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Yes we do. Stop the “publish or be damned” daftness and hire people who are actually trained in the disciplines.

That will cost more but that’s a solution.




Q: Science is 'broken' (faked / rosy bias in data and publication, less useful results, lack of public trust, etc). // "How do we ''fix'' Science?"

Hypothesis: TL;DR Goodhart's law: 'the measure became the target and thus is no longer a good measure' -- Publish or die / secure funding or die has lead to risk averse research, a lack of research into new fields, and a lack of reproduction / verification of existing research (checking the known is not 'sexy' / profitable).

Experiment: Proposal: Create a 200 year funding guaranteed tenure tracking inflation funded public domain / commons expansion researcher reward that ensures a life long appointment (and retirement) based on some other excellence requirement. Maybe revisit former initiatives like 'project paperclip' (WWII) for criteria suggestions.

Data Collection / Reports: Conduct the real experiment, for the first of at least 200 years OR until all enrolled applicants retire / expire. Issue interim reports every couple years (4, 10, something) to see if clear results contrary to the typical environment persist.


Read the first paragraph. We don't know if those strategies will work; there are no data.


Sounds like a great moment to try an experiment.


Which is the point of the piece.




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