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Universities have their own biases as well --whether it's to pad one's CV, the PI's CV, or whatever, but they are also not free from interference against 'pure'
by mc32 5y ago
Universities have their own biases as well --whether it's to pad one's CV, the PI's CV, or whatever, but they are also not free from interference against 'pure' research.
There is a lot of "garbage" research that happens at universities. Yes, we do expect quite a bit of research to be dead-ends --that's the nature of research, but there is a lot of research that is knowingly fraudulent or uses very suspect data and or methodology.
- skoskie 5y agoOut of curiosity, are there any institutions that meets a “pure” research standard? NIST? Or is that standard unattainable because undue influence exists everywhere?
- canaus 5y agoInfluence exists everywhere because without influence the studies wouldn't exist in the first place.
- azinman2 5y agoAnd people need careers, successful publications and grants make that possible. That isn’t to say everything is trash— lots of good stuff is still done with these requirements.
- lupire 5y agoUnless you have a wealthy aristocracy and some of them are bored so they create a lot of the major science of past couple of centuries.
- guhidalg 5y agoGet a private wealthy benefactor that likes your work, then you can avoid undue influence.
- Barrin92 5y agoThat's in principle what academic tenure is for, it guarantees independence and research freedom. And while you may talk about how there's always this or that political topic that anyone will shy away from, at least in the hard sciences I think academic freedom is largely intact. In a company you can always be fired and the singular goal is the bottom line. Much more so since modern companies seem to not operate with the mentality of the old corporate research labs like Bell, but keep a much tighter lid on things, always pushing for products.
- haswell 5y agoWhile true, are these biases impactful in the same ways? Bias will always exist. The nature of that bias and the degree of impact will vary.