News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The Scientific Paper is Obsolete (2018). Parent comment

Re:The Scientific Paper is Obsolete (2018) by diognesofsinope on Monday December 13, 2021 @08:07PM (#29546906)
> Researchers are incentivized to write papers that seem impressive (and intimidating) rather than clear and intuitive.

Ah, a fellow economist lol. Lack of clarity is a strategic advantage because (1) (as you said) it looks impressive and (2) it's hard to validate that it's correct.

So many papers contain such elementary statistics mistakes such as survivorship bias, e.g. 'returns to education' is almost exclusively measured by asking individuals who graduated (on average 50% of enrolled students don't) and respond back to surveys (good chance of bias).

Pubs are how you get jobs. It's not about science anymore, it's about navigating bureaucracy for an elite job.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Scientific Paper is Obsolete (2018) by civilized on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @08:23AM (#29551198)
> Ah, a fellow economist lol. Lack of clarity is a strategic advantage because (1) (as you said) it looks impressive and (2) it's hard to validate that it's correct.

Reminds me of the old "there are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies."

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Scientific Paper is Obsolete (2018) by fho on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @04:52AM (#29549964)
There is the whole WEIRD participants thing ... of which I am guilty too, only because that's the crowd you can easily recruit for experiments on campus.
[ Parent | on HN ]