That being said, on crucial factor on such behavior is paperianism (a.k.a. publish or perish) and the lack of interest of the biggest journals to publish negative results at all (it could be anything, from short communications to just a database)..
It's so much harder to judge negative results than positive results. And it's so incredibly hard to attribute blame. Why was this result negative? Did you screw something up? Something very trivial you don't normally even report on? It's totally possible and that makes negative papers hard to swallow. Anyone can produce an unlimited number of negative results by being incompetent.
This is well said, I'm surprised I haven't heard it expressed before.
Assuming competence is rarer than incompetence, rewarding negative results will probably just drive the incentives even more to the extremes. Instead of outright fraud, everyone will get to hide behind "oops."
Nowadays, professors tend to play a middlemen role. Apply for grants, advertise results, and claim credit. Nothing else.
Most of the time, they do not come up with ideas, nor care about them or do any of the hard work.
Places like the Arc Institute have been born to cut PI middlemen out and get research out of this tar pit.
There is nothing special ahout the Arc Institute. It's a research institute that can hire professional researchers to do research, because it's not a university department that's supposed to train people to do research. The funders just are generous enough that the researchers don't have to apply for funding. Any organization could do the same with funders like that.
You can get a single renewal - but that's all. No matter what you are done after 14 years.
Arc is indeed special because all funding is internal, just like it was at LMB or CSHL during their golden years. This encourages small groups where everyone does research, instead of creating a class of middle managers.
> Phase 1 of the institute involves hiring 10–15 Core Investigators, each of whom may employ 10–20 trainees, researchers, or engineers.
Those are large groups by academic standards.
The middle manager structure itself arises from many causes. Funders like competitive grants, because that gives them more control over the research they fund. Universities are in the business of training the next generation of researchers. And universities save money by hiring dedicated teachers instead of professors, leaving a smaller number of research-active people in charge of the trainees.