Bad science persists because poor methods are rewarded

Re:Bad science persists because poor methods are rewarded by YeGoblynQueenne on Thursday September 22, 2016 @05:27AM (#12555603)

>> Ultimately, therefore, the way to end the proliferation of bad science is not to nag people to behave better, or even to encourage replication, but for universities and funding agencies to stop rewarding researchers who publish copiously over those who publish fewer, but perhaps higher-quality papers.

I don't see why being prolific should be punished. No, a better solution is to reward research that is replicated more than research that is not yet so.

This would be much easier to do than punishing anyone. It's hard to find a good reason to punish someone because they published something; after all, even very thorough research has a chance to be wrong, and let's not get into what is "correct" anyway. And it's a bad idea to discourage people from going out and tyring things that have a very slim chance of working.

Rewarding replication might even result in some labs specialising in replication studies and that would be a net benefit for everyone, especially the researchers who would love to do replication but really don't have the resources to do it.

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Re:Bad science persists because poor methods are rewarded by mtriano on Thursday September 22, 2016 @07:58AM (#12556183)

Yeah, but it's hard to get funding to do a rigorous replication of something that doesn't have an immediate commercial justification (for example legal liability or FDA requirements in drug trials). It's a big investment where the best case scenario is that you can be a little more confident in prior results. And if you can't replicate the results, it doesn't necessarily mean the original finding was wrong, it could just mean the original scientists were better than the replication scientists.

Also, among scientists who have invested the time to earn a Ph.D., there is a culture of wanting to break new ground and push humanity forward. There would have to be a strong incentive to motivate them to invest the time in replicating research for which they won't get the glory.

You would have to change the way science is funded to make research replication a required step in the modern scientific method.

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Re:Bad science persists because poor methods are rewarded by _0ffh on Thursday September 22, 2016 @06:53AM (#12555909)

He's not saying anything about punishing anyone, just about stopping to reward quantity over quality. That's nicely compatible with rewarding replicable research, as replicability is a sign of quality.

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