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Another variant of the incentive problem is more insidious. Many academics are driven by ego, and specifically a desire to be influential. One way to be influen
by canjobear 6y ago
Another variant of the incentive problem is more insidious. Many academics are driven by ego, and specifically a desire to be influential. One way to be influential is to have great, original, and correct ideas. This can be a good incentive, but coupled with our human ability to deceive ourselves, it can become pathological. I’ve seen researchers get convinced that their ideas are so beautiful and right-feeling that they just can’t be wrong, and they will torture the data and run experiment after experiment it appears to work. Sometimes this crosses into outright fraud without the researcher even realizing it——after all, the theory is right, so if the data don’t match it they must be wrong!
This problem seems much harder to fix than research funding, because the question is how to allocate prestige and influence, not just money.
- prionassembly 6y ago> I’ve seen researchers get convinced Where have you seen them?
- kergonath 6y agoThis confirmation bias is everywhere. As in, “this calculation looks off, we should re-run it” or “this number is wrong, let’s call it an outlier”. Sometimes there’s a good reason, sometimes it’s wishful thinking and they are hoping the next one will be more “correct”. Distinguishing the two is not always easy, either. From my experience, it is checked most of the time before it becomes fraud, though.
- prionassembly 6y agoYes, but where is your experience? Academia, industry, STEM, biosciences, the pub?
- kergonath 6y agoAll of them except biosciences :) Condensed matter physics in a well-known university. But it does involve working with engineers and quite a lot of pub-going.