Comment by tgv

14 days ago

The root of the problem is referred to implicitly: publish or perish. To get tenure, you need publications, preferably highly cited, and money, which comes from grants that your peers (mostly from other institutions) decide on. So the mutual back scratching begins, and the publication mill keeps churning out papers whose main value is the career of the author and --through citation-- influential peers, truth be damned.

6 comments

tgv

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strangattractor  14 days ago

Citations being the only metric is one problem. Maybe an improved rating/ranking system would be helpful.

Ranking 1 to 3 - 1 being the best - 3 the bare minimum for publication.

3. Citations only

2. Citations + full disclosure of data.

1. Citations + full disclosure of data + replicated

  • nick486  14 days ago

    this will arguably be worse.

    you'll just get replication rings in addition to citation rings.

    People who cheat in their papers will have no issues cheating in their replication studies too. All this does, is give them a new tool to attack papers they don't like by faking a failed replication.

bicepjai  14 days ago

The same dynamics from school carry over into adulthood: early on it’s about grades and whether you get into a “good” school; later it becomes the adult version of that treadmill : publish or perish.