| I think this paper summarises everything that is wrong with academia and why a lot of people have enough and are looking for ways out. A second concern held by some is that a new class of research person will emerge — people who had nothing to do with the design and execution of the study but use another group’s data for their own ends, possibly stealing from the research productivity planned by the data gatherers, or even use the data to try to disprove what the original investigators had posited. According to the authors, trying to reproduce results or possibly disproving them is worse then theft. That already says it all. Especially in medicine, where reproducibility is severely lacking and research fraud is certainly far from uncommon. There is concern among some front-line researchers that the system will be taken over by what some researchers have characterized as “research parasites". Wow, strong language here. Imagine everyone who used someone else's results to advance science would be called a research parasite. The authors have an extremely cynical view on science and are simply equating it to business and career. To be honest, I am not surprised that this is coming out of NEJM or another medicine/molecular biology journal as this is a fairly common attitude once you rise in the academic ranks in those areas. |
- isn't that the whole point of peer reviewed research?!