The "broken clock" reaction to politics in science
We wanted Republicans to agree eventually, not now.
Retraction Watch published a guest post “NIH-funded replication studies are not the answer to the reproducibility crisis in pre-clinical research” recently. It was alarming to supporters of replication and, apparently, supporters of political independence.
The post, by image integrity sleuth Michael Rossner, now has a response from Csaba Szabo whose book I am forced to thoroughly recommend because he's right about a lot of things, notably the endless promotion of replication crisis interventions that are “palatable to official stakeholders but have neither worked nor will ever really work.”
Dr. Szabo has also been willing to reach across the proverbial aisle. I don't know what his political leanings are and don't need to, but the aisle is generally to the right of most researchers and his suspicion that “pushback may be less about the substance of the proposals and more about political dislike of those proposing them” is unavoidable. (Dr. Rossner denies having political motivation and that could be true.) Dr. Szabo has supported NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, someone who has a “restore debate,” and forgive-your-political-opponents platform.
I also responded to Dr. Rossner, and wrote a similar response to Holden Thorp’s op-ed this week with the restrained title of “No YOU’RE a slug” on the same topic. Thorp’s op-ed is also a response to the Republican adoption of the replication crisis, and has more endless promotion of interventions that don't work.
My response to the Retraction Watch post is below. The usual promise to link to or publish rebuttal applies.
The head of the Center for Open Science, Brian Nosek, recently commented on Trump's “Gold standard of science” executive order. “If I was just reading section 3,... I’d be delighted - oh, fantastic! These are the things I talk about all the time - that it is my mission to advance, that the open science movement has been advocating for.” This was despite Brian's vociferous opposition to other parts of the order and to Trump in general.
In other words, “even a broken clock is right twice a day.” I agree. I am forced to agree because broken clocks are indeed right twice a day, and administrations I disagree with can say things I'm forced to agree with because that’s how true things work. They're independent of what I necessarily want.
The essay by Dr. Rossner is slightly different. It is a claim that broken clocks are not right twice a day and there is nothing to agree with in Trump's policies even the one generically about giving billions of dollars to replication. The author carefully evades being associated with Trump even though it's hard to tell what the difference is between science being “an iterative process” and funding replication. The broken clock is wrong at 2 PM because it’s actually 2 in the afternoon?
The essay is not only political, it is inaccurate. “Failure to replicate once does not mean that you won't replicate on the second, third, or fourth attempt.” It does mean you are less likely to replicate, otherwise we’re in real trouble. And scientists “replicating their own work enough times before deciding it is ready for publication” without publishing the failures is malpractice.
I say this not because I want to debate whether or not Trump is a bad man, or explore how thoroughly screwed I am having said the same thing as he did. I say this because the incredibly important topic of reproducibility crisis interventions has been plagued for ten to twenty years with one important flaw. We need adversaries in science but we don't want, you know, adversaries. Not people who are against us so much that we have to change. People who are against us just enough so we don't have to change.
One tactic I would suggest is to have ideas that even people who disagree with you on a fundamental level are forced to agree with. An idea is no good if only people with the same interests agree with it, and it's doubly no good if it's a perfect litmus test. Reject any idea that perfectly divides interest groups. It’s probably more interest than idea.
If you might have a liberal bias, ask an average conservative to critique it. If they’re able to poke holes in it based on common sense, it's probably not a good idea. As a non-academic, and non-PhD-holder I experience this all the time. I am in literal and virtual rooms full of PhDs frequently. The most popular ideas for reproducibility crisis reforms could be debunked by literate high schoolers or ChatGPT. Usually, refuting the latest reproducibility crisis reform is as simple as asking, “what if researchers don't want to, and don’t?” Researchers are regularly switching outcomes on their RCTs, and rigor is not often taught in schools. I don't think less tightly-regulated interventions, or less incontrovertible ones will work given that track record.
On the problem of being associated with the Trump administration, my advice to the open science movement is to say what's true, even if it hurts. The more it hurts, the more trust you will gain. So there’s no time like the present.