[HN Gopher] To what extent is science a strong-link problem?
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To what extent is science a strong-link problem?
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 28 points
Date : 2024-10-30 11:37 UTC (5 days ago)
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| pkoird wrote:
| Science is only as good as it's honest. I get a result that's not
| as flashy but did I report everything correctly? Yes? Then it's
| good science. I get a result that's groundbreaking but I left out
| certain (potentially problematic) caveats in the report. Bad
| Science. Maybe a valuable result won't be recognized till much
| later, or maybe a relatively suboptimal result will continue to
| sub-optimally drive some key processes. Imo, it doesn't matter as
| long as we know them to be from good science.
|
| The only problem that I can see from where I stand is that the
| machinary is consistently being disincentivized to produce good
| science. PhDs want to finish their research at any cost possible,
| Professionals are constantly under the publish or perish dilemma,
| and there is an increasing difficulty in getting enough reviewers
| to go through a manuscript with desired rigor. Not sure what'll
| fix it though. Perhaps efforts to promote good science as opposed
| to a great one like accepting publications for failed attempts
| (michaelson morley style), replication results of earlier works,
| or the general acceptance of the fact that research is difficult
| and one can not be expected to pull the figurative rabbit out of
| one's hat every couple of months?
| Icy0 wrote:
| > Not sure what'll fix it though. Perhaps efforts to promote
| good science as opposed to a great one like accepting
| publications for failed attempts (michaelson morley style),
| replication results of earlier works
|
| Too often we try to solve social problems by "adding"
| something, whether it be adding an incentive or adding a
| program. I think to really solve the problem of publish or
| perish mentality, we first need to understand the root cause or
| causes of this mentality, then work to remove them. What I'm
| seeing here is humans being shepherded by enormous economic and
| social pressure to engage in selfish behavior for survival
| and/or social acceptance. Adding an incentive or a program
| therefore ultimately does not work because it does nothing
| about the fact that the humans are still largely enslaved by
| the aforementioned pressure. So, we must remove the pressure.
| Remove the pressure, remove the selfish behavior. But how to
| remove the pressure?
| pbmonster wrote:
| > But how to remove the pressure?
|
| Since this is simple to answer (remove all requirements to
| publish frequently, and hope that a lot of journals die
| naturally after that), the real question is: how do we
| distribute funding to scientists without forcing them to
| frequently show their work?
|
| I could imagine a world where every scientist (starting from
| Ph.D student onwards) is evaluated only e.g. on the basis of
| a biyearly dissertation-style report, which includes all
| (positive and negative) results, all
| data/metadata/code/analysis. Rapid communication of
| interesting results can still happen at conferences and the
| remaining journals.
|
| But then who reads, reviews and ranks all this work? Who gets
| positions and funding?
| badgley wrote:
| The Carnegie Institution of Washington used to use this
| model -- each year publishing a 'year book.' From 1902
| through the 1980s, Institution funded scientists
| contributed detail reports -- including figures and even
| new results -- to the organizations Year Book. Year Books
| often exceeded 700+ pages.
|
| Today, the Year Book is little more than a glossy
| fundraising document.
|
| You can view the reports over the years: https://carnegiesc
| ience.edu/about/history/publications/carne...
| kjhughes wrote:
| Science as a _strong-link problem_ references this piece,
|
| https://www.experimental-history.com/p/science-is-a-strong-l...
|
| discussed here last year:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35712694
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I like to think of _Science_ and _Nature_ as good molecular
| biology journals that, for some reason, run papers in other
| fields (physics, social sciences) that come to outrageous
| conclusions. In those fields it's like they run the papers that
| fail peer review for _The National Enquirer_.
| kadoban wrote:
| Do you happen to have any fun examples? More for chuckles than
| anything, I do enjoy reading bogus papers and seeing if I could
| figure it out.
| idkwhatiamdoing wrote:
| Not the person you ask, but I have to think about this one
| (PNAS is pretty much a Science/Nature level journal impact
| wise). https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2202224119
| PaulHoule wrote:
| A long time ago I got a paper with my name on it in PNAS
| because a professor I knew had been invited to submit one
| as part of a conference (bypassing the usual peer review)
| so I got together with another prof and a student and we
| smashed together a few student research projects into
|
| https://arxiv.org/pdf/cs/0312018
|
| which I think is a good paper from the viewpoint of
| "correctness" but on another level isn't a normal research
| paper as it isn't about one project. A lot of weird stuff
| goes on like this in academic publishing. When I was
| studying physics I got invited to present at a CS
| conference on Java in academic computing and didn't really
| understand the opportunity I would have had to have gotten
| a paper published pretty easily based on my attendance
| (e.g. really connections, I knew people who knew Geoff Fox
| who was organizing it)
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Here's one https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00976-y
|
| My claim is that Molbio folks see the world like
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_of_the_World_from_9th_Ave.
| ..
|
| where you replace "Manhattan" with "Molecular Biology" so
| something in another field is going to have to really stand
| out (be outrageous) otherwise the reviewer will say "This
| isn't important enough for _Science_ , maybe they should
| consider submitting the paper to _Physical Review Letters_
| instead."
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