Related papers: Rationalizing risk aversion in science
Participation incentives is a well-known issue inhibiting randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in medicine, as well as a potential cause of user dissatisfaction for RCTs in online platforms. We frame this issue as a non-standard…
Scientific discovery is shaped by scientists' choices and thus by their career patterns. The increasing knowledge required to work at the frontier of science makes it harder for an individual to embark on unexplored paths. Yet…
Communicating new scientific discoveries is key to human progress. Yet, this endeavor is hindered by monetary restrictions for publishing one's findings and accessing other scientists' reports. This process is further exacerbated by a large…
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…
Pursuing a scientific idea is often justified by the promise associated with it. Philosophers of science have proposed a variety of approaches to such promise, including more specific indicators. Economic models in particular emphasise the…
It is not easy to rationalize how peer review, as the current grassroots of science, can work based on voluntary contributions of reviewers. There is no rationale to write impartial and thorough evaluations. Consequently, there is no risk…
How should we invest our available resources to best sustain astronomy's track record of discovery, established over the past few decades? Two strong hints come from (1) our history of astronomical discoveries and (2) literature citation…
How can one efficiently share payoffs with collaborators when participating in risky research? First, I show that efficiency can be achieved by allocating payoffs asymmetrically between the researcher who makes a breakthrough ("winner") and…
Interdisciplinary collaborations now sweep most fields of the natural and life sciences, necessary to tackle the world's most challenging problems. Yet, the scientific enterprise continues to be dominated by old stereotypes:…
A suite of impressive scientific discoveries have been driven by recent advances in artificial intelligence. These almost all result from training flexible algorithms to solve difficult optimization problems specified in advance by teams of…
Typical arguments against scientific misconduct generally fail to support current policies on research fraud: they may not prove wrong what is usually considered research misconduct and they tend to make wrong things that are not normally…
The publication process both determines which research receives the most attention, and influences the supply of research through its impact on researchers' private incentives. We introduce a framework to study optimal publication decisions…
Reproducibility, the ability to recompute results, and replicability, the chances other experimenters will achieve a consistent result, are two foundational characteristics of successful scientific research. Consistent findings from…
Trust is one of the cornerstones of human society. One of the evolutionary pressure mechanisms that may have led to its emergence is the presence of incentives for trustworthy behavior. However, this type of reward has received relatively…
This article shows how the Universities and higher education and research institutions obey more and more to criteria of profitability and effectiveness, following the example of the industry. The Universities and the academic communities…
A major gap exists between the conceptual suggestion of how much a nation should invest in science, innovation, and technology, and the practical implementation of what is done. We identify 4 critical challenges that must be address in…
We study the design of contracts that incentivize a researcher to conduct a costly experiment, extending the work of Yoder (2022) from binary states to a general state space. The cost is private information of the researcher. When the…
Evidence shows that in a significant number of cases the current methods of research do not allow for reproducible and falsifiable procedures of scientific investigation. As a consequence, the majority of critical decisions at all levels,…
At what level should government or companies support research? This complex multi-faceted question encompasses such qualitative bonus as satisfying natural human curiosity, the quest for knowledge and the impact on education and culture,…
Purpose: Science is subject to a normative structure that includes how the contributions and interactions between scientists are rewarded. Authorship and citations have been the key elements within the reward system of science, whereas…