4 ms·
Kinda-OT but: During my studies I've read papers from everything to organisational theory (MBA stuff) to pretty "pure" CS (like compiler construction etc), and
by filleokus 7y ago
Kinda-OT but: During my studies I've read papers from everything to organisational theory (MBA stuff) to pretty "pure" CS (like compiler construction etc), and have in that process read so many papers in many different fields that just don't provide any insight or are barely comprehensible.
Of course, sometimes it can probably be blamed on the reader (me) for not having enough insight, but many times the papers are just crap.
My naive imagination of academic papers before university was that they were like those I now read in the __top__ journals / conferences in each field: concise understandable writing with actual insights and clear methodology that can be repeated. But papers like these are probably something like less than 1% of everything published. Many papers seem to be almost approaching levels of the Bogdanov thesis's [0].
To relate to the topic: I'm wondering if we'll see a shift in the academic culture and system, where the pressure to publish is lowered (somehow), and where focus is on quality and actually providing insight and reproducibility.
The worst possible thing is that bad science gets influential on false grounds, which needs to be avoided. But increasing the signal-to-noise-ratio is probably not a bad idea either. And I suspect that they will both turn out to be improved by fixing the underlying incentive problems.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_affair
- jacquesm 7y agoIt's the same as with programming: many people now have a career in science because that's something that comes with prestige rather than that they are driven by their curiosity and need to understand how stuff works. Once established the treadmill needs to keep turning so you get tons of low value papers and the occasional gem. Publish or perish does nothing to improve the quality of what is published, rather to the contrary.
- allovernow 7y agoThe bar for publication (like much of our media) used to be far higher. Particularly with the push to get everyone through college, even at the cost of lowering standards, there's a sort of regression to the mean with respect to publication quality. It happens with any difficult, technical field that initially attracts the more capable in society. Hell, look at what the internet was back when it was still mostly needs with passion.