Jan 13, 2025 11:25 PM
Scientists don’t want to get scooped—and it’s hurting science
https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu...ng-science
EXCERPTS: What motivates a scientist to make discoveries? An intrinsic desire to expand human knowledge, of course. But there’s often another force at work: the desire to be first...
[...] “Academic careers are built on reputation,” says Ryan Hill, a Kellogg assistant professor of strategy who studies the incentives that drive scientific innovation. “If I want credit that I can turn into salary from a university, I need people to recognize that I made novel discoveries.” Being the first to publish a finding is a major way for scientists to establish this recognition.
Still, little is known about the effects that these “priority races” have on scientists’ careers—and on the quality of the science itself. To find out, Hill and Carolyn Stein of the University of California, Berkeley investigated this topic within the field of structural biology... (MORE - details)
90% of scientific research is crap
https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/sturgeon/
INTRO: Reading Adrian Edmondson’s excellent autobiography, he mentioned Sturgeon’s law which is: “Ninety percent of everything is crap”. Adrian is a comedian and was applying the law to his creative work. Sturgeon was using it talk about science fiction, but I think it also applies to scientific research, and Sturgeon’s number is strikingly similar to the estimate from Chalmers and Glasziou that 87.5% of health and medical research is wasted (which they rounded down to 85%).
Labeling 90% of research as “crap” is hyperbolic and unfair as there are layers to the crap. At the pit is the research that is fraudulent. The cream of the crap includes studies that did not go to plan, but where the researchers still learnt something, even if that was only how to do the next study better. This research still has value, even though it failed to answer its target question.
In the middle there’s a lot of stuff where the researchers made an avoidable error, including tackling an already answered question, a simple mistake in their design or analysis, or simply failing to publish their work...(MORE - details)
https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu...ng-science
EXCERPTS: What motivates a scientist to make discoveries? An intrinsic desire to expand human knowledge, of course. But there’s often another force at work: the desire to be first...
[...] “Academic careers are built on reputation,” says Ryan Hill, a Kellogg assistant professor of strategy who studies the incentives that drive scientific innovation. “If I want credit that I can turn into salary from a university, I need people to recognize that I made novel discoveries.” Being the first to publish a finding is a major way for scientists to establish this recognition.
Still, little is known about the effects that these “priority races” have on scientists’ careers—and on the quality of the science itself. To find out, Hill and Carolyn Stein of the University of California, Berkeley investigated this topic within the field of structural biology... (MORE - details)
90% of scientific research is crap
https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/sturgeon/
INTRO: Reading Adrian Edmondson’s excellent autobiography, he mentioned Sturgeon’s law which is: “Ninety percent of everything is crap”. Adrian is a comedian and was applying the law to his creative work. Sturgeon was using it talk about science fiction, but I think it also applies to scientific research, and Sturgeon’s number is strikingly similar to the estimate from Chalmers and Glasziou that 87.5% of health and medical research is wasted (which they rounded down to 85%).
Labeling 90% of research as “crap” is hyperbolic and unfair as there are layers to the crap. At the pit is the research that is fraudulent. The cream of the crap includes studies that did not go to plan, but where the researchers still learnt something, even if that was only how to do the next study better. This research still has value, even though it failed to answer its target question.
In the middle there’s a lot of stuff where the researchers made an avoidable error, including tackling an already answered question, a simple mistake in their design or analysis, or simply failing to publish their work...(MORE - details)