göktuğ's blog

As has become a tradition, I am reproducing a social media thread I posted that I think is worthy of preserving, as a lightly edited blog post. This post has a somewhat authoritative tone, which is self-evident on social media but perhaps not in a blog post, so I want to explicitly say that this is a satirical and humorous post, and not a serious suggestion and/or the product of any philosophical or empirical process. That's not to say it's just a joke and/or invalid, but simply, the points made are my personal observations from following and studying metascientific issues.

Introducing: the Wakefield test.

It's simple. When you see a new research publication, evaluation, or accountability buzzword, you stop to think, would this have prevented the infamous, deadly, and shameful work of Wakefield being published on the Lancet. Prevent is the operative word, cos we've seen how futile the attempts to put the genie back in the bottle is, once bollocks as Wakefield's is given any modicum of scientific endorsement.

The main conclusion of the applications of Wakefield test I "did" so far is very clear:

Any proposed measure is nil unless it deals with social problems of academia in a concrete manner. Most bad research is caused by endemic malincentives and malignant power structures of academia. Publish or perish, white supremacy, extractive labour practices, economical disparities, publishing companies who are some of the closest institutions we have in real life to cartoon villain organisations.

But there's another key observation, that interacts with the above:

Any proposed measure that has no effect in the above finding is bound to repeat the said problems of academic research, while also failing to improve any matters and most importantly, offloading even more of the burden of academic bullshit onto disenfranchised members of the institution, including the research subjects, and the public itself.

So, stuff that fails the Wakefield test have a very concrete cost.

Now you might criticise me for saying stuff off the top of my head with an academic language, pretending its some sort of truth, but I must disagree. See, even tho I've just thought these things up right now, they are no less well-studied than all the wank quantitative supremacists and lovers of academic status quo spout like as if it was a cinnamon gobbling challenge and create policy on the basis of.

And jokes aside, anybody who follows any metascience knows they're true...