Comment by btilly

I only half-way agree.

Science has a self-correcting mechanism which, when it works correctly, makes it a strong-link problem. The problem is that the self-correcting mechanism is fragile. Because it is fragile, keeping the self-correcting mechanism going is a weak-link problem.

Thus, for example, the fact that psychology never tried to replicate studies and trusted other studies meant that the self-correcting mechanism was broken. Making a bunch of psychologists try to replicate and then discover that a bunch of what they thought was science really wasn't, REALLY MATTERED.

But peer review to stop bad papers from being published is not part of the self-correcting mechanism. That intervention doesn't matter.

Fraud exists on a boundary. In the real world, fraudulent research helped keep billions flowing to investigating a bad theory about Alzheimer's. And helped the fraudulent researcher get promoted - all the way to President of Stanford University! At Stanford he has accelerated a destruction of both campus culture, and free speech standards, thinks to the same attitudes that set him along the path to being a fraudster in the first place. (Sadly, he's still there. And the cultural changes seem likely to ruin Stanford as key factor strengthening startup culture in Silicon Valley.) That's pretty strong evidence that fraud should be taken seriously, and isn't just an issue around the edges.

But most fraud doesn't come with such consequences. And if the self-correcting mechanisms of science are working well, fraud gets found and corrected without long-term damage.

So it is important to make sure that there are feedback loops to catch and eliminate fraud and fraudsters. We should actively protect the strength and value of those feedback loops. Because when they work, they police science and help make it into a strong-link problem.