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Richard Horton writes that a recent symposium on the reproducibility and reliability of biomedical research discussed one of the most sensitive issues in science today: the idea that something has gone fundamentally wrong with science (PDF), one of our greatest human creations. The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness. According to Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet, a United Kingdom-based medical journal, the apparent endemicity of bad research behaviour is alarming. In their quest for telling a compelling story, scientists too often sculpt data to fit their preferred theory of the world or retrofit hypotheses to fit their data.
Can bad scientific practices be fixed? Part of the problem is that no-one is incentivized to be right. Instead, scientists are incentivized to be productive and innovative. Tony Weidberg says that the particle physics community now invests great effort into intensive checking and rechecking of data prior to publication following several high-profile errors,. By filtering results through independent working groups, physicists are encouraged to criticize. Good criticism is rewarded. The goal is a reliable result, and the incentives for scientists are aligned around this goal. "The good news is that science is beginning to take some of its worst failings very seriously," says Horton. "The bad news is that nobody is ready to take the first step to clean up the system."
[Editor's Comment: Original Submission]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by dcollins on Tuesday May 26 2015, @08:27PM
It's not just the department heads. As non-academic business people have taken over universities in the last few decades, they're the ones that keep arbitrarily tightening the screws in terms of increased number of publications in a shortened time frame for permanent employment. That stuff has basically been taken out of the hands of the academics at this point.
Immediate Example 1: This morning I received this month's "AFT On Campus" magazine with a cover story on "The pernicious effects of corporate influence" which is basically the same issue.
Immediate Example 2: Five minutes ago I got an email from faculty setting up a "workload concerns" committee to pushback on administration where I teach on the issue (for which I would not have high hopes).
http://www.aft.org/periodical/aft-campus [aft.org]
(Score: 1) by Placenta on Tuesday May 26 2015, @10:19PM
How have "non-academic business people" taken over colleges when college administration tends to be made of people with 30+ years in academia? These are people who entered college at 18, and never left. They have never worked in industry or business. This is even usually the case for those who studied and taught business!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by gamechanger on Tuesday May 26 2015, @11:43PM
The appointment of people out of industry is increasingly happening in senior executive roles in Australian universities though not in large numbers yet.
When academics are appointed to these roles, they tend to be people who have shifted to the "administrator" track from the researcher track much
earlier in their career than they did 30 or more years ago. Vice Chancellors used to be people who had had distinguished research careers and who took on the role
towards the end of their career. Now they are younger ambitious go-getters dazzled by the seven figure salary packages.
The pressure from department heads to publish results from pressure in the entire system to be high (and yet higher) in the university and discipline rankings
from Shanghai Jiao Tong, or Times, or QS or ... These in turn lead to more paying customers - international students. "Branding" is the mot du jour in
universities in Australia. This is what is driving science in Australia and I suspect elsewhere, but because of the enormous pressure for international students (and income),
I suspect the effect here is greater! And then you wonder why we are seeing bad science published?
(Score: 2) by Kell on Wednesday May 27 2015, @01:53AM
Hello fellow Aussie academic! I agree with all the points you've made - I've seen it too, myself. I seriously think about leaving academia every 6 months or so. If my field wasn't so small domestically in Australia, I'd probably have left long ago... As it is, I'm 9 months away from submitting for continuing. I can't even think of any other jobs that have a 5 year probationary period.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 2) by dcollins on Wednesday May 27 2015, @02:42AM
Example: CUNY Board of Trustees -- 15 people who actually wield power over ~20 colleges in CUNY, the largest urban university in the nation. The first guy, Chairman Schmidt, you could call a lifelong academic -- albeit chairman of a global private school network (formerly Yale). From what I can see the rest are all non-academic industry people.
http://www.cuny.edu/about/trustees/board.html [cuny.edu]
Case 1: In the last few years the trustees took control of the CUNY curriculum and demanded a reduction in credit-hours for all degrees (so as to show increased graduation rates). After much shenanigans, a no-confidence vote was taken by faculty, which came in 92% "no confidence". The Board of Trustees basically said "we don't care" and forced its implementation anyway.
Case 2: Last year Chairman Schmidt, who is on Lynn Cheney's American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), headed a report recommending that even more functions be taken away from faculty and given to trustees selected from the business community. From the report: "faculty cannot be the last and determining voice regarding academic value, academic quality, and academic strategy... it is lay trustees – with considerable life and community experience – who can bring the big picture to bear in determining what graduates will need...".
http://www.psc-cuny.org/clarion/december-2014/benno-schmidt-backs-report-calling-trustees-reduce-faculty-authority [psc-cuny.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2015, @04:15AM
It's not just that, but the people who attend college and university are increasingly doing so to get goods jobs or make money. They don't care much about actual education or having an academic understanding of the universe. So, the business people start trying to get more people into colleges who have these motivations so they can take their money, and universities end up becoming half-assed trade schools to suit these fools.