A few posts ago I commented on Jonah Lehrer’s article about replication difficulties, which Lehrer called the decline effect. I concluded it was an indication how poorly science (truth-seeking) and profession (making a living) fit together. Scientists are always under pressure to do what’s good for their career rather than find and report the truth.
Journalism is another kind of truth-seeking. It has the same problem. Journalists are always under pressure to do what’s good for their career rather than find and report the truth. In an essay about unauthorized biographies, Kitty Kelley makes this point:
[Michael] Hastings said that reporters like [Lara] Logan do not report negative stories about their subjects in order to assure continued access. No reporter would admit to tilting a story toward favorable coverage to keep entrée, but they do, and that is one of the dirty little secrets of journalism today.
Just as no reporter admits this, I have never heard a scientist admit it, with two exceptions: 1. The inventor of the aquatic ape theory of human evolution (Alister Hardy) said he stopped talking about it to avoid hurting his career. It fell to a non-scientist (Elaine Morgan) to develop it. 2. In that famous graduation speech, Richard Feynman pointed out how the first determination of the charge on an electron used the wrong value for the viscosity of air and later determinations, which did not involve that viscosity, tended to confirm the mistaken value. Unfortunately, Feynman went on to say: “We’ve learned those tricks nowadays, and now we don’t have that kind of a disease.” As if human nature had changed.
I conclude that both science and journalism will work best with systems where amateurs and professionals both have substantial power. Kelley doesn’t mention that authorized biographers have important truth-seeking advantages over non-authorized ones (e.g., access to old letters).
I conclude that both science and journalism will work best with systems where amateurs and professionals both have substantial power.
I think that an amateur can be subject to pressure, just like any professional. More so, actually. No conventional journalist would have gotten the kind of heat Assange has gotten: other journalists would have stepped in.
You may have the cause and effect backward. People who refuse to “fit in” are less likely to become fully recognized professionals. Could Assange have gotten a job at the New York Times?
The decline effect is another good reason to push for open-data requirements. These requirements not only hold professional scientists to a higher standard of accountability but also allow outsiders to use existing experimental data to develop unorthodox hypotheses and, sometimes, to challenge orthodox beliefs.
If the “aquatic ape” meme (not a theory) had not been picked up and promoted, we would all be better off. So, not a good example.
Perhaps a better example: plasma fluid dynamics is mathematically intractable, so astrophysicists go out of their way to avoid any hypothesis that might require doing any. Every observation has to be explained by gravitation alone, or it becomes unfashionable to mention at all.
The decline effect may not be such a big deal, just regression to the mean.
Jonah Lehrer’s article about the decline effect is one of the most interesting articles I’ve read in a long time. Using a Google search, I found a full-text version here: https://crayz.org/science.pdf .
This may be an unauthorized (bootleg) copy, so let your conscience be your guide.