Boring sciences are more likely to be accurate

[Cain]

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0005996

It has been suggested that the reliability of findings published in the scientific literature decreases with the popularity of a research field. Here we provide empirical support for this prediction. We evaluate published statements on protein interactions with data from high-throughput experiments. We find evidence for two distinctive effects. First, with increasing popularity of the interaction partners, individual statements in the literature become more erroneous. Second, the overall evidence on an interaction becomes increasingly distorted by multiple independent testing.

[Kai]

Yes. Too many fingers in the pot as it were. Intuitively I know this is true. In taxonomy it causes MAJOR problems in the higher vertebrates, like mammals (birds, canids, ungulates anyone?), whereas people don't pay as much attention to individual species in invertebrates so individual workers tend to take more time and be more conservative about their conclusions. When you're not competing the tendency is towards slow work and self honesty. When you're in a competitive situation the tendency is to publish quickly and as often as possible; with this comes many errors. That, and poor, shoddy done replication experiments.

[Captain Utopia]

How much of this do you think is down to the smallest measurable unit of currency/recognition being the published paper? I mean, say you're in the process of a discovery and you've been taking careful notes of your experiments for the past year, and someone else independently comes along with the idea (does insufficient testing, but publishes first) all in the space of one months work.. even if you publish your rigorous proofs a short time later.. you've now got an uphill battle with regards claiming any credit for it.

Leaving aside the "how" for a moment, I get the feeling that this is the type of problem that we should be solving with technology already.

[Kai]

You can't solve the human tendency for competativeness.

You can try to make people work together though. Good luck on that.

[Thurnez Isa]

How much of this do you think is down to the smallest measurable unit of currency/recognition being the published paper? I mean, say you're in the process of a discovery and you've been taking careful notes of your experiments for the past year, and someone else independently comes along with the idea (does insufficient testing, but publishes first) all in the space of one months work.. even if you publish your rigorous proofs a short time later.. you've now got an uphill battle with regards claiming any credit for it.

Leaving aside the "how" for a moment, I get the feeling that this is the type of problem that we should be solving with technology already.

that's why there is peer review

plus it's not a matter of getting published first as how many references you get in other scientific papers

[MMIX]

Alfred Russel Wallace eat your heart out . . .

[Kai]

Alfred Russel Wallace eat your heart out . . .

Yeah. On the Tendency of Species to Depart Indefinitely from the Type. A largely forgotten document, only about 5 pages long.

On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. 500 pages with experiments, references, metaphor, explanation, observation and piece of evidence after piece of evidence.

Everyone took Darwin seriously because he addressed /everything/, all the problems people would have with his hypotheses, all the possible inconsistancies. FFS, the man spent 10 years studying barnacles, was a world expert on coral reefs, pidgeons, orchids, carnvourous plants, and a highly respected ornithologist, geologist and botanist. He was, by all recolection, the greatest biologist to ever live, excepting maybe Barbara McClintock (who I consider his equal).

Wallace? He writes his little paper on "the struggle for existance", presents no real evidence, addresses no problems, and no one got excited about his work. He remains a footnote to the glory that is Charles Darwin, who, funny enough, was actually a rather humble and shy individual.

[Requia ☣]

Supposedly Wallace publishing is what finally convinced Darwin to publish.  In which case Wallace gets props.

[Kai]

Supposedly Wallace publishing is what finally convinced Darwin to publish.  In which case Wallace gets props.

More specificaly, some of Darwin's friends notified him that Wallace was going to publish, and pushed him into publishing the book he had been holding back on for 20 years. He wasn't sure it was quite ready yet (for one, he still didn't have a mechanism) and he was a shy and quiet person so he really didn't want to make a fuss. So, Lyell and Hooker pushed him into it and he finally published. He must have been a bit more confident after that because he subsequently published On the Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, as well as his Autobiography.

[Cain]

Once you pop, you can't stop.

[MMIX]

. . . this shows up on my front page as

Re: Boring sciences are . . .
can't help filling in that blank . . .