The fixes they propose are good ones, but aren’t grounded in reality. They ignore how we got here in the first place. Citations matter as a proxy for importance

The fixes they propose are good ones, but aren’t grounded in reality. They ignore how we got here in the first place. Citations matter as a proxy for importance. Negative studies are inherently uninteresting. Companies fund groundbreaking work because they want to be associated with a breakthrough. Scientists publish in bad journals because their careers depend on it - it’s an entire lifetimes work to get tenure and research grants. They can’t just throw that away. Journals publish lousy studies because they don’t have enough good ones - the journals will not self destruct in order to slim down for us. To fix the system will take a more honest look at the incentives of the people/institutions who create the incentives, and so on.