British scientists talked about how "British scientists" appeared

Specialists from the University of Exeter and Bristol (UK) decided to find out where the "British scientists" come from. This is not primarily about experts in various fields of science who work in the UK. It considers the reason why many experts conduct research that does not have much sense, but which can be loudly broadcast. The results of an investigation into this situation were published by Andrew Higginson and Marcus Munafo in the journal PLoS Biology .

According to the authors of the project, the main reason for what happened is the grant system that works in the country. It encourages researchers to give their projects high-profile names and talk about equally high-profile results. Moreover, these results, as a rule, have no value for science in general, or are not too valuable.

The authors of the study say that scientists should approach the study of various processes objectively, trying to strengthen and build on the building of scientific knowledge. “However, scientists are also people, and work in organizations where everything is aimed at receiving money changes the way of thinking and behavior of even honest and conscientious specialists. This process takes place equally consciously and unconsciously, ” experts say .

Since the 80s of the last century, scientists are trying to add “novelty” to the names of their works. At the same time, only a small number of publications is important for science. Now more and more scientists are trying to devote attention not to pure science, but to their careers. Many people strive to publish as many works as possible, which makes them more famous, and traveling along the career ladder more rapid. Young specialists, looking at the principles of work of experienced comrades, adopt their model of work. This can be called adaptive behavior - a similar phenomenon is widespread in the world of wildlife and plays an important role in evolution.

Higginson and his colleague Marcus Munafo used methods of mathematics and statistics in their work. They decided to find out the success of the submission of grant applications and their results in the form of publications in scientific journals. At the very beginning of the study, the authors suggested that the scientists who work with grants can use a certain general principle for their projects, which allows them to receive additional funds. It is interesting that many researchers, consciously or not, try to adapt their working methods to the methods for evaluating the projects under consideration by grant funds. In general, this is obvious.

In order to track the progress of the process from writing the application to receiving the grant by "grant-eaters", mathematicians studied the principles of work of grant agencies in the UK and Australia. Then the scientists used the data to build a computer model, where the “scientists” are trying to get as many grants from the grant committee as possible. As it turned out, most of the money received by researchers who offer small-scale projects with big words like “innovative”, “latest”, etc. The problem of such projects in reality is that their results are poorly verified, and for the most part - they are completely adapted to the initial tasks. The efficiency of scientists involved in such projects is very low. Only 10-40% of the results of such projects can be repeated. Consequently,

According to scientists from the UK, it is possible to solve the situation. To do this, it is necessary to reduce the number of supported small projects by channeling funds to support large and medium-sized projects. In addition, the commissions need to respond not to the sensationalism of the proposed developments, but to the methodology and results of such work.


The averaged statistical power of publications published in scientific journals from 1960 to 2011

Back in 1963, Jacob Ken, a psychologist from New York University, found that, according to statistics, the result expected by the researcher appears during only 20% of the experiments performed. But in reality, almost all scientists point to a positive result of their research. In other words, the authors simply do not talk about failure, in some casesdistorting the results of their research . Paul Smaldino of the University of California and Richard Mack Elres of the Max Planck Society Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology have proven that research authors still talk about their successes while hiding defeats.

Smaldino and Richard Mac Elres believe that only the firm decision of foundations and scientific organizations can not provide funds to scientists and laboratories that previously published unverified results of their research can correct the situation. Such organizations often give their expectations for a positive outcome. True, to do this is quite difficult, since the grant system has existed for a long time, and its principles are rooted in the minds of scientists.

For this reason, those who give high-profile names to their work (the notorious “our methodology can defeat cancer”) get more money and faster career progression and publish a large number of materials. Those organizations that try to carefully verify their results are published much less frequently, and are, so to speak, in the “shadow”.