vrijdag 19 oktober 2012

The beauty of being wrong: A plea for post-publication revision


 
 
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The beauty of being wrong: A plea for post-publication revision

I realize that most of what I will ever write as a scientist is wrong. Not because it is obviously wrong when I write it, or because I don't believe in my own research. But simply because virtually every insight is eventually replaced by some newer and generally more accurate insight. This is true even for the great theories of the likes of Darwin, Einstein, and Newton. And it is certainly true for the minor contributions of the remaining 99.99% of the research population, for whom supersession generally occurs quite rapidly.

Unfortunately, there are no such signs in science

Perhaps this sounds depressing, but it's really not. It's just a (negative) way of describing progress. It's a good thing. Scientists should be encouraged to acknowledge the wrongness of their theories, to find out what's so wrong about them, and to replace them by newer theories that are still wrong, but less so. You could even argue that the possibility of being wrong is what differentiates science from opinionist fields such as philosophy, art, and economics.

But the ideal model of a scientist who continually seeks to disprove himself is not very compatible with human nature. Being human after all, scientists hate to be proven wrong, and will go through great lengths (including plain denial) to avoid this from happening. Nevertheless, given a healthy environment, scientists can, to some extent, overcome their innate dislike of being wrong. But only given a healthy scientific environment. And this is, in my opinion, where things go, well... wrong.

Lately, there has been much ado about reforms of academic publishing. Most of the debate has focused on the slow, but steady shift towards open access models (i.e. making scientific papers publicly accessible). I'm a big proponent of open access, but I also think that there are deeper problems that go beyond copyright issues. More specifically, I think that the way in which scientific results are presented is detrimental to a healthy scientific climate.


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