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It’s on a slightly different level. There are strong incentives to find ‘sexy’ results, but this is mostly aimed at getting a paper into Nature, Science, or Ce
by mattkrause 7y ago
It’s on a slightly different level.
There are strong incentives to find ‘sexy’ results, but this is mostly aimed at getting a paper into Nature, Science, or Cell. Publishing in these journals can have an outsized effect on one’s career, even if the results don’t actually hold up.
In contrast, there’s not a huge pay off for getting something into Popular Science or the New York Times science section. Publicity is good and can help show the relevance of your research. It’s also fun to show your mom (who still wants you to go to med school), but people tend not to chase it nearly as hard as a “glam” paper.
- thanatropism 7y agoThat's probably a bigger effect. People have a huge trouble accepting that their wonderful science is a social process.
- rossdavidh 7y agoYes, and also that it's a very economic one. If you need to churn out (and get accepted) research in quantity, then "hold on there, do we know that for sure? let's try to replicate that, with a much bigger sample size..." is downright unwelcome. Scientists are mostly good people, but they're not angels, and if we put them in a system that rewards the wrong thing, we will get the wrong thing.
- AstralStorm 7y agoUnfortunately neither economics nor sociology are good enough science branches to even fix themselves. ;)