Re:20 Years Later
by pdonis on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @10:49AM
(#25582657)
> For this we need some accountability. To see that papers get written and not only that, but they are also having an impact on other research (citations).
But papers and citations are the wrong metric for accountability. What we want from government funded science is models that make good predictions. That's what we need if the knowledge gained from government funded science is going to be useful to the government and the taxpayers. So that's the metric we should use to judge it. Number of papers written and number of citations are, at best, irrelevant to that metric, and at worst, actively opposed to it; it's much easier to generate papers and citations if they don't have to be based on models that actually make good predictions.
But papers and citations are the wrong metric for accountability. What we want from government funded science is models that make good predictions. That's what we need if the knowledge gained from government funded science is going to be useful to the government and the taxpayers. So that's the metric we should use to judge it. Number of papers written and number of citations are, at best, irrelevant to that metric, and at worst, actively opposed to it; it's much easier to generate papers and citations if they don't have to be based on models that actually make good predictions.