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[tsumake]

What's interesting about this is that the political considerations were introduced in part through a demand for a more 'socially conscious' science. Before say the 1980's science was seen mostly as an 'ivory tower', it cost huge amounts of money while what it produced could only be understood by a very few people and the social benefits were sometimes difficult to see. Someone like Carl Sagan was shunned by scientists for public outreach / education back in the 70ies. So when the 90ies rolled round there was a huge demand for science to have some kind of social utility. Which is why academics started writing about social issues...

I agree that scientific research and discovery should be disseminated to the public and made understandable to laymen. But what was previously mentioned is just bad science.

 

[Pol Pot]

Scientists(in caves? Possibly)created the internet. Which is why you're boring everyone with this instead of someone unlucky enough to grab the stool next to you at a bar.

 

[QSD]

I agree that scientific research and discovery should be disseminated to the public and made understandable to laymen. But what was previously mentioned is just bad science.

So I started university in '97 and left academia (social psychology, one of the 'ground zero' areas of the crisis) in 2008, a couple of years before this broke, so I can tell you a bit about what the 'scene' was like before the crisis hit. Like I said, there was a lot of focus on social utility, so much so that 'dissemination' turned into 'justification' which brings with it a value system/political outlook. There was also a growing (hitherto far less important) pressure to publish. Readable, well written studies with 'fun fact' takeaways were somewhat in vogue (as opposed to dull and abstract but scientifically coherent conceptual work). Some of the old hands complained of 'coffee table research'.

I often think back on my time as research intern, there was this one German guy Daniel on the faculty who was constantly going on about the importance of methodology and correct interpretation of statistics and how many of the studies he was reading were not sufficiently rigorous. Generally I felt he was somewhat shunned as a crank. Poor Daniel, I hope he got his big vindication moment and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Anyway, that's your recipe for bad science.

 

[tsumake]

So I started university in '97 and left academia (social psychology, one of the 'ground zero' areas of the crisis) in 2008, a couple of years before this broke, so I can tell you a bit about what the 'scene' was like before the crisis hit. Like I said, there was a lot of focus on social utility, so much so that 'dissemination' turned into 'justification' which brings with it a value system/political outlook. There was also a growing (hitherto far less important) pressure to publish. Readable, well written studies with 'fun fact' takeaways were somewhat in vogue (as opposed to dull and abstract but scientifically coherent conceptual work). Some of the old hands complained of 'coffee table research'.

I often think back on my time as research intern, there was this one German guy Daniel on the faculty who was constantly going on about the importance of methodology and correct interpretation of statistics and how many of the studies he was reading were not sufficiently rigorous. Generally I felt he was somewhat shunned as a crank. Poor Daniel, I hope he got his big vindication moment and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Anyway, that's your recipe for bad science.

Thanks for that insight.

 

[Blade2.0]

10 scientific reasons Coke is good for you.

Spoiler

research funded by the Coca-Cola lobbying group.

 

[KielCasto]

I guess, for one thing, that involving oneself with video games is much easier and more popular than involving in research. In the article:

In the competitive pursuit of speedrunning, gamers vie to complete a given video game as quickly as humanly possible. It’s a sport for the nerdier among us, and it’s amazingly popular: Videos streaming and recording speedruns routinely rack up seven-figure view counts on Twitch and YouTube.

A popular "sport" may have more passionate fans than any kind of science. And if these fans have any complaints, then I'm guessing their numbers alone would put pressure on the committees to validate data.

I'm a researcher, albeit new in this field and focusing on engineering. While I'd love studies to be more transparent, I can imagine NDA and prohibition of recording (in photo/video) methods can hinder transparency. I do agree that identified articles with fraudulent data should be flagged by journals.

 

[cheezcake]

I've read a lot of books. I had a job for a few years where I would read books and write summaries of them for people who are too lazy to read books but want to know what is in them. I've read plenty of books. I'm fairly convinced that a lot of what we believe to be real isn't, and that there is an almost endless series of lies that we all get indoctrinated into for the purpose of making us act a particular way, and to accept things the way they are. All of reality must constantly be bent, tangled, re-arranged, so that millions will continue to go to cubicle farms while their wages stay stagnant.


