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I worry about publication bias with these studies. If a researcher finds the counter-intuitive results that working less leads to equivalent or better outcomes
by bradreaves2 4y ago
I worry about publication bias with these studies.
If a researcher finds the counter-intuitive results that working less leads to equivalent or better outcomes, it will be a headline.
If a researcher finds that working less leads to getting less work done, who would publish it? It won't get media headlines, but even scientific journals will not accept the results.
- waboremo 4y agoYou would have to quantify why less work being done is an inherently bad thing to humanity.
- snapcaster 4y agoWhat? No you don't. Each individual firm uses their own metrics to decide these things. How would one even measure or quantify a "bad thing to humanity"?
- waboremo 4y agoContext is important. What's being discussed is general work week trials, and the idea that nobody would publish a paper that demonstrates working less = decline in work done. Individual firm metrics are useless to even bring up here.
- HEmanZ 4y ago(Almost) No one would argue that working less for the same exact output is worse than working more. That flies in the face of the most basic ideas in economics. The question is finding the balance, work that produces productive things people value. And it turns out, free market economic systems are pretty good at democratically converging on answer.
- corbulo 4y agoCan you define what that means without using socioeconomic-class terms?
- waboremo 4y agoWhat purpose does that serve when this is a socioeconomic discussion?
- ghaff 4y agoFurthermore, there absolutely are jobs where people will get more work done in five days than in four. Lots of people would prefer to work four days but there is pretty obviously not a universal rule that they'll get as much work done.
- moduspol 4y agoWe're in the same boat now with in-office vs. work-from-home studies. Though I'd argue there's also a bias in that there are likely very few researchers choosing to hypothesize the five day work week is more productive, structuring the study to confirm that, and executing the study. The incentives are all in the other direction.
- danaris 4y ago> but even scientific journals will not accept the results. What? What are you talking about? Why would a scientific journal not accept it, if it's a properly done study that contradicts recent results? Furthermore, there are plenty of "water is wet" studies that get published all the time—some of which are confirming things we "know", but don't have solid scientific data on, others of which are doing replications of existing studies. (I suppose you probably wouldn't get much traction with studies that rehash very old, many-times-replicated results...) I don't think scientific journals work the way you think they do.