The reproducibility of Science. A meeting report.

Conclusions After criticism of the conclusions of official reports, I guess that I have to make an attempt at recommendations myself.  Here’s a first attempt. The heart of the problem is money. Since the total amount of money is not likely to increase in the short term, the only solution is to decrease the number of applicants.  This is a real political hot-potato, but unless it’s tackled the problem will persist.  The most gentle way that I can think of doing this is to restrict research to a subset of universities. My proposal for a two stage university system might go some way to achieving this.  It would result in better postgraduate education, and it would be more egalitarian for students. But of course universities that became “teaching only” would see (wrongly) as demotion, and it seems that UUK is unlikely to support any change to the status quo (except, of course, for increasing fees). Smaller grants, smaller groups and fewer papers would benefit science. Ban completely the use of impact factors and discourage use of all metrics. None has been shown to measure future quality.  All increase the temptation to “game the system” (that’s the usual academic euphemism for what’s called cheating if an undergraduate does it). “Performance management” is the method of choice for bullying academics.  Don’t allow people to be fired because they don’...
Source: DC's goodscience - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Human resources Imperial reproducibility University College London University of Sheffield Alice Gast bibliometrics Dermot Kelleher impact factor Imperial College irreproducibility James Stirling King's College London Queen Mary Source Type: blogs