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. vanviegen · 1790946702 · focus · HN ↗

      Yeah, science needs to reinvent itself.

      How about this: instead of going through publishers, researchers are required (by their funding organizations) to put a bounty on falsifying the result (for, say, 10 years). The higher the bounty, the higher the 'impact factor'. Put your money where your mouth is. A bounty of at least the cost of the study should be expected for serious research.

      I can imagine a 'falsification insure' industry. They'd look at reputation as well as employ people close to the subject matter to asses risk, taking over the role of peer review. But with aligned incentives.

      This way researchers and institutions who don't care too much about truth are marginalized; they either have low impact factors or they'll need to pay huge falsification insure fees.

      And researchers who are sceptical of certain results will have an incentive (money!) to try to replicate it.

      Remaining question: who is the authority on whether a publication has been falsified?

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