But things that work from a god’s-eye view don’t work from within the system. No individual scientist has an incentive to unilaterally switch to the new statistical technique for her own research, since it would make her research less likely to produce earth-shattering results and since it would just confuse all the other scientists. They just have an incentive to want everybody else to do it, at which point they would follow along. And no individual journal has an incentive to unilaterally switch to early registration and publishing negative results, since it would just mean their results are less interesting than that other journal who only publishes ground-breaking discoveries. From within the system, everyone is following their own incentives and will continue to do so.
You can, as an individual scientist, start praising and giving status to any other scientist who follow stricter guidelines than the average, and comment negatively on any scientist that’s using guidelines that are laxer than the average and your own. Eventually really lax scientist stop having an edge, slightly stricter scientists gain it and the standards in the field move up.
It doesn’t require simultaneous coordination and it’s a rule of thumb any scientist can adopt without harming their own fitness too much.
This was amazingly good.
On a side note:
You can, as an individual scientist, start praising and giving status to any other scientist who follow stricter guidelines than the average, and comment negatively on any scientist that’s using guidelines that are laxer than the average and your own. Eventually really lax scientist stop having an edge, slightly stricter scientists gain it and the standards in the field move up.
It doesn’t require simultaneous coordination and it’s a rule of thumb any scientist can adopt without harming their own fitness too much.