SoylentNews

hubie [soylentnews.org] writes:

Fear of being exploited is stagnating our progress in science [phys.org]:

Science is a collaborative effort. What we know today would have never been, had it not been generations of scientists reusing and building on the work of their predecessors.

However, in modern times, academia has become increasingly competitive and indeed rather hostile to the individual researchers. This is especially true for early-career researchers yet to secure tenure and build a name in their fields. Nowadays, scholars are left to compete with each other for citations of their published work, awards and funding.

So, understandably, many scientists have grown unwilling to cooperate and help their peers by sharing their work. They would "hide" their raw data, despite having taken years-long efforts to collect it. They would also conceal experiments that have failed or proved insignificant. All these practices would then result in different teams wasting precious time in running the same useless studies, rather than making further progress and contributing to the world's knowledge.

[...] According to their findings, a specific personality trait called "victim sensitivity" predicted knowledge hiding in science. Researchers with this personality trait are characterized by a latent fear of being exploited by others, and thus, are more suspicious about their colleagues.

[...] The good news, point out the authors of the study, is that—among the participants—the intention to hide knowledge was rather low.

However, the authors warn about a potential bias. It is likely that researchers who volunteered to take part in these studies were more cooperative to begin with. Additionally, it might be that in the context of self-reporting, the participants tried to present themselves as more likable.

"We may need to change the stereotypical way we think about ourselves as researchers, in order to build trust and create a sharing environment among scientists," concludes the research team. "Identifying as a researcher should include being cooperative, other-oriented, and trustworthy: a social identity that stands for knowledge sharing—not knowledge hiding."

Journal Reference:
Marlene Sophie Altenmüller et al, Among us: Fear of exploitation, suspiciousness, and social identity predict knowledge hiding among researchers, Social Psychological Bulletin (2023). DOI: 10.32872/spb.10011 [doi.org]

Original Submission