"The next step is for our anti-hero to write a “systematic review” at the end of the year (or, really, whenever he gets around to it). In it, He Who Shall Not Be Named predictably rejects all of the studies that do not support his position as being “fatally flawed,” or as having been “refuted by experts”—namely, by himself and his close collaborators, typically citing their own contestable critiques—while at the same time he fails to find any flaws whatsoever in studies that make his pet procedure seem on balance beneficial."
He will, however, carefully point to a few rather weak studies that point out flaws in his arguments in order to make himself seem objective.
http://quillette.com/2016/02/15/the-unbearable-asymmetry-of-bullshit/
Good one. Some validation ...
ReplyDelete"Academia: Where Originality Will Hurt You
The good, healthy mentality would naturally be to work on research that we believe is important. Unfortunately, most such research is challenging and difficult to publish, and the current publish-or-perish system makes it difficult to put bread on the table while working on problems that require at least ten years of labor before you can report even the most preliminary results. Worse yet, the results may not be understood, which, in some cases, is tantamount to them being rejected by the academic community ...
Ideally, the academic system would encourage those people who are already well established and trusted to pursue these challenges, and I’m sure that some already do. However, I cannot help but get the impression that the majority of us are avoiding the real issues and pursuing minor, easy problems that we know can be solved and published. The result is a gigantic literature full of marginal/repetitive contributions. This, however, is not necessarily a bad thing if it’s a good CV that you’re after ..."
This is from a letter of resignation by a graduate student who was within months of completing their phd. See more of the letter at https://plus.google.com/+ChrisReeveOnlineScientificDiscourseIsBroken/posts/2rCpQP8mR4j.
I'm already familiar with the letter writer. They also write them to government laboratories where innovative research might be ongoing. They will blast the head of the research laboratory for wasting taxpayer money to pursue this obviously wrong line of investigation, regardless of the details (like if the simulation was done on off-cycles).