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A lot of the problems in academia, I believe, come from incompetence, a lack of questioning or at least of doubting others' competence and your own competence,

A lot of the problems in academia, I believe, come from incompetence, a lack of questioning or at least of doubting others' competence and your own competence, and reliance on unsound ideas about scientific methodology. Andrew Gelman has some good thoughts here that I feel are related: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/07/29/the-crooks-get-the-headlines-but-the-real-problem-is-bad-science-done-by-non-crooks/ https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/07/29/the-crooks... Some people will have the best of intentions, they will really be doing "science" out of the goodness of their hearts and out of their desire to help mankind, but they'll end up publishing trash that gets acceptance and sometimes even praise. What are the incentives that need to be instilled to fix the problems we currently have? I'd say we need to incentivize competence and humility. How? I don't know exactly, but values like these seem to be able to be instilled through cultural practices and traditions. Also, especially humility seems to be lacking from many cases of bad science. If people accepted criticism and accepted that they don't really understand all that much, I believe scientific quality would improve. You do have a lot of reasons to not be humble in academia though, as this comic lays out.

bjornsing 6y ago
> I'd say we need to incentivize competence and humility. Problem is I think that the competent are few, and when the cultural norm is that they must be humble then they stand no chance against the many incompetent. IM(H)O: Science shouldn’t be humble in the face of non-science. As long as it is it will lose. The idea of conflict free great science is a pipe dream. We need a culture that accepts (intellectual) conflict.
- James_Henry 6y ago
  I agree that there isn't enough competence, or that "the competent are few" (though competence isn't a yes or no thing, you can be competent in some respects and not in others). However, I think that competence really only has a chance if the incompetent are humble. There will be conflicts and these conflicts should be embraced and someone who is incompetent and not humble will fight the existence of conflict rather than the actual scientific issue that needs to be solved or understood.
  - bjornsing 6y ago
    What I’m worried about are the incompetent but seemingly humble... They will go around and call the competent “arrogant”, they will seem to be right (to a lot of people), because the competent have such high scientific ideals, and a lot of people will feel like they can’t live up to them. So they will win. The End. Real science is a hell of a lot harder than p-hacking and HARKing your way to a great career. At least some of the incompetent know this. They will not play nice.
- LMYahooTFY 6y ago
  I agree and I think this hits deeply into the heart of the matter. Science is precisely resolving conflict in your observations by removing as much bias as possible. Engaging in that conflict with each other is how we expose new ideas for further analysis.
- gregmac 6y ago
  > the cultural norm is that they must be humble then they stand no chance against the many incompetent I don't think this is a cultural norm so much as just the Dunning-Kruger effect [1] in play. People who are highly competent still realize there is much they don't know, and that makes them humble. I suspect if you go and find someone widely recognized as an expert in pretty much any field, and ask them if they know all there is to know, you'll find no one says yes. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effec...
  - James_Henry 6y ago
    I'm willing to bet that the Dunning-Kruger effect is shaped by culture and an individual's characteristics, like humility.
  - bjornsing 6y ago
    I don’t know... I often feel like we’re talking about many kinds of humility at once. You seem to be talking more about “epistemological humility”, while I was talking more about “social humility”. Was Richard Feynman humble?
    - James_Henry 6y ago
      Yes, from what I've read of him, he was humble in quite a few ways.
      - bjornsing 6y ago
        I agree: He was very humble before reality (as all good scientists have to be). But I argue he wasn’t very “socially humble”...
- goblin89 6y ago
  The way I see it, pride is noise. By staying truly humble in the face of non-science, science provides a calm even backdrop, against which it is more manageable to evaluate worthwhile findings from bullshit. This is orthogonal to conflict. A conflict could be handled humbly (Rapoport’s rule and all), or the opponents could drown the signal of their arguments in the noise of pride. To abandon humility would be to fight noise with more noise.
Donthatme 6y ago
> A lot of the problems in academia, I believe, come from incompetence, a lack of questioning or at least of doubting others' competence and your own competence, and reliance on unsound ideas about scientific methodology. I kind of agree, but I will state it somewhat differently. Note my experience is in physics and healthcare, so may not apply for all fields. In my experience, the desired skill set shifts to more management/admin/bureaucracy/money-chasing once your in a professor or professor-like position, as opposed to nitty-gritty researcher in the grad school phase. The incentives for the grad school phase is good science. The incentives for the professor-like phase is grants/papers/awards.
einpoklum 6y ago
> A lot of the problems in academia, I believe, come from incompetence Indeed, but: 1. We are all - well, almost all of us - incompetent in many aspects of our lives, and competent only in some. 2. The incompetent are often not willing to simply cede their place and let the competent do what (arguably) needs to be done. 3. Proving and verifying competence is quite difficult unless you are yourself competent and close to their field competence in which is in question...
- James_Henry 6y ago
  Hence the need for humility and an understanding that science is about trying to figure stuff out, not about just following rules?

