I see the author's point but I respectfully disagree. If anything, there is now much more pressure to make sure the research is error-free because so many people independently look at it. In the past if you found an error in published research, you had limited ways to share your findings. Most journals are reluctant to put their papers under scanner. Now we can just write a blog or tweet out the findings. The researchers today face much more scrutiny compared to the ones in the past. In economics, people are using AI to replicate older famous papers and reporting problems with them. Tools like refine.ink can help researchers identify the errors in their research before even submitting the paper anywhere for a peer review.
Error-free is not the goal, which is the author's point. Citation metrics and grant funding chasing mean the goal is not to be error free but attention grabbing, sensational, a step towards getting a big fat grant or even error filled so other people are forced to tackle the problem and cite you
Where did you get the idea that error-free research is not the goal? The author even mentions this:
Recently, I have bumped into multiple cases where I believe the correctness of the results, the honesty of the people writing them, or the lack of curiosity once they are told that their results are wrong, incorrect, faulty, or misleading, has been unsatisfying.
Note "I believe the correctness of the results....has been unsatisfying." Sure it might be unsatisfying for the author but on average the correctness is only increasing because of the increased scrutiny
I think part of the issue is that there is basically no downside to having bad papers. In ML conferences, I think the only paper I have ever seen retracted was because some of the authors had an affiliation with a Russian institution. There are LOADS of bogus papers at the big ML conferences and none get retracted afaik ...
The worst that can happen is someone tweets about it and then everyone forgets about the paper.
malshe · · focus · HN ↗
xqcgrek2 · · focus · HN ↗
malshe · · focus · HN ↗
Recently, I have bumped into multiple cases where I believe the correctness of the results, the honesty of the people writing them, or the lack of curiosity once they are told that their results are wrong, incorrect, faulty, or misleading, has been unsatisfying.
Note "I believe the correctness of the results....has been unsatisfying." Sure it might be unsatisfying for the author but on average the correctness is only increasing because of the increased scrutiny
bobmarleybiceps · · focus · HN ↗