[1970-01-01]

Once again, there is merit to cutting funding when more than half of research is irreproducible crap. A decimation can function as the first step toward rebuilding. The problem is that you DO need to have plans to rebuild it. We don't.

[biophysboy]

Why do you think reproducibility will improve if funding is cut significantly? That is less money for labor, instruments, and consumables, which means less money for experiments, particularly for follow up experiments that have no deliverable.

[1970-01-01]

I agree that cutting it won't solve the issue, especially without that long term plan, but at the current sky-high level of fraud, this just isn't science anymore. At what level of fraud do you suggest pulling the plug if not right now? Funding research until 90% is fake? 95%? 99%? Taxpayer money can be spent on many other life-critical areas with tangible results.

[biophysboy]

Irreproducibility is not the same as fraud. In any case, I would support high-risk research - stuff that may not be repeatable - if it has a high direct ROI, economic spillover (USA has a big biotech/pharma ecosystem), and leads to cost savings (e.g. no more dialysis machines).

[1970-01-01]

Yes, exactly. Defund the junk science, the circles that are put around the results and called targets, and all the questionable research activity until merit has returned to scientific research and the vast majority of empirical studies can be replicated without p-hacking it.

[biophysboy]

Ehh.. I think you're overestimating how easy it will be to make science repeatable. Even if we perfectly execute experimental/statistical methods, biological experiments are not always going to be reproducible.

Edit: as a follow up (because I feel like I strawmanned you), I am just trying to say that p-hacking is not always malice or incompetence. Sometimes limited methods/theory miss confounding variables, sometimes labs lack resources, etc.

[const_cast]

I just don't even buy this, medicine is definitely advancing. And, like, very rapidly. We have highly effective and safe drugs available today that were unthinkable 10 years ago.

[walls]

> Taxpayer money can be spent on many other life-critical areas with tangible results.

... but it won't be.

[nothercastle]

Competition is higher people are hungrier, fraud will go up not down

[biophysboy]

Yes, exactly

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Sure. But which half? If half is legitimate, and half is fraudulent, who do you expect to still be in the game after you cut half, the legitimate researchers or the fraudsters?

Talking about rebuilding after just shifts this problem instead of solving it. When you start to spin things back up, who's at the front of the line looking for new grant money?

[dimal]

I’m conflicted about this as well. I’ve had a range of chronic illnesses my whole life. I’d love it if there was useful research into them. But after seeing decades with no progress, I have to conclude that most medical research into chronic illnesses is going in the wrong direction.

Most research is still following a medical model that worked for infectious diseases in the 1950s but does not yield any meaningful information or treatments for chronic, complex disorders that have multiple interrelated factors.

And since doctors are trained primarily in the treatment of acute diseases, even the useful information that’s found by research is largely ignored in practice. The ignorance of the average MD about chronic illnesses is astounding.

I’ve been sick for the last two years and I’ve given up going to doctors. They are a waste of my time. I’ve done much better by doing my own research and treating myself. Much of what’s helped has been stuff that I’ve seen described as pseudoscience, even though it’s empirically based, because there aren’t enough RCTs for it to qualify as “evidence”. This makes me incredibly angry.

The system is utterly broken. I’d like to scrap the whole thing and start over. Hopefully, we’ll find a way to start over when the smoke clears.