The incentive structures in science has been relatively stable since I entered the field in 1980 (neuroscience, developmental biology, genetics). Quality and qu

The incentive structures in science has been relatively stable since I entered the field in 1980 (neuroscience, developmental biology, genetics). Quality and quantity of science is extraordinary, but peer review is worse than bad. There are almost no incentives to review the work of your colleagues properly. It does not pay bills and you can make enemies easily. But there was no golden era of science to look back on. It has always been a wonderful productive mess—much like the rest of life. As least it moves forward—and now exceedingly rapidly. Almost unbelievably, there are far worse crimes than fraud that we completely ignore. There are crimes associated with social convention in science of the type discussed by Karl Herrup with respect to 20 years of misguided focus on APP and abeta fragments in Alzheimer’s disease: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262546010/how-not-to-study-a-disease/ https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262546010/how-not-to-study-a-di... This could be called the “misdemeanors of scientific social inertia”. Or the “old boys network”. There is also an invisible but insidious crime of data evaporation. Almost no funders will fund data preservation. Even genomics struggles but is way ahead in biomedical research. Neuroscience is pathetic in this regard (and I chaired the Society for Neuroscience’s Neuroinformatics Committee). I have a talk on this socio-political crime of data evaporation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZhnXU8gV44&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fgenenetwork.org%2F https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZhnXU8gV44&embeds_referring...