4 ms·

I think the increase in fraudulent papers getting published is a symptom, not the disease. The disease is that there are too many scientists doing research for

by Fede_V 12y ago

I think the increase in fraudulent papers getting published is a symptom, not the disease. The disease is that there are too many scientists doing research for a given research budget. Due to the ferocious competition for grant money, people are either sloppy and cut corners, or do whatever they need to do and outright cheat to publish in top tier journals. As a society, we need to make a decision about how much we want to fund scientific research - then, once we've made that decision, insure that we put in place a sustainable system in place - we cannot put in a put of money to finance 100 grants, but then build a pipeline that funnels an ever increasing amount of people into a pool that remains constant.

dluan 12y ago
Funding review is different than pre-publication or even post-publication review of results. One argument is that review of results is easier for a reviewee to defend in public, since the data and results are stated and there's nothing to hide. Reviewing funding proposals is more speculative once you get past basic methods or ethics review (e.g. depends on the risk appetite of the funders) and therefore might require anonymity. This is something we've been grappling at Experiment. It's possible a better design of the system is a double blind review for proposals but a public post-pub review for results.
snowballsteve 12y ago
One could argue that papers are the disease. It was a good medium, but with today's communication technology, something better needs to arise. The need to "publish to exist" in academia has gotten to the point that it promotes sub-standard work and hinders advancement of knowledge.
jessriedel 12y ago
Do you agree that that's a "command and control" approach to the market for research labor? In other words, it sounds like you want to have the government set the number of researchers in the field rather than simply pay for the amount of research it wants, in the same way some governments (the USSR is the classical example) in the past have decided on the number of manufacturers in a certain industry, not just how much they want to pay for a certain widget. All things being equal, such approaches are generally discouraged by economists. So presumably you think that the market for research labor is unusual, e.g. has some market failure. Could you describe what you think that is? Basically, my angle is that, once you've answered this question, it's almost always better to try to fix the market failure directly rather than go full command and control. For instance, if you think that prospective PhD students aren't well informed about the long odds against getting a tenured position, then it would be better to educate those students rather than instituting a cap on the number of PhDs that are funded.

by Fede_V 12y ago

dluan 12y ago

Funding review is different than pre-publication or even post-publication review of results. One argument is that review of results is easier for a reviewee to defend in public, since the data and results are stated and there's nothing to hide. Reviewing funding proposals is more speculative once you get past basic methods or ethics review (e.g. depends on the risk appetite of the funders) and therefore might require anonymity. This is something we've been grappling at Experiment. It's possible a better design of the system is a double blind review for proposals but a public post-pub review for results.

snowballsteve 12y ago

One could argue that papers are the disease. It was a good medium, but with today's communication technology, something better needs to arise. The need to "publish to exist" in academia has gotten to the point that it promotes sub-standard work and hinders advancement of knowledge.

jessriedel 12y ago

Do you agree that that's a "command and control" approach to the market for research labor? In other words, it sounds like you want to have the government set the number of researchers in the field rather than simply pay for the amount of research it wants, in the same way some governments (the USSR is the classical example) in the past have decided on the number of manufacturers in a certain industry, not just how much they want to pay for a certain widget. All things being equal, such approaches are generally discouraged by economists. So presumably you think that the market for research labor is unusual, e.g. has some market failure. Could you describe what you think that is? Basically, my angle is that, once you've answered this question, it's almost always better to try to fix the market failure directly rather than go full command and control. For instance, if you think that prospective PhD students aren't well informed about the long odds against getting a tenured position, then it would be better to educate those students rather than instituting a cap on the number of PhDs that are funded.