Lots of arguments in👇I disagree with or are questionable. To start with a point of agreement: Yes, current modes for getting competitive research grants are not ideal. But I am fairly skeptical the proposed alternative is superior 1/
Let's leave aside that 'impact' seems to be equated with publishing and citations: Getting paid for publications would, in the current system, most likely not improve research and funding allocation. I think it wouldn't be different than it is right now where researchers 2/
aim to get published in journals that are perceived to be of high impact/high quality bc of potential positive effects for grant applications, tenure, promotions etc. Funding agencies paying for publications in a list of "approved venues" (who would decide about this list?) 3/
would set strong and potentially wrong incentives to get published in these venues (p-hacking etc.).
Another proposal is that authors who published in these venues can give money to authors they cited in their own study. The idea is that authors can reward 4/
"major enablers or precursors" of the new research. It is difficult to see how this could not contribute to formation of clubs, networks and collusive behavior to keep the money inside your own research clique.
The claim that science is an industry is to some degree right, 5/
but the conclusion is not, IMO. An analogy to industry is: "You buy a car, not a document describing a car that may or may not be built, and the carmaker gets paid when it delivers the car." First, I guess in the history of car-making there had been funding for plans for cars 6/
that were not built. Second, this conflates basic and applied research, where the article seems to have a strong preference for the latter. Third, a car-buyer knows that the car meets certain standards bc of laws and regulations that are enforced (most of the time, at least) 7/
This is not where I see scientific publications (generally speaking) at the moment wrt to transparency, reproducibility (if applicable) etc. Funding allocation could be partially revised by attaching higher priority to these elements of research. 8/
It is then of secondary importance whether a single plan to build a car worked or didn't work and whether there is a car or not. If certain standards are followed and enforced, one can be confident that the result is credible and can serve as the basis for follow-up research 9/
Scientific journals must be alert to potential manipulation in citations and referencing doi.org/10.1177%2F1747… Good summary of evidence on citation manipulation by authors, reviewers and editors that also identifies major challenges.
- Reviewers and editors should check 1/
whether citations are appropriate or evidence for potential overcitation of own work. Challenge is that this is a lot of work requiring much expertise and that there is a gray zone. For raising bar a little bit and rising sensitivity to citation practices, I like the 2/
idea presented in the article that authors should sign a statement that no citation manipulation has been done.
- Besides practical limits in enforcing proper citation behavior, reviewers and editors are not the ideal agents for this bc they might have their own interest in 3/
and gives example of work that has done this already (I understand big data/computational soc sci to be the focus here). From the perspective of political science, this complements calls for combining qualitative and quantitative research 2/
- in nested analysis doi.org/10.1017/S00030…, or in variants that have been developed later such as pathway analysis doi.org/10.1177/004912…;
- in natural experiments and quasi-experimental designs to validate quantitative identification assumptions doi.org/10.1177/106591… 3/
Four reasons slow scholarship will not change academia blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocial…@LSEImpactBlog from May 2021
Slow Science idea hasn't really been picked in academia, as far as I can tell. The post presents some good thoughts why the "slowness-idea" is problematic in general. 1/
I agree that slowness is not a value in itself. Sometimes, developments and events like a pandemic demand it to do research faster than one would do it otherwise. However, research about Covid-19 also showed that the research process can be too fast thehill.com/opinion/health… 2/
There most likely is a negative relationshp between duration of the research process and probably of making mistakes doi.org/10.1080/089896… "fast" and "slow" do not work well as absolute categories. Best is to be as fast as possible and as slow as necessary. With regard to 3/
1) #IchBinHanna zeigt schon sehr eindrücklich, was Wissenschaflter:innen tun können. 2) Die Feststellung, dass nicht für alle Platz ist wird kaum jemand bestreiten. Ich denke, man kann einen anderen Eindruck bekommen, aber 1/
der rührt genau aus den Strukturen, die es zu verändern gilt. Aktuell haben sehr viele Wissenschaftler:innen in der Nachpromotionsphase eine Stelle. Sehr viele von diesen Wissenschaftler:innen erwerben ein Profil, das 2/
professurfähig ist (als Regelform einer Dauerstelle) und äußern daher verständlicherweise Erwartung auf eine Dauerstelle. Das kann so wirken, als würde erwartet, es solle für sehr viele eine Dauerstelle geschaffen werden, aber diese Erwartungen schürt das System erst. 3/
There is a highly instructive symposium on "Veil of Ignorance" #ProcessTracing in the new @APSAtweets QMMR publication qmmrpublication.com/uploads/1/1/4/… There is lots to say ab it. For now, I want to focus on whether (causal) qualitative research has a problem w/ confirmation bias that 1/
needs to be addressed.
In short, Veil of Ignorance process tracing aims to blindfold the data collectors and analysts to the hypotheses to reduce risk of confirmation bias.
Proposal receives a lot of criticism by all respondents, partly for valid reasons, partly not, IMO 2/
If there was no bigger issue with confirmation bias, there would not be much benefit in talking about blinding in qualitative research.
As Beach notes, the intro to the symposium does not present evidence that bias is a problem. This is correct, but there is also no evidence 3/