Arguments against efficiency in science

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Abstract

A recent commentary critiqued the embrace of performance metrics at research universities. Drawing on our research studying the metascience movement, we suggest that the drive to maximize efficiency in science is increasingly extending beyond performance metrics, into labs themselves. Because institutional and public audiences are predisposed to viewing science in simple terms, it can be challenging for scientists to articulate counterarguments to policies that increase transparency and accountability in the name of efficiency. This short piece offers a sketch of an argument against treating efficiency as the lodestar for science.

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A manifesto for reproducible science

Marcus R. Munafò, Brian Nosek, Dorothy V. M. Bishop … (2017)

Improving the reliability and efficiency of scientific research will increase the credibility of the published scientific literature and accelerate discovery. Here we argue for the adoption of measures to optimize key elements of the scientific process: methods, reporting and dissemination, reproducibility, evaluation and incentives. There is some evidence from both simulations and empirical studies supporting the likely effectiveness of these measures, but their broad adoption by researchers, institutions, funders and journals will require iterative evaluation and improvement. We discuss the goals of these measures, and how they can be implemented, in the hope that this will facilitate action toward improving the transparency, reproducibility and efficiency of scientific research.

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Institutional Ecology, `Translations' and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39

S. Star, J. Griesemer (1989)

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Scientific Utopia: II. Restructuring Incentives and Practices to Promote Truth Over Publishability.

Brian A. Nosek, Jeffrey R Spies, Matt Motyl (2012)

An academic scientist's professional success depends on publishing. Publishing norms emphasize novel, positive results. As such, disciplinary incentives encourage design, analysis, and reporting decisions that elicit positive results and ignore negative results. Prior reports demonstrate how these incentives inflate the rate of false effects in published science. When incentives favor novelty over replication, false results persist in the literature unchallenged, reducing efficiency in knowledge accumulation. Previous suggestions to address this problem are unlikely to be effective. For example, a journal of negative results publishes otherwise unpublishable reports. This enshrines the low status of the journal and its content. The persistence of false findings can be meliorated with strategies that make the fundamental but abstract accuracy motive-getting it right-competitive with the more tangible and concrete incentive-getting it published. This article develops strategies for improving scientific practices and knowledge accumulation that account for ordinary human motivations and biases.