Are scientific papers obsolete?
A recent article in the Guardian posed an exciting question: Should we get rid of the scientific paper? The author, Stuart Ritchie, goes on to list out all of the known flaws of the scientific publishing process. One of those flaws is that there is publication bias. Only articles that report on positive and exciting findings get published when in reality the negative studies are just as interesting.
You can’t prove a hypothesis
In fact, if you follow the logic of some of the great science philosophers such as Karl Popper you only learn something when you disprove a hypothesis (1). You can never prove a hypothesis. The commonplace example that explains this the best is that of white swans. If all you have ever seen are white swans you might hypothesize that all swans are white. When you find a black swan that disproves the hypothesis. But the more white swans you observe do not make the hypothesis that all swans are white more true. You only learn something with what is in effect a negative result. This is why Ritchie’s point about publication bias is more than just a skewing of the scientific literature it hits at the core of what science is about.
False peaks
Scientific papers can be a sort of false peak. The true peak is getting the intended innovation into use. In Collective Genius (2) the authors define innovation as the creation of something both novel and useful. When it comes to the life sciences and healthcare creating something novel is not difficult, creating something useful is. This point is often lost on researchers who stand dazzled in the light of a novel publication. Is it useful is a more important question. The fact that much of the published findings in the life sciences literature are not repeatable sort of answers that question. A research finding that is not repeatable is not useful. Even when the research findings are repeatable, it does not make them automatically useful. Despite decades of scientific papers on digital health solutions, we are just now seeing the beginnings of digital health widespread use.
Innovation leadership
The risk is that an overemphasis on publications diminishes the effort invested in resolving innovation bottlenecks. One could argue that given the consistently slow pace of translating research findings into clinical practice there is currently too much emphasis on publishing scientific papers. The question is not whether or not we should get rid of the scientific paper. It is what can be done to enable an increased focus on delivering useful innovations more rapidly.
What is needed is more innovation leadership. One of the best settings for developing skills as an innovation leader is a collaborative venture such as a consortium project or even a well-organized community or ecosystem. By their nature collaborative ventures focus on resolving innovation bottlenecks. Plus there is always more to do and new opportunities that arise which means there is a lot of potential for individuals in all phases of their careers to become innovation leaders. Perhaps instead of scientific papers, the degree to which someone has contributed to solving innovation bottlenecks should be the metric for judging researchers.
McLeod, S. A. (2020, May 01). Karl popper - theory of falsification. Simply Psychology. www.simplypsychology.org/Karl-Popper.html
Collective Genius, by Linda A. Hill, Greg Brandeau, Emily Truelove, and Kent Lineback
