4 ms·
We often hear these days from science commentators if Physics should receive or not funding for the next big accelerator, High Energy Particle physics detector
by pa7x1 4y ago
We often hear these days from science commentators if Physics should receive or not funding for the next big accelerator, High Energy Particle physics detector or gravitational wave interferometer. Most frequently brought argument is the lack of interesting findings during the last decades, and if that money would be better spent in other fields that have a higher return on investment given they are more prolific in their discoveries.
Guess what, it's very easy to find things when 1 in 20 of your papers can produce them by random chance (95% CI). When not outright participating in scientific fraud and p-hacking.
Perhaps the real lesson to learn from all of this is that we should defund every field that does not adhere to strict replicability controls. When funding follows findings you have set-up the perverse incentive to find something when there is nothing to get funding.
- nradov 4y agoThat depends on what you mean by replicability. Climatologists can't exactly conduct controlled experiments, but I think it's still worth putting some public funding into that field.
- thelamest 4y agoFinding new particles and studying astronomical events has a larger nugget of similarity with the psychology modus operandi than you may think. They’re studying rare or unique objects with extremely finicky measurement tools; enormous amounts of noise are statistically treated to extract a signal. Victor Ninov claimed to have discovered new elements, causing years of disappointing failures to replicate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Ninov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Ninov). Even if the actual scientists learn their lesson, with some regularity popular science media announce that “the Standard Model just got overturned” or that this or that new quark was discovered.