Alternatively, let's ask a separate question. Is it better to believe there are nukes? Do you trust that no government would ever do anything irresponsible with them? Do you trust that they won't end life on earth either accidentally or because it becomes too easy to make these weapons and the wrong people get ahold of them? A lot of people have a lot of stress when they think about this topic, you could go to that cubicle for 20 years, and then right before you retire boom, nuclear war, your dead, all of your good choices in life are now completely meaningless. It's a disempowering belief that minimizes the importance of your own personal choices.


I don't think it's good to believe in nukes, even if they exist. If they do exist, I'm confused as to why people don't want to put scientists on a short leash, they have been creating dooms day weapons after all. Maybe we should have some nerd control. Like if you get a doctorate in nuclear engineering or physics you should be in a registry, and you should be spied on constantly to make sure you don't end life on this planet.

Do you believe all nuclear power plants are fake too? The science between bombs and power plants is the same.

On topic this article is lazy af. There’s real problems in scientific academia (if more so in the soft sciences) that would be interesting to dig in to. But just taking one event in both circles and then extrapolating that to “why are gamers so much better at catching fraud than scientists” is retarded.

 

[Ballthyrm]

I really liked this Article, thanks OP.

I thinks it all boils down to incentive for scientists. Right now the whole way we do and fund science is broken.
The incentive for gamers are to honor only the people who really achieved something, so they will make sure people aren't cheating as they are competing with one another on the results.

The scientists don't really get anything from proving someone wrong or not being able to replicate someone's result.
They only get funding from their own results, and these results have to be positive results as negative result provide no value to the investors (they provide a lot of value to science but who gives us shit right ?)

So science incentivize a lot to go with the flow, to go where the funding is, and to only publish positive results.
So of course people are going to cheat, either by obfuscation or by P - Hacking, or even worse by making data whole cloth.

That's not the fault of scientist they are just reacting to market forces.
What must change is the way we fund science.

• We must fund replication
• We must fund negative results
• We must fund preregistration of studies
• We must fund Online Open data sharing
• We must fund Triangulation

Until the money become smart, the scientist will continue to be dumb (on purpose)

 

[Kenpachii]

Problem with scientists is there funding. 1000 of them will research how something is bad, because massive funding.
Nobody research it why it could be good, because no funding. U either join the train or u get left in the ditch.

This is what makes science in general more a religion, even while obviously science creates progress.

 

[QSD]

I really liked this Article, thanks OP.

I thinks it all boils down to incentive for scientists. Right now the whole way we do and fund science is broken.
The incentive for gamers are to honor only the people who really achieved something, so they will make sure people aren't cheating as they are competing with one another on the results.

The scientists don't really get anything from proving someone wrong or not being able to replicate someone's result.
They only get funding from their own results, and these results have to be positive results as negative result provide no value to the investors (they provide a lot of value to science but who gives us shit right ?)

So science incentivize a lot to go with the flow, to go where the funding is, and to only publish positive results.
So of course people are going to cheat, either by obfuscation or by P - Hacking, or even worse by making data whole cloth.

That's not the fault of scientist they are just reacting to market forces.
What must change is the way we fund science.

• We must fund replication
• We must fund negative results
• We must fund preregistration of studies
• We must fund Online Open data sharing
• We must fund Triangulation

Until the money become smart, the scientist will continue to be dumb (on purpose)

This is also a good comment. Before the big crisis hit, there was already a growing consciousness among social psychologists that the field had a big problem with not publishing negative results, but what are the individual scientists that are struggling to make a name for themselves going to do about it? The incentives for them are just lined up in a way that is not conducive to scientific rigor.
Science IMHO is better off not being as competitive as was (and still is?) because nobody 'wins' if bad science is elevated to truth. I would like to point to the fact that science used not to be as competitive and researchers could go years working on a theory before publishing anything. Obviously that led to a lot of slacking and wasted resources, but I'm not sure the highly competitive, time-pressured style of science that replaced it is better.

 

[Fuz]

 

[EverydayBeast]

You still have gamers who don’t cheat.

 

[MaestroMike]

Cuz we got the biggest dongs donkey kong big country big