Scientific production in difficult times: keys for a hermeneutic reading of our times

The following essay aims to reflect on the scientific production of a group of six (06) academics in the framework of an environment marked by the global Covid-19 pandemic and the social, economic and political crisis in Venezuela. With this, we seek to interpret the way in which academic production can show the meaning of the vital events of being involved in a social, political, economic and ethical crisis. First, we address the transition between knowledge from life experience and so-called scientific knowledge. Then we review some of the intellectual work that begins with curiosity and pertinent questions always framed by the difficulty of language as the house of being. We do not stop reflecting on the link between science and society, as well as on the productions that constitute “junk science”, according to the author Agin (2008). In this aspect of scientific production, we consider the issue of fraud that at the time generated scandals, as well as plagiarism, which force us to reflect on the ethics of the researcher. We are guided by a qualitative methodology and the hermeneutical method from which we intend to "read" the signs of the times reflected in a group of university graduates and their work as generators of knowledge. To support these objectives, we do not stop resorting to the wisdom of authorities in the field of Hermeneutics such as Gadamer (2003) and Ricoeur (2003), scientists such as Beveridge (1966) and important philosophers such as Burk (1972), Martínez (2017), Maurois (1986), among others, whose references we indicate at the end.