bjornsing 6y ago

> I'd say we need to incentivize competence and humility. Problem is I think that the competent are few, and when the cultural norm is that they must be humble then they stand no chance against the many incompetent. IM(H)O: Science shouldn’t be humble in the face of non-science. As long as it is it will lose. The idea of conflict free great science is a pipe dream. We need a culture that accepts (intellectual) conflict.

James_Henry 6y ago
I agree that there isn't enough competence, or that "the competent are few" (though competence isn't a yes or no thing, you can be competent in some respects and not in others). However, I think that competence really only has a chance if the incompetent are humble. There will be conflicts and these conflicts should be embraced and someone who is incompetent and not humble will fight the existence of conflict rather than the actual scientific issue that needs to be solved or understood.
- bjornsing 6y ago
  What I’m worried about are the incompetent but seemingly humble... They will go around and call the competent “arrogant”, they will seem to be right (to a lot of people), because the competent have such high scientific ideals, and a lot of people will feel like they can’t live up to them. So they will win. The End. Real science is a hell of a lot harder than p-hacking and HARKing your way to a great career. At least some of the incompetent know this. They will not play nice.
LMYahooTFY 6y ago
I agree and I think this hits deeply into the heart of the matter. Science is precisely resolving conflict in your observations by removing as much bias as possible. Engaging in that conflict with each other is how we expose new ideas for further analysis.
gregmac 6y ago
> the cultural norm is that they must be humble then they stand no chance against the many incompetent I don't think this is a cultural norm so much as just the Dunning-Kruger effect [1] in play. People who are highly competent still realize there is much they don't know, and that makes them humble. I suspect if you go and find someone widely recognized as an expert in pretty much any field, and ask them if they know all there is to know, you'll find no one says yes. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effec...
- James_Henry 6y ago
  I'm willing to bet that the Dunning-Kruger effect is shaped by culture and an individual's characteristics, like humility.
- bjornsing 6y ago
  I don’t know... I often feel like we’re talking about many kinds of humility at once. You seem to be talking more about “epistemological humility”, while I was talking more about “social humility”. Was Richard Feynman humble?
  - James_Henry 6y ago
    Yes, from what I've read of him, he was humble in quite a few ways.
    - bjornsing 6y ago
      I agree: He was very humble before reality (as all good scientists have to be). But I argue he wasn’t very “socially humble”...
goblin89 6y ago
The way I see it, pride is noise. By staying truly humble in the face of non-science, science provides a calm even backdrop, against which it is more manageable to evaluate worthwhile findings from bullshit. This is orthogonal to conflict. A conflict could be handled humbly (Rapoport’s rule and all), or the opponents could drown the signal of their arguments in the noise of pride. To abandon humility would be to fight noise with more noise.

Donthatme 6y ago

> A lot of the problems in academia, I believe, come from incompetence, a lack of questioning or at least of doubting others' competence and your own competence, and reliance on unsound ideas about scientific methodology. I kind of agree, but I will state it somewhat differently. Note my experience is in physics and healthcare, so may not apply for all fields. In my experience, the desired skill set shifts to more management/admin/bureaucracy/money-chasing once your in a professor or professor-like position, as opposed to nitty-gritty researcher in the grad school phase. The incentives for the grad school phase is good science. The incentives for the professor-like phase is grants/papers/awards.

einpoklum 6y ago

> A lot of the problems in academia, I believe, come from incompetence Indeed, but: 1. We are all - well, almost all of us - incompetent in many aspects of our lives, and competent only in some. 2. The incompetent are often not willing to simply cede their place and let the competent do what (arguably) needs to be done. 3. Proving and verifying competence is quite difficult unless you are yourself competent and close to their field competence in which is in question...

James_Henry 6y ago
Hence the need for humility and an understanding that science is about trying to figure stuff out, not about just following rules?