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Comment by cubano | Hacker News Reader

No I believe the motivating factor is not money, but a short-lived burst of fame, and even notoriety, for the authors of the studies.

Think about it...you dedicate your life to your science, and grind day after day, year after year with no verifiable results, because, you know, in case you haven't noticed, curing cancer is motherfucking hard.

I can see where maybe at some point, you just want to feel some sense of accomplishment or to be noticed in your social group, so you find some questionably-causal, but statistically-relevant piece of research you did and just publish the damned thing.

Don't get me wrong, I find this sort of thing appalling, but in the end, most of us are fairly imperfect people.

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That could explain researchers publishing such things (but I'd give more credit to this being just a result of publish-or-perish culture), but it doesn't explain why journalists write all that crap about those studies. Also note that often, the finding itself is reasonable but of little direct impact - "study found that X correlates with Y (r=0.67) under conditions Z, p<0.05" - and it's journalists who turn it into a bunch of sensationalist lies.

My guess would be that they are not trained to know better and that they have to write about something, anything really, that has some chance of grabbing reader attention and isn't related to celebrity culture.

What's more interesting then a headline that promises some scientific breakthru is about to change the world?

The real issue, I believe, is that there is no accountability for almost anyone these days. If there is some upside in publishing or reporting on questionable science, and no downside, what is the incentive not to do it?

> My guess would be that they are not trained to know better and that they have to write about something, anything really, that has some chance of grabbing reader attention and isn't related to celebrity culture.

I fear that no training can be helpful if you're supposed to have 10 stories written by this afternoon, and they'd better be good at attracting readers, or else.

> The real issue, I believe, is that there is no accountability for almost anyone these days. If there is some upside in publishing or reporting on questionable science, and no downside, what is the incentive not to do it?

I agree. I think you captured the essence of the problem. There is no immediate cost to doing this (if people had an actual span of attention, most of the news sites would go banrkupt quickly), and clear benefits. There is no direct price to be paid for misleading people, and the accumulated costs are apparent only years later, in the form of growing distrust towards everything, which destroys society from inside.

Let us not forget the superiors to those scientists who pressure publication because a lot of times that is the only way they can be sure to get further funding / grants.

At least that is what I take away from a lot of it.

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