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Yup, that is also how it works with scientific research: Once an article is published, anybody is free to read it, criticize it, reproduce it. That's because th

Yup, that is also how it works with scientific research: Once an article is published, anybody is free to read it, criticize it, reproduce it. That's because the government stays out of it: private individuals can use things like Google Scholar and Google Search to find other people's reviews and follow-up studies to better understand the quality and nuances of the original research. Consensus is an important part of science just as it is for reviews on Google Maps. Is consensus sometimes wrong? Yes, no doubt. Is it useless? Nope. > If people can't define it, then that seems to me like a valid criticism of the scientific method. Please read the hamburger example once more.

mike_hearn 1mo ago
Peer reviews don't appear in Google Scholar. The involvement of governments is when they force the public to pay for the studies via tax funded grants, without caring about the quality.
- blackbear_ 1mo ago
  As we all know, oeer review is not a very reliable signal about the veridicity of the claims, it is merely an approximate quality gate indicating that a study was done following appropriate standards. There needs to be more awareness of this. Nonetheless, in some fields peer review have been public for a long time, and more and more journals are making peer reviews publicly visible. This is a good trend that we should all encourage. I also think that it sounds like a good idea to hold scientists accountable for the quality of their research, but moving away from fraud (which should unquestionably be punished) towards merely "low quality" is a very slippery slope. Who determines when the quality is good enough and under which criteria? Citations and follow-up research already are an approximate signal, why is that not enough? Proving a study false does not automatically make it low quality. How much money and resources would these additional measures cost? Would the savings from fewer "bad quality studies" offset these costs? How many fewer "good quality studies" would be prevented by redirecting these resources.

mike_hearn 1mo ago

Peer reviews don't appear in Google Scholar. The involvement of governments is when they force the public to pay for the studies via tax funded grants, without caring about the quality.

blackbear_ 1mo ago
As we all know, oeer review is not a very reliable signal about the veridicity of the claims, it is merely an approximate quality gate indicating that a study was done following appropriate standards. There needs to be more awareness of this. Nonetheless, in some fields peer review have been public for a long time, and more and more journals are making peer reviews publicly visible. This is a good trend that we should all encourage. I also think that it sounds like a good idea to hold scientists accountable for the quality of their research, but moving away from fraud (which should unquestionably be punished) towards merely "low quality" is a very slippery slope. Who determines when the quality is good enough and under which criteria? Citations and follow-up research already are an approximate signal, why is that not enough? Proving a study false does not automatically make it low quality. How much money and resources would these additional measures cost? Would the savings from fewer "bad quality studies" offset these costs? How many fewer "good quality studies" would be prevented by redirecting these resources.