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).
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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 13 retweets 85 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 54 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 38 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 5 retweets 58 likesShow this thread -

I’d suggest that every PhD student be required to perform at least one attempt at Sokaling as a graduation requirement.
Learning what should count as unacceptably bad research is a critical part of learning how to do it well. And of spotting the difference in the lit.3 replies 12 retweets 65 likesShow this thread -

Initially, everyone would go for low-hanging fruit in Sokaling attempts: the easiest ways to get nonsense past reviewers.
Reviewers would quickly catch on to the simplest tricks… then subtler errors.
And I hope this would lead to a virtuous upward spiral of quality.2 replies 3 retweets 45 likesShow this thread -

Three questions:
𝔸) Would this make academia more adversarial, and thereby even more awful?
𝔹) Can a system develop that is adequately resistant to gaming (Goodhart’s Law)?
ℂ) Is it realistic to imagine something like this could actually happen?7 replies 6 retweets 57 likesShow this thread -

I’d love to hear your opinions about 𝔸 & 𝔹 !
As for ℂ — the crisis in academia is now obvious to all. Things cannot go on as they are. Unusual action becomes possible in extremis.
Recent dramatic process reforms in social psychology are startling, and inspiring.11 replies 4 retweets 43 likesShow this thread -
Replying to @Meaningness
Dan listens to rain falling on the rooftop Retweeted Richard Feynman
this ought to be the default position in all kinds of research, especially research where methods produce, at best, correlative results.https://twitter.com/ProfFeynman/status/1047530013929553920 …
Dan listens to rain falling on the rooftop added,
1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
I think adversarial "red team" actors will be partially effective but also divisive and prone to politicization for all the usual reasons, mostly because there's money and career status at stake. A shift in norms to make it more acceptable to say "I don't know" is best
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