5 ms·
The major journals have absolutely no accountability. In any other market, if the product doesn't work or harms someone the company goes out of business or the
by _fol8 4y ago
The major journals have absolutely no accountability. In any other market, if the product doesn't work or harms someone the company goes out of business or the maker is sued. Not so in journals. So, why do we accept it? Because there's no other way for the layman to determine what makes a good professor, because by definition, they are smarter than us (or at least they're supposed to be), and so we (the general public) are not able to tell if they are good at what they do or not.
So - the answer we have is peer review, which is just the foxes guarding the hen house. There's no other solution that's been proposed that makes any sense in a self reinforcing market manner. Having some post-docs suddenly become concerned about this and hire a bunch of undergraduates to start using to comb excel with spreadsheets will be useful until everyone loses interest. The price of a can of Coca-Cola isn't useful until people lose interest - it's market priced by millions of customers at every minute of every day.
Until there's a solution to this problem that makes sense this will keep happening over and over again.
- sjkoelle 4y agocould start by paying journal reviewers
- jrumbut 4y agoThis is an underrated idea. Putting a very smart and motivated person on the other side of the proble is better than any static set of incentives that can be gamed.
- sjkoelle 4y agosome sort of discount consultant rate might be justified... author pays the reviewers rather than the random publishing fees.... want your paper reviewed, pay $2k
- stocknoob 4y agoPrediction markets may be an option: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1516179112 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1516179112 Similar to how charities (ostensibly) can be rated by Charity Navigator, and colleges (ostensibly) can be rated by US News, the credibility of various studies (and the journals that publish them) can be measured.
- patientplatypus 4y ago[dead]
- projektfu 4y agoIt matters to people who are actually doing science because they replicate findings in their own labs before relying on them. Hopefully they will get control of this problem because it's incredibly wasteful to chase red herrings that were never actually true findings in any lab. Labs that try to stand on previous work without verifying it are standing on a house of cards
- moremetadata 4y ago> In any other market, if the product doesn't work or harms someone the company goes out of business or the maker is sued. Not strictly true, here in the UK you wont get refunds for drug treatments that dont work if seeing a private gp (or vet), thats why the NHS exists, its harder to sue the NHS in those conditions. NICE who decide what drugs to use, is veiled in secrecy unless you can attend one of their public meetings, just like its impossible to attend every court case, its a form of resource burning which only the rich entities can afford. IF you do challenge any drugs, you'll get passed from pillar to post until you under up in the govt's lap and they make the rules up as they go along, but its very hard to get any recourse unless you can afford expensive lawyers who know the technicalities to use as an approach vector.
- patientplatypus 4y ago[dead]