Thursday, July 16, 2020
Nice but useless
From PLOS:
Amid growing criticism of the traditional "publish or perish" system for rewarding academic research, an international team has developed five principles that institutions can follow to measure and reward research integrity. Principle 1: Assess researchers on responsible practices from study conception to delivery, including the development of the research idea, research design, methodology, execution and effective dissemination Principle 2: Value the accurate and transparent reporting of all research, regardless of the results Principle 3: Value the practices of open science (open research), such as open methods, materials and data Principle 4: Value a broad range of research and scholarship, such as replication, innovation, translation, synthesis, and meta-research Principle 5: Value a range of other contributions to responsible research and scholarly activity, such as peer review for grants and publications, mentoring, outreach, and knowledge exchangeCan't argue with any of them. All are in the right direction. All are abstractly good. But the effort is a day late and a dollar short. Or more precisely 60 years late and trillions of dollars short. 60 years late: Tenure and P-or-P have been problems since the 1950s. My father wrote an article criticizing the system in 1959, his first year as professor. He practiced what he preached. He never wrote another article. His career didn't advance, but he later found a college that allowed him to TEACH. Trillions of dollars short: These proposals ignore the real problem. Grants are given for results. Grantors always have an agenda. Paying for value makes perfect sense in research that really solves problems. When Ford pays an engineering college for research in adaptive suspensions, the desired result is clear. There's no pretense of openness or random discovery, thus no conflict. Paying for value is destructive in open-ended research. If the goal is to observe an unfamiliar part of Nature and see what it's doing, a grant that seeks specific results will put blinders on the researchers. Most government or foundation grants serve the murderous ends of globalist tyranny, defined by "climate emergency" and now by "virus emergency". When the grantor wants to see that corals are being destroyed by "climate emergency", the researchers aren't going to observe that corals are actually being destroyed by overfishing. Traditionally the best open-ended observation has been supported by independent wealth. In modern times, with all wealth rigidly tied to Share Value and thus to NYC globalists, independent wealth is no better than government grants. But crowdfunding CAN be better. These proposals don't even mention money, so they're basically pointless.
Labels: Blinded by Stats, Carbon Cult
¶ 11:08 PM
