New Article Discusses Long-Standing Problems
The following article was just recently published in Environmental Engineering Science.
Academic Research in the 21st Century: Maintaining Scientific Integrity in a Climate of Perverse Incentives and Hypercompetition
I like the title. I like their idea encouraging more discussion of this topic.
Altruism
But, I don’t much like their idea that altruistic behavior should be encouraged.
As I understand the meaning of altruism, it implies a lack of self interest. I think it’s unfortunate that so many otherwise intelligent people are so enamored of the idea that encouraging individuals to disregard their own self interest will somehow result in ‘greater good’. Altruism and selflessness are even listed as ideals or stated aims of scientific societies.
Incentives
Nor do I believe that ‘relying on incentives’ is problematic. A system that imposes perverse incentives will induce perverse behavior, and good incentives will encourage good behavior. It’s a matter of what incentives the academics perceive. The authors themselves acknowledge that academics (like all humans) respond to the incentives facing them. I think a major problem is that the bureaucrats who fund and manage academic research have imposed perverse incentives.
Whom are academics aiming to please?
Within the government-dominated systems of academic funding and the government-dominated systems of research universities, agencies, and laboratories in many countries, academics are not rewarded for pleasing members of the general public. They are rewarded with research funding for pleasing the bureaucrats who distribute that funding. They are also rewarded with publications for pleasing a small subset of their peers, the reviewers of publications and editors of journals. They are also rewarded with promotions for pleasing a different and still small subset of their peers, their fellow faculty members or other researchers at their institute.
A couple of years ago I wrote Incentives, nor merely an academic concern and shared some of my personal experiences. You can find more musings by academics about academia at The Thalassa Chronicles, a blog started by one of my close colleagues, Ago, who works in academia in Germany.
Could more productive incentives be devised
Certainly, yes, if the goal is indeed to generate results valued by many individuals from the ‘general public’, rather than a few bureacrats and a subset of academics.
How about new journals that allow the readers and subscribers to vote for the publications they value, just as we here on Steemit vote for the posts that we value?
S. Lan Smith
Kamakura, Japan
September 26, 2016
Thanks to Pixabay for the free images.