Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

  Obviously I'm not in academia, but to most outsiders this is really obvious stuff.
That's my point. To outsiders like you and me, these things may seem obviously desirable.

But academics respond to incentives. Imagine you've spent 10 years pushing some set of conclusions based on some shaky studies you did early in your career. Do you really want people to dig deep and challenge the validity of your research?



Isn't that just part of the job? If you're not wrong sometimes you're not trying hard enough. To avoid this situation you should invite others to challenge your work more quickly.


The academic job is primarily about getting funding for further work. If ten years of work were proven wrong, the academic may worry that funding agencies may stop funding them. "You've been doing the wrong work for a decade!"

So while the academic may not mind being proven wrong in their hypotheses/results/conclusions, they may stress about not being able to get more funding.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: