Related papers: The Natural Selection of Bad Science
The ability to make decisions based on data, with its inherent uncertainties and variability, is a complex and vital skill in the modern world. The need for such quantitative critical thinking occurs in many different contexts, and while it…
In the era of big science, many national governments are helping to build well-funded teams of scientists to serve nationalistic ambitions, providing financial incentives for certain outcomes for purposes other than advancing science. That…
It appears paradoxical that science is producing outstanding new results and theories at a rapid rate at the same time that researchers are identifying serious problems in the practice of science that cause many reports to be irreproducible…
Systematic differences in experimental materials, methods, measurements, and data handling between labs, over time, and among personnel can sabotage experimental reproducibility. Uncovering such differences can be difficult and time…
The rapid evolution of artificial intelligence has led to expectations of transformative impact on science, yet current systems remain fundamentally limited in enabling genuine scientific discovery. This perspective contends that progress…
The Bayesian method is noted to produce spuriously high posterior probabilities for phylogenetic trees in analysis of large datasets, but the precise reasons for this over-confidence are unknown. In general, the performance of Bayesian…
We study the societal impact of pseudo-scientific assumptions for predicting the behavior of people in a straightforward application of machine learning to risk prediction in financial lending. This use case also exemplifies the impact of…
Behavioral research can provide important insights for SE practices. But in performing it, many studies of SE are committing a normative fallacy - they misappropriate normative and prescriptive theories for descriptive purposes. The…
Scientists pursue collective knowledge, but they also seek personal recognition from their peers. When scientists decide whether or not to work on a big new problem, they weigh the potential rewards of a major discovery against the costs of…
Science is a fundamental human activity and we trust its results because it has several error-correcting mechanisms. Its is subject to experimental tests that are replicated by independent parts. Given the huge amount of information…
Statistical hypothesis testing serves as statistical evidence for scientific innovation. However, if the reported results are intentionally biased, hypothesis testing no longer controls the rate of false discovery. In particular, we study…
The constant development of new data analysis methods in many fields of research is accompanied by an increasing awareness that these new methods often perform better in their introductory paper than in subsequent comparison studies…
Structural inequalities persist in society, conferring systematic advantages to some people at the expense of others, for example, by giving them substantially more influence and opportunities. Using bibliometric data about authors of…
Background: Many published machine learning studies are irreproducible. Issues with methodology and not properly accounting for variation introduced by the algorithm themselves or their implementations are attributed as the main…
One of the fundamental principles driving diversity or homogeneity in domains such as cultural differentiation, political affiliation, and product adoption is the tension between two forces: influence (the tendency of people to become…
Meta-analysis is routinely performed in many scientific disciplines. This analysis is attractive since discoveries are possible even when all the individual studies are underpowered. However, the meta-analytic discoveries may be entirely…
Scientific investigation procedures have been evolving to follow an ever-changing cultural landscape, the sophistication of the technology available and an ever-growing knowledge base. This continuous evolution brought investigation…
One of the most interesting scientific challenges nowadays deals with the analysis and the understanding of complex networks' dynamics. A major issue is the definition of new frameworks for the exploration of the dynamics at play in real…
Prior work finds a diversity paradox: diversity breeds innovation, and yet, underrepresented groups that diversify organizations have less successful careers within them. Does the diversity paradox hold for scientists as well? We study this…
Many see modern science as having serious defects, intellectual, social, moral. Few see this as having anything to do with the philosophy of science. I argue that many diverse ills of modern science are a consequence of the fact that the…