publish or perish¶

The "publish or perish" model is crippling academia, and specifically the very premise on which science rests: replicability. High impact journals only publish "groundbreaking" research, which means no one is incentivized to repeat experiments and reexamine their conclusions. https://t.co/DSist0MHUR It also drives researchers to seek out "positive results." If you want to get into a "good journal," you need to prove something, not disprove something. Researchers get blinded by the prospect of publication so much that they overlook glaring flaws in the experimental setup. In rare cases, they engage in outright fabrication. More often, they just don't investigate thoroughly enough, or they draw conclusions that haven't been demonstrated conclusively. The journals are incentivized to give them a pass in the name of spectacle (and thereby "impact"). Small labs often forego even trying to get published in big name journals, due to the significant price tag. Their claims might be small, but foundational for an emerging field--but no one will know, because it wasn't published with enough "prestige."