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Prior: most published research is false [0]. If a paper is being forgotten by the internet, that's a weak signal that it was not valued by its field. If you co

Prior: most published research is false [0]. If a paper is being forgotten by the internet, that's a weak signal that it was not valued by its field. If you combine that weak signal with the strong prior, you'd conclude that the paper wasn't a meaningful contribution and can be safely forgotten. I can see why this mass forgetting is a problem for preservationists and historians of science. [0] https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124 https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo... [1] e.g. Gordon Allport's "The Nature of Prejudice" was published 1954, has been cited >50,000 times, and is still in print: https://www.amazon.com/Nature-Prejudice-25th-Anniversary/dp/0201001799 https://www.amazon.com/Nature-Prejudice-25th-Anniversary/dp/...

duckman1 3y ago
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marcosdumay 3y ago
> If a paper is being forgotten by the internet, that's a weak signal that it was not valued by its field. That would be valid if the decision was made by popular vote. It's completely invalid if a single entity is allowed to decide whether it lives or dies.
plumeria 3y ago
Some research is forgotten/dismissed by some generation only to be revived by a later generation (see e.g. Geometric Algebra)
squigz 3y ago
Science doesn't work like that; we can't look at data/research at our current point in time and deduce its value forever. Having this information years down the line can inspire some more research ideas or contribute some groundwork to future research
kragen 3y ago
to tell whether a piece of research is false or not, you need to be able to find out what it was. then you can conclusively prove it false. lost research like tesla's weather control notes, the alchemists' transmutation of lead into gold, or water-powered cars can instead give rise to conspiracy theories about how it was suppressed by the powerful and wasted lifetimes that could have been dedicated to something productive
- InSteady 3y ago
  It also forces the next generation of scientists to repeat the same mistakes instead of learning from the past. Of course it would be easier still to learn from mistakes if academic research allowed for more honesty about negative or undecipherable results, but that's another issue. It's still orders of magnitude easier to do some in-depth analysis on a paper in your chosen field to see if it looks like a load of BS than to get funding and conduct a study yourself to see if a hypothesis pans out with some kind of meaningful result.
  - kragen 3y ago
    i don't think you can reject a hypothesis because someone conducted a shitty study; results from shitty studies are sort of by definition inconclusive. usually there are things you can learn from their shitty study tho
eviks 3y ago
The probability assessment is fine, but meaningless even outside history. Baby and the bathwater

duckman1 3y ago

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marcosdumay 3y ago

> If a paper is being forgotten by the internet, that's a weak signal that it was not valued by its field. That would be valid if the decision was made by popular vote. It's completely invalid if a single entity is allowed to decide whether it lives or dies.

plumeria 3y ago

Some research is forgotten/dismissed by some generation only to be revived by a later generation (see e.g. Geometric Algebra)

squigz 3y ago

Science doesn't work like that; we can't look at data/research at our current point in time and deduce its value forever. Having this information years down the line can inspire some more research ideas or contribute some groundwork to future research

kragen 3y ago

to tell whether a piece of research is false or not, you need to be able to find out what it was. then you can conclusively prove it false. lost research like tesla's weather control notes, the alchemists' transmutation of lead into gold, or water-powered cars can instead give rise to conspiracy theories about how it was suppressed by the powerful and wasted lifetimes that could have been dedicated to something productive

InSteady 3y ago
It also forces the next generation of scientists to repeat the same mistakes instead of learning from the past. Of course it would be easier still to learn from mistakes if academic research allowed for more honesty about negative or undecipherable results, but that's another issue. It's still orders of magnitude easier to do some in-depth analysis on a paper in your chosen field to see if it looks like a load of BS than to get funding and conduct a study yourself to see if a hypothesis pans out with some kind of meaningful result.
- kragen 3y ago
  i don't think you can reject a hypothesis because someone conducted a shitty study; results from shitty studies are sort of by definition inconclusive. usually there are things you can learn from their shitty study tho

eviks 3y ago

The probability assessment is fine, but meaningless even outside history. Baby and the bathwater