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>I can't blame researchers for tailoring their research to help their own careers What about a lowly restaurant-owner who skimps on food quality or sanitary co

>I can't blame researchers for tailoring their research to help their own careers What about a lowly restaurant-owner who skimps on food quality or sanitary costs to "help their career?" A psychopath or "can't blame them?" Erroneous research can also have human costs. White collar and blue collar workers should both be scrutinized equally. I'm not sure where this acceptance of moral depravity among more-privileged peoples comes from, but I really don't like it.

jfz 8y ago
There is a massive difference between doing something that will clearly hurt someone and choosing to do only work that benefits you. Researchers are currently under no obligation to write up their null findings, and it would be hard to get null findings in prestigious journals. This should be fixed at an institutional level, like the pre-registration of studies in the article, not as a mandate to each individual researcher to write up and publish every study.
- wallace_f 8y ago
  >There is a massive difference between doing something that will clearly hurt someone and choosing to do only work that benefits you. This is the most-downvoted comment I've ever made on HN, and I think your explanation is in summary what people disagree with. However, the problems of bias and integrity in scientific research can and do have costs in terms of harm to human life. It's just that the connection between just following incentives and bad scientific research is much more abstracted, and therefore is not clearly intentional negligence, as the case with something like food safety.
  - btrettel 8y ago
    There's a great recent blog post on the basic point you're making: http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2018/10/02/no-its-not-the-incentives-its-you/ http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2018/10/02/no-its-not-the-inc...
    - wallace_f 8y ago
      Yea that looks to be spot on. Thanks, I appreciate the link.
bunderbunder 8y ago
"Moral depravity" is maybe overstating the case. There are some pretty egregious cases that have come to light, but the vast majority of the problem is just a natural result of how even people with the best of intentions will still be influenced by a bad incentive structure. For example, a big part of how the file drawer effect happens is that writing papers is expensive and time consuming, and it's hard to get anyone to publish negative papers, and academics' careers operate under a rather brutal "publish or perish" regime. All that adds up to, if you get a negative result, you've got a whole lot of very concrete reasons to cut your losses and move on. The goody two shoes who's scrupulous about reporting all their findings is not going to get rewarded for their efforts with a job. Nor will they be rewarded with the satisfaction of knowing they've done their part to improve the average quality of the published literature. Out-of-work scientists don't get many opportunities to do research.

jfz 8y ago

There is a massive difference between doing something that will clearly hurt someone and choosing to do only work that benefits you. Researchers are currently under no obligation to write up their null findings, and it would be hard to get null findings in prestigious journals. This should be fixed at an institutional level, like the pre-registration of studies in the article, not as a mandate to each individual researcher to write up and publish every study.

wallace_f 8y ago
>There is a massive difference between doing something that will clearly hurt someone and choosing to do only work that benefits you. This is the most-downvoted comment I've ever made on HN, and I think your explanation is in summary what people disagree with. However, the problems of bias and integrity in scientific research can and do have costs in terms of harm to human life. It's just that the connection between just following incentives and bad scientific research is much more abstracted, and therefore is not clearly intentional negligence, as the case with something like food safety.
- btrettel 8y ago
  There's a great recent blog post on the basic point you're making: http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2018/10/02/no-its-not-the-incentives-its-you/ http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2018/10/02/no-its-not-the-inc...
  - wallace_f 8y ago
    Yea that looks to be spot on. Thanks, I appreciate the link.

bunderbunder 8y ago

"Moral depravity" is maybe overstating the case. There are some pretty egregious cases that have come to light, but the vast majority of the problem is just a natural result of how even people with the best of intentions will still be influenced by a bad incentive structure. For example, a big part of how the file drawer effect happens is that writing papers is expensive and time consuming, and it's hard to get anyone to publish negative papers, and academics' careers operate under a rather brutal "publish or perish" regime. All that adds up to, if you get a negative result, you've got a whole lot of very concrete reasons to cut your losses and move on. The goody two shoes who's scrupulous about reporting all their findings is not going to get rewarded for their efforts with a job. Nor will they be rewarded with the satisfaction of knowing they've done their part to improve the average quality of the published literature. Out-of-work scientists don't get many opportunities to do research.