Science of Science
science.sciencemag.org
science.sciencemag.org
The conclusion that institutition doesn't matter, for example, seems ridiculous and flies in the face of a lot of IO research. People move for reasons, for example; the question isn't whether productivity changes after a move on average, it's what would have happened to an individual researcher if they had stayed in a given situation relative to what would have happened after a move to another situation. There's a lot of cliques, the moves aren't random, etc.
It's a bit like concluding that you can determine the importance of a paper solely by looking at the impact factor of a journal.
That would be the Philosophy of Science.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metascience
Epistemology is philosophy of knowledge, justification, and the rationality of belief. Epistemologists don't use methods that would make it science.
if you want the real deal for the title, see STS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science,_technology_and_societ...