Yea, there are huge systemic issues in research funding and publishing. Did you know researchers have to pay journals for a chance to get their work published? And the peer reviewers are not paid? You'd think it would be the otherway around - the journals would be paying researchers for the best content, and the expertise of peer review would be valued!
One of the most obvious problems of this system is it makes it difficult for outsiders to break into published academia (an environment with the slogan 'publish or perish'), particularly as it essentially requires someone to bankroll researchers. Gatekeepers for funding can ensure only research with favourable findings will ever make it to completion, let alone print.
You mention all the studies being paid to find the same results, but actually in many ways it is the opposite - reproducability of results is core to science, YET in realistic terms the academic system only really values research which produces new findings. This means if 300 studies reproduce a finding, but one study (by chance of data, rather than actual reflection of reality) contradicts the establishment, the controversial study will be the one getting published, putting it on an even pegging with the prior published study (even though the original study has 300 unpublished replications supporting it and the contradictory study has nothing behind it at all).
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12-14-2025, 08:43 AM
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