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Well, that is the alternative? Forbidding privately-funded research? Submitting it to gigantic bureaucratic committees? The only proposal I back is forcing pub
by ucaetano 9y ago
Well, that is the alternative? Forbidding privately-funded research? Submitting it to gigantic bureaucratic committees?
The only proposal I back is forcing publicly-funded researchers to disclose all gifts and grants, similarly to public officials, but even that is a massive bureaucratic ordeal.
Research is not a regulated environment, and it should not be one.
- amoorthy 9y agoI think the suggestion is simple: Disclose funding sources and % of funding total for any research. And if you don't disclose then no journal should accept your paper. Funding source does not by itself invalidate findings and corporations absolutely should continue to fund research. But for readers of research this is critical information. I may be naive but this does not seem like a big bureaucratic ask. And even if it were seems like good scientists would do it because they pride themselves on pursuing the truth with impeccable attention to detail.
- ucaetano 9y agoThat is a fair suggestion, but the devil is in the details: how do you implement that? How do you prevent journals from accepting? How do you force researchers to disclose?
- amoorthy 9y agoJournals that accept papers that don't disclose funding sources progressively lose their credibility. (I am not a scientist and have never published a paper so I may be asking for things here that are unreasonable but they seem plausible and useful to me).