Competition for priority harms the reliability of science, but reforms can help

Leonid Tiokhin (), Minhua Yan and Thomas J. H. Morgan
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Leonid Tiokhin: Eindhoven University of Technology
Minhua Yan: Arizona State University
Thomas J. H. Morgan: Arizona State University

Nature Human Behaviour, 2021, vol. 5, issue 7, 857-867

Abstract: Abstract Incentives for priority of discovery are hypothesized to harm scientific reliability. Here, we evaluate this hypothesis by developing an evolutionary agent-based model of a competitive scientific process. We find that rewarding priority of discovery causes populations to culturally evolve towards conducting research with smaller samples. This reduces research reliability and the information value of the average study. Increased start-up costs for setting up single studies and increased payoffs for secondary results (also known as scoop protection) attenuate the negative effects of competition. Furthermore, large rewards for negative results promote the evolution of smaller sample sizes. Our results confirm the logical coherence of scoop protection reforms at several journals. Our results also imply that reforms to increase scientific efficiency, such as rapid journal turnaround times, may produce collateral damage by incentivizing lower-quality research; in contrast, reforms that increase start-up costs, such as pre-registration and registered reports, may generate incentives for higher-quality research.

Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1038/s41562-020-01040-1

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