4 ms·
This is a good answer from the incentives angle - how to motivate people to check whether studies are good or bad. On the object level, the answer is surprising
by jimrandomh 11y ago
This is a good answer from the incentives angle - how to motivate people to check whether studies are good or bad. On the object level, the answer is surprisingly simple: actually read the thing. The press is full of stories where a journalist rephrased another journalist's story about a press release about a study, and when you actually go to the study, it says something subtly different. When I see those, I try to jump out of the journalist's summary and get to a PDF as fast as possible, guess what the caveat is going to be, then check for it.
- pavpanchekha 11y agoThere are two stories here. One is, how do you—I'm guessing you're not a scientist—tell which studies are worth a damn. In this case, yes, reading the study is the best thing to do. The second is, how do scientists know which studies are good? This is a harder job than for you¸ because you're only ever made aware of papers that made it through the publication gauntlet. (No, they won't publish "anything" these days, not in a journal that gets any coverage.) For scientists, the task is harder, so prediction markets might be the tool they need.