Exciting versus Honest Research in Scientific Publication
There have been in recent years many articles, blogs and debates focussing on the tendency for scientific journals (especially the most prestigious ones) to prioritise the publication of research considered exciting, while research that is honest and thorough but perceived as not particularly interesting or citable is ignored or relegated to lesser journals. A post on the Conversation blog serves as an effective way into the topic: http://bit.ly/1AOUvqb.
I want to point out here that by interesting or exciting neither I nor the author of the Conversation post mean groundbreaking, informative or necessary research, but research that is attention grabbing, fashionable or sexy, and will therefore sell. A focus on such research, it is argued, diminishes the value of complicated, conflictive or negative results, which are often left out of published articles, and it also minimises the importance of replication studies, which have been declining significantly in number. Perhaps this focus does indeed contribute to the most prestigious journals having the highest rates of article retractions and unreliable results (as in results that are not replicable): http://bit.ly/1DeaDpT. This situation has serious potential to decrease the rigour and validity of scientific research. In the words of a winner of the Nobel prize for medicine, offering ‘the biggest rewards’ for ‘the flashiest work, not the best,’ damages science and serves neither the profession nor humanity more generally (http://bit.ly/18wZRsY).
Now, not all authors of articles reporting sexy science choose their topics for their popularity – fashionable topics and results need to be explored and reported just as less flashy ones do. Similarly, not all instances of simplifying, clarifying and focussing research results are undertaken to increase the sell factor of an article. Journals have word limits, disciplines have standard conventions and some streamlining is always an aspect (usually a challenging one) of reporting and interpreting complex research results via logical argumentation in linear text. Any author who has edited complicated and detailed work is well aware of the need to strike an effective balance, and this balance should ideally present honest scholarship in interesting and exciting ways. Procedures, evidence and results that detract from the main line of an argument or would simply make a paper too long (or too dull) can usually be included in online archives, and even results that are unexpected or disappointing can be presented in engaging ways by emphasising their significance, considering their implications and suggesting innovative recommendations for future research. Not every paper will be published in a top tier journal or be cited frequently, but better to have made honest scholarship as exciting as possible for the readers it does reach than to have compromised honesty for the sake of excitement over what might have become poor science in the process.
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