HHS Secretary RFK Jr is proposing banning NIH-funded researchers from publishing in top-tier journals, including JAMA and Lancet.
This is bonkers for all sorts of reasons, but let me just mention one. He points out that Lancet has retracted articles. This is factually correct, but it's a reason these journals are *more* trustworthy, not less.
Journals and peer review don't guarantee that what's published is "correct". It's merely the best process we have to get closer to finding the truth.
@mattblaze as a society we have a deep seated problem around acknowledging errors and mistakes. We have somehow created a culture where for a whole lot of people making a mistake and owning up to it is seen as somehow an existentially hard thing to do that they refuse to do at any cost.
This seems absurd to a whole lot of us who recognize that it is a sign of strength not weakness to acknowledge your errors and mistakes, to learn from them, to retract them, to make amends and fix them
@Rycaut okay but you have to keep in mind that we have been trained to view empathy as a disadvantage, and thus humility as a weakness. it could interfere with individually beneficial transactional interaction which, be it social, cultural or economic, has been inculcated as Fundamental Human Nature.
we have a few pretty solid broadly applied base level assumptions that are going to have to be chipped away at. as individuals, it's easy to recognise that this is bad, but when schools, governments, public services, research projects, hospitals and churches are all expected to turn a profit first and foremost, mistakes are costly, admitting to them are even more so.
Matt Blaze
Shannon Clark
the gripe ibis