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Bias Against Novelty in Science

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41–46 of 46 posts

Re: Bias Against Novelty in Science

#41
post #3

My preconceptions here are the reverse - that mundane studies seeking to replicate existing studies to confirm their findings are boring, and as such are not pursued or funded, despite their importance. I understand that 'novel' is being used in a slightly different context here, though.

I also think there is a huge bias for publishing "novel" findings... that's how you get into bigger journals.

Re: Bias Against Novelty in Science

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhat novel research is fine, just as long as it conforms to what is expected. Novel AND counter to the expectations of the field is much harder to publish.

sad but very true

Can you think of a low impact paper that later turned out to be too novel to get published in a high impact journal at the time? How often do you think this happens? I for one don't see this a lot. What I see more often are people that think there work is super novel, and either it's not, or they don't have enough evidence and don't know the field well enough to know that they are wrong.

Re: Bias Against Novelty in Science

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obligatory mention of pseudoscience in a topic about real science: check. Might as well hail Deepak Chopra as Einstein reincarnated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake

Obligatory knee-jerk accusation of “pseudoscience” at the mention of Sheldrake: check. It’s a topic about overly conservative attitudes in the scientific community. Thanks for demonstrating that tendency with your insulting comment.

Sheldrake's ideas of "morphic resonance" are the worst kind of pseudoscientific garbage. The man literally believes that insulin molecules inherit a collective memory from all insulin molecules that have existed in the past.

He has constructed a New Age world of fantasy based on a fundamentally new type of physical phenomenon that is completely unsupported by physicists.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and he has not delivered such evidence.

Re: Bias Against Novelty in Science

#44

If anything I've heard the other thing - that it's hard to get published unless something is novel enough. There's not much interest in studies that just confirm or slightly extend, which is why reproducibility becomes an issue.

Somewhat novel research is fine, just as long as it conforms to what is expected. Novel AND counter to the expectations of the field is much harder to publish.

Is this because journal editors like to see their own lines of research expanded on? (Incentive problem?) Or harder to referee novel papers? (Time and attention problem?)

Re: Bias Against Novelty in Science

#45
post #18

Good! There should be a bias against new things until the new things are proven to be correct. Optimizing science based on "what do people who want to get tenure want" seems like a great way to be bad at science.

I agree, I have some experience from doing medical research, and this seems like a given to me. My friends who work in the softer sciences like psychology have different opinions though, since they often work in degree's of correctness.

Re: Bias Against Novelty in Science

#46
post #23

My aunt's been studying the sun magnetic field for decades. She has measured (yes, measured) parts of the sun inner magnetic field (quite complex to do actually). Div(B) not null there. She can't get it published because Maxwell's equations and it's a "new" discovery. Maxwell starts with "in the void", I think we can agreed that centre of the sun is not the void. It is incredible that scientist MEASURING stuff can't…

Has she posted on arxiv to get feedback from other experts?
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