 2024

Supports the importance of the Latin American diamond open access model, with no fees to read or publish, as a public and more equitable scientific communication infrastructure.