[huijzer]

> I've become so skeptic over the years that I assume almost all papers to be lies until proven otherwise.

I couldn't agree more. I have read a lot of psychology papers during my PhD and I think there is very little signal in the papers. Many empirical papers for example use basically the same "gold standard" analysis, which is fundamentally flawed in many ways. One problem for example is that if you would use another statistical model, then the conclusions would often be wildly different. Another being that the signal is often so weak that you can't use it to predict much (to be useful). If you try to select individuals for example, the only thing you can tell is that the group on average is less neurotic. But for individuals there is no better chance of picking the right one than average. The point of a good paper is to take these sketchy analyses and write a beautiful story around it with convincing speculation. It sounds absurd but take a random quantitative psychology paper and check which percentage of the claims made in the discussion are actually based on the actual data from the paper.

But the worst part about this is that these problems exist for literally decades. Nobody cares. The funding agencies grade people not on correctness but on the number of citations. As a result, you see that many subcultures exist who's sole existence is about promoting the importance of their subculture. It is quite common in academia to cite someone in the introduction just to "prove" that some idea is worth pursuing. But does it work? Doesn't matter. Just keep writing papers.

So I'm not saying that all research is bad. I'm saying that indeed most papers are not very useful or correct. Many researchers try, but the incentives are extremely crooked.

[pbronez]

How could this be corrected? The scientific community has lost a lot of credibility with the public, and the backlash is obvious in recent policy changes. Fast forward four years. Assume Trump and RFK jr have successfully destroyed the current system. What should replace it?

How could the Federal government ensure that public monies only fund high quality research? Could policy re-shape the incentives and unlock a healthy scientific sector?

[iinnPP]

Consequences with the current system would suffice.

Ignorance as a defense needs to go too. Ignorance as a defense is too powerful and we should balance it more towards hurting the supposedly ignorant rather than everyone else. Basically, a redefining of wilful ignorance so it's balanced as stated.

[huijzer]

I don’t know but these are exactly the right questions to ask!