Having experienced bias against publishing truly novel findings, I can testify this form of bias is a potential hazard re: scientific progress.<p>Back in the early 2000's, in the course of clinical practice I encountered some unexpected outcomes of treatment which correlated to a particular, if unexpected diagnosis. I tried to find info about this, but to my surprise a thorough search of the literature came up empty.<p>I felt a duty to report my observations. Putting it into a formal paper was difficult for me to accomplish, but did get it organized. Believing in the idea of open access, I decided to submit to a newly established open-access publisher.<p>Peer review did not go smoothly. Because the subject had never been reported before, at least in a peer-reviewed journal, the reviewers expressed doubt about the reality of the data. One "peer" was determined to disparage the report to the extent of making glaringly inaccurate, distorted comments about the nature of the condition in the subjects of my report. After a rigorous defense of data and procedure the editors decided to ignore the negative review and the report was published.<p>Novelty is not only apparent in terms of methodology or cross-discipline application of ideas, but also arises when attempting to share previously unreported observations. The closed-mindedness of many in the academic community (who are the predominant peer reviewers) is apparently a pervasive problem in the sciences, and possibly endemic in academic culture in general.
Yep. Professor in molecular biology here. Been at numerous universities you know. I can confirm very unscientific groupthink as the main driver of science progress nowadays. Being a lone wolf, rogue isn't really a viable option given the funding climate. Perfect sheep extends all the way from college to the professor level. Think this would surprise most lay people given the conception of scientists as off in their own world.
I feel like if you break down what's being said here, that it's just a consequence of having to communicate ideas to people.<p>I publish "Gravitational constant is actually (some slightly more specific thing)", with extension of existing methods. Someone sees that and already will be convinced just by the title!<p>I publish "Gravity is actually caused by micro-gnomes pushing things around with walkie-talkes", and it's pretty novel. I don't really have existing work to base it on.<p>Why should anyone believe my work has any basis in reality then? The burden of proof is on me to convince people. Fool-proof methodology, simple explanations. Bringing it back to current understanding helps. But I'm the person saying everything is different, the world owes nothing to me just yet.<p>Not to mention that the header graph is totally confirmation bias. Yes, you're going to cite the original paper citing the effect you're studying. You probably won't cite most incremental research. Definitionally novel papers that get any traction will collect references.<p>---<p>I actually have an example of my own novel research! I'm the first person to post about a bug with Ubuntu's (at the time) new IME manager[0] on Ask Ubuntu. Turns out there was a real thing (and it wasn't me being silly). So now I have 550 points on Ask Ubuntu because of this question, and get notifications about it all the time.<p>I have cornered the "Ubuntu 13.10 keyboard bug" citation space. Mainly for being first. And I have gotten extra rewarded for it. Novel papers enjoy the same perks when they get any traction.<p>[0]: <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/356357/how-to-use-altshift-to-switch-keyboard-layouts" rel="nofollow">http://askubuntu.com/questions/356357/how-to-use-altshift-to...</a>
It's likely not the same phenomenon, but I'm reminded of the story of Millikan's oil drop experiment and how the accepted value slowly changed from Millikan's reported value to the curent accepted value.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_drop_experiment#Millikan.27s_experiment_as_an_example_of_psychological_effects_in_scientific_methodology" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_drop_experiment#Millikan.2...</a>
Their full paper is here <a href="http://cepr.org/sites/default/files/news/CEPR_FreeDP_180416.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://cepr.org/sites/default/files/news/CEPR_FreeDP_180416....</a> . If I followed it correctly they measure "novelty" by:<p>- bucketing citations into journals<p>- building a network of journals with edge weights defined by the number of papers that cite both journals<p>- Using cosine similarity between journals (cf <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Similarity_(network_science)#Cosine_similarity" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Similarity_(network_science)#C...</a> ) in this network to define how banal it is to cite them together<p>- For a new paper, they recompute this matrix and define novelty by summing 1-banality over the new edges<p>I don't know if their method reduces to a standard thing from network science (eg. betweenness, centrality, ?) but I would not be surprised if it did.<p>A closely-related paper with a totally-different writing style did something like this a few years back:<p>"Citing for High Impact" <a href="https://cs.stanford.edu/people/jure/pubs/citations-jcdl10.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://cs.stanford.edu/people/jure/pubs/citations-jcdl10.pd...</a>
My preconceptions here are the reverse - that mundane studies seeking to replicate existing studies to confirm their findings are boring, and as such are not pursued or funded, despite their importance. I understand that 'novel' is being used in a slightly different context here, though.
Status-quo bias is a phenomenon that is well documented in the psychology literature:
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_quo_bias" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_quo_bias</a>
Bias for the established ways of thinking seems especially common (to me) in the physical sciences. I do not think that should be a surprise since the fundamental view of natural processes does not advance quickly. Perhaps this is why Einstein remarked that if you really believed in your ideas then you should quit being an academic and go get a job like a lighthouse keeper. That maybe works in mathematical physics, where all you need is a pen and paper, but in the other sciences it does not seem like a great plan. What I have observed many do when they find their ideas fall foul of the times is they go get a line-of-business job that does not require a lot of mental energy. That is a plan I have seen work for many. Finance is particularly good for that. It is a field where knowing how to think in contrarian fashion and also knowing how to run with the herd are both valuable. I see a lot of mathematical physics folks do that as a way to reconcile the glacial pace of scientific development with the urge to think and do something new and innovative. There are quite a few famous mathematicians who paid the bills with finance work. For instance, Gauss wrote insurance contracts and used his distribution to help price the risk. Of course, in modern times Jim Simons runs a hedge fund.
Good! There <i>should</i> be a bias against new things until the new things are proven to be correct.<p>Optimizing science based on "what do people who want to get tenure want" seems like a great way to be bad at science.
My aunt's been studying the sun magnetic field for decades. She has measured (yes, measured) parts of the sun inner magnetic field (quite complex to do actually). Div(B) not null there. She can't get it published because Maxwell's equations and it's a "new" discovery. Maxwell starts with "in the void", I think we can agreed that centre of the sun is not the void. It is incredible that scientist MEASURING stuff can't get its measures published in recognized science papers.
Is this bias, or does it just take time for other researchers to go into areas opened up by novel papers and then publish other papers that cite those novel papers?
Intuitively this sounds like confirmation for the current system. The thing is, that it takes time to understand truly novel research, while a measurement like the discovery of the Higgs has a immediate impact, because the Higgs mechanism was studied for 40 years.<p>(To be clear, I believe that the focus on citations is stupid for other reasons, but this does not seem to be a failure of the system.)
If anything I've heard the other thing - that it's hard to get published unless something is novel enough. There's not much interest in studies that just confirm or slightly extend, which is why reproducibility becomes an issue.
What if it is an education issue? Maybe by training young scientists for wayy too long before they start doing science, we "overtrain" them, and their mental models are over-fitted to current science. Naivete can sometimes be a major source of creativity (that's why people who cross disciplines sometimes have great impact).