3 ms·

What do you mean by "the gate keeping mechanisms" should be removed? Do you mean the difficulty of publishing? Or tenure? Or degrees?

voakbasda 4y ago
All of those gate keeping mechanisms have systemic issues and need to be reformed at the very least. "Removed" might be a bit strong, but I definitely see how one could reach that perspective. Regardless, they certainly have lost the credibility to claim any monopolistic authority over the domains they purport to serve.
- smcin 4y ago
  a) It's easy to suggest gatekeeping mechanisms like degrees, tenture, journals controlling publication "should all be reformed", without proposing any specific alternatives; but they all exist to prevent an obvious set of anti-patterns; if you eliminate them you just get different anti-patterns. Can you make a specific proposal of what's a better system to replace them with? b) In any case, the $$ incentives and root-causes are distorted, no point in scapegoating the gatekeeping mechanisms. The US pharmaceutical industry (for example) is 3.2% of GDP, and is 48% of the global pharmaceutical market. That amount of $$ is obviously going to distort policy at all levels. c) Scientific fraud should be criminalized, there should be stiff penalties and they should actually be enforced (actual prison, fines, losing job and tenure, retracting PhDs). Otherwise you're playing a race-to-the-bottom in a consequence-free environment, against someone else who's going to do unethical things. d) Until you address the root-causes/incentives, people's behavior won't change, why would it. Compare to the recent similar scandal on "self-reported data" for US News college rankings. [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=%22college%20ranking%22&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...]
smegsicle 4y ago
revolutionary ideas will always come from outside, because institutions naturally can only form around what they already assume to be true... but taking that to mean institutions serve no purpose is terribly shortsighted one thing that does have to go though is the implication that the peer-review process is 'science' and anything outside of it is 'not science', which is just embarrassing

voakbasda 4y ago

All of those gate keeping mechanisms have systemic issues and need to be reformed at the very least. "Removed" might be a bit strong, but I definitely see how one could reach that perspective. Regardless, they certainly have lost the credibility to claim any monopolistic authority over the domains they purport to serve.

smcin 4y ago
a) It's easy to suggest gatekeeping mechanisms like degrees, tenture, journals controlling publication "should all be reformed", without proposing any specific alternatives; but they all exist to prevent an obvious set of anti-patterns; if you eliminate them you just get different anti-patterns. Can you make a specific proposal of what's a better system to replace them with? b) In any case, the $$ incentives and root-causes are distorted, no point in scapegoating the gatekeeping mechanisms. The US pharmaceutical industry (for example) is 3.2% of GDP, and is 48% of the global pharmaceutical market. That amount of $$ is obviously going to distort policy at all levels. c) Scientific fraud should be criminalized, there should be stiff penalties and they should actually be enforced (actual prison, fines, losing job and tenure, retracting PhDs). Otherwise you're playing a race-to-the-bottom in a consequence-free environment, against someone else who's going to do unethical things. d) Until you address the root-causes/incentives, people's behavior won't change, why would it. Compare to the recent similar scandal on "self-reported data" for US News college rankings. [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=%22college%20ranking%22&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...]

smegsicle 4y ago

revolutionary ideas will always come from outside, because institutions naturally can only form around what they already assume to be true... but taking that to mean institutions serve no purpose is terribly shortsighted one thing that does have to go though is the implication that the peer-review process is 'science' and anything outside of it is 'not science', which is just embarrassing