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While I see where you're coming from, I'm very conflicted on your approach to address this. I don't think throwing more money at the problem fixes the underlyin

While I see where you're coming from, I'm very conflicted on your approach to address this. I don't think throwing more money at the problem fixes the underlying issues, if anything, I would expect them to deepen. There was an article making the rounds some time ago on HN how something like three quarters of medical studies had either strong data analysis errors in them or had complete bogus data, to the point where it was impossible to tell whether the results had any grain of truth to them. That's an absurd ratio, and not something I would want to fund.

queuebert 3y ago
If the desire to inflate results comes from the intense competition, not incompetence, then more money would fix it. The fact that the top universities are suffering big fake research scandals would bolster this. Personally I've known many competent scientists who left for greener pastures not because they couldn't cut it but because they wanted higher pay and less stress.
cycomanic 3y ago
I think this attitude is actually a big part of the problem. Because research is largely government funded there is big political pressure to show that the research leads to measurable outcomes and that there is zero misuse or waste of funding. This is what has lead to the current system of big administrative bodies just focused on tracking how funding is used (and we can't really blame universities for the situation, reporting requirements on everything they do have increased dramatically). On the other hand nobody cares about the waste in private industry, we are perfectly fine with paying a certain amount for e.g. a Facebook ad even though they just wasted a huge amount of money on a big VR bet.. Maybe we should just admit that there will be wastage and we can't easily measure scientific outcomes and just say we are happy with the overall benefit we get from science/academia for the price we pay for it (which in the broad picture is quite small).

queuebert 3y ago

If the desire to inflate results comes from the intense competition, not incompetence, then more money would fix it. The fact that the top universities are suffering big fake research scandals would bolster this. Personally I've known many competent scientists who left for greener pastures not because they couldn't cut it but because they wanted higher pay and less stress.

cycomanic 3y ago

I think this attitude is actually a big part of the problem. Because research is largely government funded there is big political pressure to show that the research leads to measurable outcomes and that there is zero misuse or waste of funding. This is what has lead to the current system of big administrative bodies just focused on tracking how funding is used (and we can't really blame universities for the situation, reporting requirements on everything they do have increased dramatically). On the other hand nobody cares about the waste in private industry, we are perfectly fine with paying a certain amount for e.g. a Facebook ad even though they just wasted a huge amount of money on a big VR bet.. Maybe we should just admit that there will be wastage and we can't easily measure scientific outcomes and just say we are happy with the overall benefit we get from science/academia for the price we pay for it (which in the broad picture is quite small).