3 ms·

The same issues exist. The next dodgy scientist on the hamster wheel looking to get a name for themselves will claim reproducibility and then publish a follow u

The same issues exist. The next dodgy scientist on the hamster wheel looking to get a name for themselves will claim reproducibility and then publish a follow up in the spirit of publish or perish. You could further entrench the issue with this approach, unfortunately.

lamontcg 4y ago
Better solution might be for the government to just fund reproducibility studies, and even departments of reproducibility. Take the profit motive out of it, find good scientists who are painstaking but maybe not innovative and fund them to reproduce major results. The scientists would never get the credit for major breakthroughs, but could occasionally be wrecking balls that called research like this into question. With consistent and reliable funding from the government their reward could be stability of employment rather than innovative fame (of course these days some partisan politics would probably gut it, which is why we can't have nice things).
- chmod600 4y ago
  I'm open to that idea but not sure how it would play out. It could go wrong in a few ways. One potential problem is that it could become "the" authority on reproducing results. If they repro something and another scientist can't, or vice versa, would the other scientist get ignored? Another problem is that it could take away the independence of science. The government might start saying what is good science and what isn't.
  - lamontcg 4y ago
    They can only publish their results, though, they can't force people to accept them. Any other institution, anywhere else in the world, is free to publish results which disagree. Scientists should then have the necessary tools to figure out which one is likely to be correct, and try an independent third or fourth time. It would be expected that sometimes there would be a failure to replicate which was a mistake in how it was replicated, that shouldn't be seen as being a failure of the goal of replication, and the original authors should be incentivized to reach out and discuss the issues with the methods.

lamontcg 4y ago

Better solution might be for the government to just fund reproducibility studies, and even departments of reproducibility. Take the profit motive out of it, find good scientists who are painstaking but maybe not innovative and fund them to reproduce major results. The scientists would never get the credit for major breakthroughs, but could occasionally be wrecking balls that called research like this into question. With consistent and reliable funding from the government their reward could be stability of employment rather than innovative fame (of course these days some partisan politics would probably gut it, which is why we can't have nice things).

chmod600 4y ago
I'm open to that idea but not sure how it would play out. It could go wrong in a few ways. One potential problem is that it could become "the" authority on reproducing results. If they repro something and another scientist can't, or vice versa, would the other scientist get ignored? Another problem is that it could take away the independence of science. The government might start saying what is good science and what isn't.
- lamontcg 4y ago
  They can only publish their results, though, they can't force people to accept them. Any other institution, anywhere else in the world, is free to publish results which disagree. Scientists should then have the necessary tools to figure out which one is likely to be correct, and try an independent third or fourth time. It would be expected that sometimes there would be a failure to replicate which was a mistake in how it was replicated, that shouldn't be seen as being a failure of the goal of replication, and the original authors should be incentivized to reach out and discuss the issues with the methods.