>>13364641>Help me learn about the replication crisis and what it implies.Simply put the "publish or perish" principle has made science and academia run off into the weeds. It is publishing at all cost and known frauds are not reined in as stopping fraudsters would damage their home institution. So they recruit and promote people who lie to get in and lie in research and publications.
This has had two immediate results:
- the replication crisis, which means a lot of publications are garbage, and
- the retractions, as documented by Retraction Watch, at a volume that has meant they had to set up a database to keep up with all the retractions.
The rot has gone all the way to the core and all the way to the top. Honest scientists lose out in the rat race. Fraud is not punished but just continues as if nothing happened. It has already spiralled out of control. There is no willingness to do anything about it. Even in epic cases little happens:
- Schoen affair: his co-authors kept their jobs.
- Sudbo affair: he has already returned to academia
Academic inbreeding is also part of this and such networks enables frauds to continue without fear of being thrown out. At the same time fresh blood is kept out. The rot just continues. Academic freedom also means little can be done about this without academia itself becoming willing to do at least something.
Perhaps if the international ranking lists took retractions and inbreeding into account wold things improve. Perhaps.
