Nobody Wants to Find the Errors
I wanted to share one more thought about the various crises in "studies show" science.
We're finding a lot of errors in a lot of past studies, and--hopefully--we're fixing them. Or at the least we've been given the opportunity to change our beliefs when it turns out they were based on erroneous or unreplicable studies. This is good. And it's a halfway decent attempt at actually using the scientific method.
But think about this: Imagine you're a "studies show" scientist, and consider the various pressures out there arrayed against you if take it upon yourself to uncover these types of errors. It takes precious time away from your own research. You look vaguely like a jerk for criticizing your peers. You get stonewalled when you ask to see peoples' data. And the research world is small: nobody wants to find errors in the work of someone you might work with (or worse, work for) in the future.
Worst of all by far: you don't get paid for it.
There is absolutely no incentive structure out there for finding study errors. In fact there are enormous incentives not to find them.
So it makes you even more cynical about "studies show" science: if they're finding as many errors as they are--despite all the pressures and reasons not to find them--how many more errors must there be?
READ NEXT: Rebellion Practice
We're finding a lot of errors in a lot of past studies, and--hopefully--we're fixing them. Or at the least we've been given the opportunity to change our beliefs when it turns out they were based on erroneous or unreplicable studies. This is good. And it's a halfway decent attempt at actually using the scientific method.
But think about this: Imagine you're a "studies show" scientist, and consider the various pressures out there arrayed against you if take it upon yourself to uncover these types of errors. It takes precious time away from your own research. You look vaguely like a jerk for criticizing your peers. You get stonewalled when you ask to see peoples' data. And the research world is small: nobody wants to find errors in the work of someone you might work with (or worse, work for) in the future.
Worst of all by far: you don't get paid for it.
There is absolutely no incentive structure out there for finding study errors. In fact there are enormous incentives not to find them.
So it makes you even more cynical about "studies show" science: if they're finding as many errors as they are--despite all the pressures and reasons not to find them--how many more errors must there be?
READ NEXT: Rebellion Practice
No comments