5 ms·
The solution is unfortunately for everyone, more transparency in research. When you conduct an experiment, why on earth is the report composed months, sometimes
by gmd63 3y ago
The solution is unfortunately for everyone, more transparency in research. When you conduct an experiment, why on earth is the report composed months, sometimes years later, instead of being streamed live and recorded?
Just the same as in business. We need a new more prestigious stock exchange for companies that are willing to open their books up to continual audit.
The government can step in to aid businesses and researchers that act openly, in the form of grants to researchers or tax breaks for members of the more restrictive stock exchange, and shift the cost of policing destructive fraud to rewards for constructive conduct.
- analog31 3y agoWe're not all that different than tech workers. Who wants to be on stage 100% of the time?
- gmd63 3y agoThat's why the incentives exist. Folks who can stomach it get tax breaks or bigger grants. Evidently, we're not able to stop fraud, so it makes sense to analyze how much we're spending fighting fraud, and spend that paying people to be honest.
- jltsiren 3y agoToday I "conducted an experiment". Which means that I went to a grocery store, did laundry, and took a walk in a park. Between all that, I checked once in a while that things were proceeding as expected. The outcome of that experiment is probably never going to be reported, except maybe if something unexpected happens. Real science is full of messy exploratory work. It's sometimes done remotely, and often in short stretches regardless of what time and day it is. And you usually don't know in advance if it's going to be relevant. At some point, you may start believing that you have discovered something other people may care about. Then you start thinking about the normative experiments that are supposed to demonstrate the result and perhaps even validate it. But at that point, most of the work is often already done. The discovery has already been made (or at least you believe so) and you are just trying to replicate it. Maybe you could record those experiments if you are really into it. But the recordings would likely be meaningless without the actual written report.
- gmd63 3y ago"Checked that things were proceeding as expected" meaning that there is some process going on that you could be recording? I don't think it's fair to paint recordings of exploratory work as meaningless. You obviously have some interest in it or else you wouldn't be doing it. If you don't share that experience, wouldn't someone else spend time trying the same thing?
- jltsiren 3y agoIn my case, it was just code running on a single cloud instance. For someone a bit upstream from me, it could have been a commercially made device doing its stuff, with the details being trade secrets of its manufacturer. Computers have made science boring to watch. Many things are now automated and run 24/7. Even if you happen to be on site, there may not be much to see. In many situations, automation also makes doing things on your own easier than trying to determine if someone has already done similar experiments. If you are doing exploratory work, there is often no established terminology for the topic. Even if a report of prior experiments exists, it can be difficult to determine if it's discussing the same thing. (AI could plausibly help here.)
- melagonster 3y agoIt is, in biochemistry region, it is typical to write protocol step by step during experiments. video can not ameliorate it more.
- joe_the_user 3y agoI disagree. Scientists need to care about the truth and most do care. The problem is both that as "publish or perish" becomes more and more literal people feel a strong incentive to cheat and moreover we have increasing cynicism as the system treats a given scientist as disposable. Constant surveillance wouldn't address that, if anything it would increase the cynicism. Just much, no brilliant scientist is going to work under constant surveillance so you'd drive the most serious thinkers out of any given field.
- gmd63 3y agoWorking with a labmate is also constant surveillance. I think you're dressing it up to be something far more negative than it actually is. I think streaming or recording would decrease cynicism. The openness would allow scientists to avoid false idolatry of people who juiced their citations with fraudulent research. And the cost of dealing with the fallout from fraud would be eliminated. I suspect that the fraud itself is a big accelerant of the hypercompetitive publish or perish phenomenon. Maybe some funding of a transparent program could be allocated toward severance for scientists who honorably choose to "perish". Of course, perishing in this case means still being able to live as a civilian outside of academia. And that person can still speak to those in charge of research projects and benevolently influence the arc of human understanding, which for most good people is enough of an incentive to continue living and contributing. Folks who wouldn't want to be transparent in their methodology could still do science the old way, they just wouldn't have access to the extra funding.
- dartos 3y agoA labmate and a permanent recording are not comparable levels of surveillance. Especially if that recording is publicly accessible.
- gmd63 3y agoI just find it odd that people think folks who allegedly value observation enough to make it their full time job would be against observing themselves.
- mnky9800n 3y agoNo the problem is that there's no incentive to do your job between the PhD and permanent position phase. There's no reward for doing anything except publishing an amazing, mind shattering paper that will get a billion citations yesterday. Because unless you do that, everything else seems to be distributed randomly. So people cheat because the system is inherently unfair.