Globally Rational

Yesterday, I wrote about how we’re incentivizing scientists to stop innovating. In that post, I promised to suggest some solutions today. Here are some things we can do to foster increased scientific innovation:

• We should require institutional research boards (IRBs) to include more scientifically knowledgeable personnel, so that decisions can be made by scientists instead of lawyers. Also, IRBs should be required to publish their membership - like several universities are already doing (i.e. Stanford, UT-Austin, etc.) - so that they have an incentive to hire more qualified people. According to one of my commenters yesterday, many top-class universities do have more qualified IRB members; however, this is not true at many large non-top-tier public universities. This will solve problems #1 and 2 (see yesterday’s post).
• As I wrote once before, the Public Library of Science (PLoS) should become the only source for publications. This will eliminate many slowdowns caused by a scientific journal’s in-press time. As long as the peer-review system is kept intact (I also have a plan for this, but it’s outside the scope of this post), there is no drawback. This will solve problems #3, 4, 5, and 8 (see yesterday’s post).
• There should be a specific minimum wage scale for scientists with PhD’s. Right now, it really doesn’t pay to become an academic researcher; most potential researchers end up going into industry, going to pharmacy/dental/optometry/podiatry/medical school, becoming engineers, or doing something other than science. This will solve problem #6.
• NIH and NSF should objectively score/rank all researchers in terms of the quality of their research (it doesn’t have to be a precise score; they can just get titles such as “expert” and “newcomer”). This way, tenure committees can look at these ranks instead of requiring an arbitrary number of publications, thereby solving problem #8.

I think that if we implement these regulations, it will drastically improve scientific productivity and, consequently, our overall society. Any objections?

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