Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

There is a real problem with incentives in science strongly encouraging bad science. It is a publish or perish world, so every researcher needs to be finding some (apparantly) statistically significant result on a regular basis. Quantity is rewarded more than quality. Being super careful with the stats makes it much harder to get publishable results but doesn't significantly increase the rewards (i.e. academic credit). So the culture tends to sloppy stats making garbage or weak results look strong. And there is no academic credit for being open with data, and more of a risk that someone will discredit your results if you are open, so that is rare as well.



Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: