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Fouad et al. Metab Target Organ Damage 2024;4:20 Metabolism and
DOI: 10.20517/mtod.2024.26
Target Organ Damage

Perspective Open Access

Could controversies in the arena of fatty liver
disease be a potential gate for the democratization

of science？

3
2
1
Yasser Fouad , Mohamed Alboraie , Ahmed Gomaa , Ming-Hua Zheng 4 , Amedeo Lonardo 5
1
Department of Endemic Medicine and Gastroenterology, Faculty of Medicine, Minia University, Minia 11432, Egypt.
2
Department of Internal Medicine, Al-Azhar University, Cairo 19104, Egypt.
3
Department of Endemic Medicine and Gastroenterology, Faculty of Medicine, Fayoum University, Fayoum 102 45, Egypt.
4
MAFLD Research Center, Department of Hepatology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou
541004, Zhejiang, China.
5
Department of Internal Medicine, Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria of Modena (-2023) Modena 41126, Italy.
Correspondence to: Prof. Yasser Fouad, Department of Endemic Medicine and Gastroenterology, Faculty of Medicine, Minia
University, Main Road, Minia 11432, Egypt. E-mail: Yasser.abdallah@mu.edu.eg
How to cite this article: Fouad Y, Alboraie M, Gomaa A, Zheng MH, Lonardo A. Could controversies in the arena of fatty liver
disease be a potential gate for the democratization of science. Metab Target Organ Damage 2024;4:20. https://dx.doi.org/10.
20517/mtod.2024.26
Received: 8 Apr 2024 First Decision: 10 May 2024 Revised: 20 May 2024 Accepted: 24 May 2024 Published: 29 May 2024

Academic Editor: Sonia Najjar Copy Editor: Yanbing Bai Production Editor: Yanbing Bai

Abstract
The term “democratization of science” describes the process of more evenly allocating epistemic authority
between scientists, members of dominant civilizations, and the academic community at large, or members of less
dominant societies. This means that it includes initiatives aimed at democratizing the decision-making process by
acknowledging the presence of diverse types of “wisdom of crowd” and so reducing the barriers between the
various stakeholders. Our purpose is to separate influence from involvement that contributes to the breakdown of
conventional closed-circuit authority structures and to prevent future abuses of power by academic institutions,
scientific societies, and even individual opinion leaders. A conceptual framework for comprehending the idea of the
democratization of science is presented in this perspective piece. Our considerations are pertinent to the politics of
widespread academic engagement in scientific decision-making, even though they were spurred by the discussion
surrounding the definitions of fatty liver disease.

Keywords: MAFLD, NAFLD, fatty liver, democratization, science

© The Author(s) 2024. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, sharing,
adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, for any purpose, even commercially, as
long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and
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