Serious systemic problems in academia which, in my view, stem back to unintended consequences of the grant process. It is that which causes the publish or perish mentality because worth for the purpose of grants is measured by number of articles, number of citations etc. I have written on it here: https://www.whatkatydid.net/p/more-than-a-pat-on-the-head
I did consider getting into ridiculous articles which got past peer review in this post, as an illustration of the fact that it isn’t working, but I decided to concentrate on the problem of good articles which didn’t through past peer review.
Some "perverse incentives" baked right into the system:
Wikipedia: "The cobra effect is the most direct kind of perverse incentive, typically because the incentive unintentionally rewards people for making the issue worse. ....
The term cobra effect was coined by economist Horst Siebert on the basis of an anecdote of an occurrence in India during British rule.[2][3] The British government, concerned about the number of venomous cobras in Delhi, offered a bounty for every dead cobra. Initially, this was a successful strategy; large numbers of snakes were killed for the reward. Eventually, however, enterprising people began to breed cobras for the income. When the government became aware of this, the reward program was scrapped."
So - actually - I wrote about the “cobra effect” in ‘Guilty Pigs’ when I was talking about the way in which bounties on pest animals can really badly backfire (also the sad case of the Thylacine, I feel so bad for those poor Tassie Tigers.)
But rather "disconcerting" the extent to which poorly thought-out policies and laws can backfire on us. As a legal beagle, you may know of Lord Acton's quip to the effect that it is unwise to pass a bad law on the assumption that its worst aspects won't be taken advantage of to the detriment of society in general. At least I think it was Acton, though haven't been able to track down its source -- maybe you know of it? 🙂
Another fab read! As an "early career researcher" (I know people in 40s being labelled as ECRs lol- only in academia), the pressure to publish is so pervasive that you feel the need to publish whatever random brainfart comes to you on a given day and then you make it palatable to the peer reviewers as they may have a different idea of your brainfart. How they choose to convey their conception of brainfart is essentially moot. Rarely do you have the time to think critically of our own ideas and therefore sometimes peer reviews seem harsh. I feel academic world resembles corporate hierarchies where publications are your KPIs and peer reviewing is a form of power play. In a perfect world, where all academics are rational people operating under rational choice theory, they would upload papers on their own websites/substacks after they get comments from their colleagues and let people read for free and comment on it below. But nah, that won't happen would it?
No. Well - actually - I keep wondering if I should do that with pieces in progress… But the terms of publication often make it difficulty. There’s that contract law, getting us in trouble…
Looks to be some serious "systemic" problems in virtually all of Academia.
But not sure if you're on (X)Twitter or not, but, ICYMI, here's one Twitterer who takes frequent shots at the peer-review part of that problem:
https://twitter.com/RealPeerReview/status/779780977698574336
Serious systemic problems in academia which, in my view, stem back to unintended consequences of the grant process. It is that which causes the publish or perish mentality because worth for the purpose of grants is measured by number of articles, number of citations etc. I have written on it here: https://www.whatkatydid.net/p/more-than-a-pat-on-the-head
I did consider getting into ridiculous articles which got past peer review in this post, as an illustration of the fact that it isn’t working, but I decided to concentrate on the problem of good articles which didn’t through past peer review.
Some "perverse incentives" baked right into the system:
Wikipedia: "The cobra effect is the most direct kind of perverse incentive, typically because the incentive unintentionally rewards people for making the issue worse. ....
The term cobra effect was coined by economist Horst Siebert on the basis of an anecdote of an occurrence in India during British rule.[2][3] The British government, concerned about the number of venomous cobras in Delhi, offered a bounty for every dead cobra. Initially, this was a successful strategy; large numbers of snakes were killed for the reward. Eventually, however, enterprising people began to breed cobras for the income. When the government became aware of this, the reward program was scrapped."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive
So - actually - I wrote about the “cobra effect” in ‘Guilty Pigs’ when I was talking about the way in which bounties on pest animals can really badly backfire (also the sad case of the Thylacine, I feel so bad for those poor Tassie Tigers.)
I blame Disney for giving them a bad press ... 😉🙂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_May_Hare
But rather "disconcerting" the extent to which poorly thought-out policies and laws can backfire on us. As a legal beagle, you may know of Lord Acton's quip to the effect that it is unwise to pass a bad law on the assumption that its worst aspects won't be taken advantage of to the detriment of society in general. At least I think it was Acton, though haven't been able to track down its source -- maybe you know of it? 🙂
Another fab read! As an "early career researcher" (I know people in 40s being labelled as ECRs lol- only in academia), the pressure to publish is so pervasive that you feel the need to publish whatever random brainfart comes to you on a given day and then you make it palatable to the peer reviewers as they may have a different idea of your brainfart. How they choose to convey their conception of brainfart is essentially moot. Rarely do you have the time to think critically of our own ideas and therefore sometimes peer reviews seem harsh. I feel academic world resembles corporate hierarchies where publications are your KPIs and peer reviewing is a form of power play. In a perfect world, where all academics are rational people operating under rational choice theory, they would upload papers on their own websites/substacks after they get comments from their colleagues and let people read for free and comment on it below. But nah, that won't happen would it?
No. Well - actually - I keep wondering if I should do that with pieces in progress… But the terms of publication often make it difficulty. There’s that contract law, getting us in trouble…
Dang it. Always knew contract law was up to no good. Always being nosy .... :-/