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No offense, but astronomy is ripe for being rife with this sort of thing because the validity of astronomical research doesn't matter for the "real world" and c
by noobermin 3y ago
No offense, but astronomy is ripe for being rife with this sort of thing because the validity of astronomical research doesn't matter for the "real world" and can't really easily be tested. I feel like it could be better, but since you guys do not have any external pressures beyond yourselves (as academics), you can still publish however you feel like.
A lot of the more applied fields cannot survive scrutiny. Either you have to produce something that leads to a product or something a PM will scrutinize (especially if you work for a national lab or the like, or for pharma, and so on). There, a lot of published research might be bogus, but it is nowhere near the majority.
- gtop3 3y agoAstronomy is fantastic for preventing this type of fraud. The data is incredibly open. Anyone can download datasets from telescopes, or build their own. Papers built on invalid data can be refuted by simply pointing telescopes at the location the paper is lying about. There are very few possible discoveries or theories in an astronomy journal that would immediately impact the wider culture. Compare astronomy to sociology, in which questionnaire results can be fabricated and are essentially unconformable without using other unconformable questionnaires. Compare astronomy to economics, which the articles can be used bolster political positions.