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The fact that most research, dare I say by definition, has little value is true. The fact that most published papers have no value is also true. It is also tru

The fact that most research, dare I say by definition, has little value is true. The fact that most published papers have no value is also true. It is also true that some (published) research may go unnoticed and be discovered or rediscovered (much of science is the rediscovery of ideas that were once speculative and then became valuable because of a change in methods, technology, paradigm) later on. It is a rare occurrence, though, which does not justify the hours, money, energy spent on endeavors that everyone knows are, to the greater community of scientists, researchers, and citizens, meaningless and worthless. But part of the currency used in science is the number of papers, place of publication, citations received and overall impact on the field of the papers, and the deluge of worthless articles and research is a direct effect of the metrics chosen to evaluate scientists.

dylan604 4y ago
> The fact that most published papers have no value is also true. Is that true though? If I'm about to embark on a bit of extensive research, the first bit of that research would be to see if someone else has already done it. If they have, then there's value to me in not having to spend time/money in repeating what someone else has already done. Or it could show me where other things can be tried instead of just repeating. If we know 999 ways on how not to build a light bulb, we can scratch one more method off by seeing what other people have published. How is that not considered value?
- borroka 4y ago
  You are referring to the publication of "negative results", which are of course informative, although rarely published due to a bias shown by journal editors and scientists themselves towards "positive results", that is results supporting the hypothesis tested. Negative results are published, yes, but in the context of popular or highly contested hypotheses or models. That's valuable research. Some examples of papers that have zero value are papers testing hypotheses nobody is interested about, theoretical work that looks like more abstract art than science, p-hacking, work that starts with corrupted, unreliable, badly collected data, and so on. Work that has no value other than that provided to the authors by the fact that they have produced a piece of "scientific currency". I must say that at least 1/3 of my conspicuous scientific output was of very limited value. Unfortunately, I cannot go back in time and spend my valuable time and energy on more valuable research.
  - sillysaurusx 4y ago
    > Some examples of papers that have zero value are papers testing hypotheses nobody is interested about I broadly agree with you, but this point is probably mistaken in an illuminating way. The path to breakthrough science sometimes passes through uninteresting work. Few scientists were interested in natural selection before Darwin and his contemporary. There are many other examples.
    - borroka 4y ago
      We are talking about different things. We know about speculative research (which I referred to in my first comments), which gets discovered later on because of new methods, technologies, changes of paradigm. It rarely happens, and it makes a "splash" because it is good narrative and it is unlikely. But it happened, no doubt. I am talking about, just to offer an example, the vast majority of research that is published (please take this as a gross simplification) in journals with impact factors that start with a zero, theoretical work that re-invents linear regression, work based on data collected like a stream collects rain during a storm, that is everything gets in unfiltered. The justification for thousands and thousands of worthless articles published worldwide every year cannot be, "maybe among them there is the next natural selection-like theory of evolution that will revolutionize our understanding of the world". But unfortunately, left unchecked, scientific production has increased tremendously in volume, and I am quite confident that increase did not lead to an increase in "good science".
      - sillysaurusx 4y ago
        Ah. That makes sense. Thank you for the thoughtful point.

dylan604 4y ago

> The fact that most published papers have no value is also true. Is that true though? If I'm about to embark on a bit of extensive research, the first bit of that research would be to see if someone else has already done it. If they have, then there's value to me in not having to spend time/money in repeating what someone else has already done. Or it could show me where other things can be tried instead of just repeating. If we know 999 ways on how not to build a light bulb, we can scratch one more method off by seeing what other people have published. How is that not considered value?

borroka 4y ago
You are referring to the publication of "negative results", which are of course informative, although rarely published due to a bias shown by journal editors and scientists themselves towards "positive results", that is results supporting the hypothesis tested. Negative results are published, yes, but in the context of popular or highly contested hypotheses or models. That's valuable research. Some examples of papers that have zero value are papers testing hypotheses nobody is interested about, theoretical work that looks like more abstract art than science, p-hacking, work that starts with corrupted, unreliable, badly collected data, and so on. Work that has no value other than that provided to the authors by the fact that they have produced a piece of "scientific currency". I must say that at least 1/3 of my conspicuous scientific output was of very limited value. Unfortunately, I cannot go back in time and spend my valuable time and energy on more valuable research.
- sillysaurusx 4y ago
  > Some examples of papers that have zero value are papers testing hypotheses nobody is interested about I broadly agree with you, but this point is probably mistaken in an illuminating way. The path to breakthrough science sometimes passes through uninteresting work. Few scientists were interested in natural selection before Darwin and his contemporary. There are many other examples.
  - borroka 4y ago
    We are talking about different things. We know about speculative research (which I referred to in my first comments), which gets discovered later on because of new methods, technologies, changes of paradigm. It rarely happens, and it makes a "splash" because it is good narrative and it is unlikely. But it happened, no doubt. I am talking about, just to offer an example, the vast majority of research that is published (please take this as a gross simplification) in journals with impact factors that start with a zero, theoretical work that re-invents linear regression, work based on data collected like a stream collects rain during a storm, that is everything gets in unfiltered. The justification for thousands and thousands of worthless articles published worldwide every year cannot be, "maybe among them there is the next natural selection-like theory of evolution that will revolutionize our understanding of the world". But unfortunately, left unchecked, scientific production has increased tremendously in volume, and I am quite confident that increase did not lead to an increase in "good science".
    - sillysaurusx 4y ago
      Ah. That makes sense. Thank you for the thoughtful point.