Also in 2013, I suggested that there should be substantial career rewards for successful Sokaling.
There should also be consequences for editors and reviewers that accept demonstrably and intentionally bogus papers.https://twitter.com/Meaningness/status/307084670108053505 …
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Making Sokaling a routine part of the academic process would go a long way towards fixing it, I think. A few dozen Sokalings are a good start to raise awareness, but if—say—5% of all submitted papers were Sokals, reviewers and editors would become much more careful.5 replies 25 retweets 109 likesShow this thread -
How would this work in practice? A paper would have to be registered as a Sokaling before first submission, along with an explanation of what the author thinks is wrong with it. A cryptographic time-locked database could ensure honesty about this.4 replies 6 retweets 69 likesShow this thread -
½ [That is, everyone could publicly verify whether or not a paper was intended as a Sokal. Once it was accepted, the author could unlock the pre-registration; after a determinate time period had elapsed, it would automatically unlock in any case.]1 reply 3 retweets 34 likesShow this thread -
Fraud—invented facts—are a different problem from nonsense. In science, publishing a paper based on false, made-up data would not generally count. Either you use real data and give a bogus interpretation, or you describe a worthless data-collection process (with fake data).1 reply 7 retweets 46 likesShow this thread -
This proposal is not nice. Unfortunately, it is too late for nice. Many-to-most academic fields run on a go-along-to-get-along basis, and now have large negative net value as a result.
Some fields should simply end. I suggested that for nutrition:https://meaningness.com/nutrition-resigns …1 reply 11 retweets 81 likesShow this thread -
A tension here: academia is increasingly awful as a career. That drives away many of the best researchers. Reforms that add to the suffering risk making a bad situation even worse.
Currently, reviewing papers is unpaid scut-work. Not surprising not everyone does it well.1 reply 8 retweets 51 likesShow this thread -

If peer review has reputational risk—it will be public knowledge if you recommend accepting a deliberately bad paper—many people may decline the job. (Though, successful detection of a hoax should look good on your CV!)
Publishers might have to pay reviewers…2 replies 3 retweets 37 likesShow this thread -

… and the total number of papers published might drop precipitously if reviewers were more reluctant to recommend publication.
That would be good. Everyone agrees there’s WAY too much stuff published under the current system. A 90% reduction would be great.4 replies 3 retweets 57 likesShow this thread -
Replying to @Meaningness
Something that we greatly need is a compression of current knowledge. Exposition is way undervalued. Much current literature is scattered, poorly written, poorly organized. Many of these people doing mediocre research could be writing good exposition - easier and still valuable
2 replies 1 retweet 3 likes
Yes! Have you seen: https://distill.pub/2017/research-debt/ …
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