2 ms·

I think reproducibility is one of the biggest challenges to face science in our time. Luckily we have the tools we need to solve the problem already. Of corse p

I think reproducibility is one of the biggest challenges to face science in our time. Luckily we have the tools we need to solve the problem already. Of corse paper journals don't want to waste space and reproducing results, but no such constraints are on online publications. And while moving publications online we can solve the issues of journal publishers owning the copyright on papers written with public money. The big question that's left is trust. A lot of the journals that have gone online are essentially scams publishing whatever you want for a fee. We still need the peer review step the close the gap.

dagw 11y ago
The big problem isn't that journals don't want to "waste" space publishing reproduced results, but that scientists don't want to "waste" their time reproducing other peoples results. Unless the result is a once a decade game changing result for your field, there is no incentives in reproduction. You cannot change peoples behaviour without changing the underlying incentive structure. Do that and everything else will trivially fall into place.
- digi_owl 11y ago
  Nah i think the bigger problem is the MBAs walking around, trying to apply widget factory metrics to academia, healthcare, and other hard to measure environments. This in turn has lead to the whole "publish or perish" environment, as the MBAs use published articles as a replacement for widgets made and citations as sales.
- arcanus 11y ago
  > scientists don't want to "waste" their time reproducing other peoples results Completely agree, and it is actually even worse than you imply: if you think it is hard to get scientists to reproduce others work, imagine trying to pitch NSF/DOE, etc. to fund the study!