Thread

1. lp4v4n · 1790945181 · focus · HN ↗

   I once read the criticism that science is already moving too fast and that wrong results get published and accepted as true because nobody reaps any laurels for verifying or reproducing results, even if that's an indispensable part of the scientific method.

   Now in the age of AI this problem will be heavily accentuated. Who's going to review the quality and validity of dozens and dozens of papers being generated by a researcher who used to publish sporadically?

   It's not hard to see science going through a "slop crisis" in the next few years, in the same way that now projects are getting inundated with PRs.

   1. f6v · 1790945614 · focus · HN ↗

      > nobody reaps any laurels for verifying or reproducing results

      That's not entirely true. There's a whole genre of "response" and "response to response" papers that voice concerns when there's a methodological issue. That's somewhat common in my fields (computational biology and biomedical research).

      And even if a "response" isn't published, people still try to reproduce published techniques if those seem useful.

      1. geerlingguy · 1790946596 · focus · HN ↗

         A lot of useful studies take weeks, months, or years to do the first time, and require a staff, a grant, etc. at least in medicine, physics, chemistry...

         You'd be surprised how rarely (overall) reproduction / verification is attempted. Sadly, a lot of research is taken at face value. That's done quite often with AI/tech stuff these days, and even more so for scientific research. It's a hard problem.

         1. f6v · 1790950104 · focus · HN ↗

            > You'd be surprised how rarely (overall) reproduction / verification is attempted.

            I didn't say it's common, I said that stating it's "never" reproduced is false.

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