In academia, “publish or perish” is a maxim to live by. As new PhD students spill into the workplace every year, the job hunt becomes a desperate rush for work where your name on a research paper is one of the best weapons you can have. Academic research has long been one of the primary goals of universities and has been the source of incredible scientific and social breakthroughs that have altered the course of the world and changed the lives of billions.
However, not all academic research is created equal, and changes to the nature of research have had unintended consequences that can have dangerous side effects. The combined forces of the lure of distinction and pressure from administrators for a steady output has mutated research from a dive into the unknown to a game of strategy where data matter less than conclusions drawn or which journal publishes the work. In essence, publish or perish changes the goal of research to a numbers game where quantity trumps quality. Moreover, as the hallowed peer reviewed system becomes overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of papers, which reached 1.3 million spread over almost 24,000 journals in 2006, the ability of the system to fact-check itself and correct its own errors is degraded.
This may seem to be a foolish but ultimately harmless trend if effects are contained to the world of academia. And while that may be true for some research, dangerous side effects arise when dubious findings are accepted and disseminated throughout the world. For example, the British Journal of General Practice in 2011 published a research paper about the benefits of acupuncture. More mainstream media organizations skimmed over the research itself, which displayed a negligible change to acupuncture patients and focused on the exaggerated conclusions drawn by the researchers.
This incentive for researchers to overstate the inferences from their findings has dangerous implications for the reliability of data. In theory, any mistake or overstated claim shouldn’t be that serious an issue, as labs around the world quickly attempt to replicate experiments for themselves. But replication, a key component of the scientific process, doesn’t pay anymore and has experienced a steady decline. Without verification as to the accuracy of results, false or exaggerated claims can poison the well of science. False claims also pose a danger to people’s lives; between 2000 and 2010, 80,000 patients were participants in clinical trials based around research that was later retracted due to “mistakes or improprieties.” Perhaps the most well known instance of fraud came from Andrew Wakefield, the doctor who falsely linked autism with vaccines.
Publish or perish might also corrupt one of the core purposes of research — innovation. A study at the University of California-Los Angeles found that researchers who choose to work further on established questions have a greater chance of being published. Those who choose pursue unexplored avenues of research may make rare breakthroughs that garner attention and rewards, but as the likelihood of success is smaller, most choose the safer path. Another disturbing trend in research publishing has been the steady decline in negative results that are published. Finding what is not true or what does not work in research, while not as exciting as new discoveries, is just as important to scientific progress. As journals spend less space propagating new information on negative results, researchers waste time and money repeating experiments already proven incorrect.
It's clear the way we look at research needs to change. Improvements could include measuring professor productivity by a more comprehensive metric than just the number of published papers. Several grant institutes have also begun to fund individual scientists instead of specific research projects, giving them greater freedom in choosing what to explore. As a research institution, the University will be directly affected by these changes. The new Cornerstone Plan aims to improve our research by ensuring that it is focused on areas of study that will have the maximal impact. This is a good start, but more wide-ranging changes need to be implemented quickly. The respect science commands stems from its ability to discover the truth and to correct itself if wrong. If these research trends continue, the logical basis of the scientific process could degrade dangerously.
Alex Mink is an Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at a.mink@cavalierdaily.com.
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