[jfz]

There is a massive difference between doing something that will clearly hurt someone and choosing to do only work that benefits you. Researchers are currently under no obligation to write up their null findings, and it would be hard to get null findings in prestigious journals. This should be fixed at an institutional level, like the pre-registration of studies in the article, not as a mandate to each individual researcher to write up and publish every study.

[wallace_f]

>There is a massive difference between doing something that will clearly hurt someone and choosing to do only work that benefits you.

This is the most-downvoted comment I've ever made on HN, and I think your explanation is in summary what people disagree with.

However, the problems of bias and integrity in scientific research can and do have costs in terms of harm to human life. It's just that the connection between just following incentives and bad scientific research is much more abstracted, and therefore is not clearly intentional negligence, as the case with something like food safety.

[btrettel]

There's a great recent blog post on the basic point you're making: http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2018/10/02/no-its-not-the-inc...

[wallace_f]

Yea that looks to be spot on. Thanks, I appreciate the link.