Reliable shortcuts

There’s an old saying that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.

I think that’s true of shortcuts, not mousetraps.

Everyone wants reliable shortcuts. They don’t want to have to assess every available option every single time.

Best seller lists, Consumer Reports, “Two thumbs up!” from Siskel and Ebert, “Certified fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes, “People also shopped for” on Amazon, “Five stars” on Yelp!, and awards shows are all efforts to create shortcuts.

An amazing number of arguments in academia are about shortcuts. Almost every debate about tenure and promotion and assessments of academics I have seen or read is about shortcuts. Arguments about the GRE are about shortcuts.

I got thinking about shortcuts because of this article on what journals go into PubMed.

For some members of the scientific community, the presence of predatory journals, publications that tend to churn out low-quality content and engage in unethical publishing practices—has been a pressing concern.

Rebecca Burdine is among the concerned, because she advised people to use PubMed as a shortcut.

I could tell parents “researching” their rare disease of interest that if it wasn’t on PubMed, then it shouldn’t be given lots of weight as a source.

Stephen Floor thinks the problem is even wider:

This has also contributed to the undermining of “peer reviewed” as a measure of validity.

But again, “peer reviewed” is a shortcut. Anyone who’s been in scientific publishing for a while knows that assessing scientific evidence is messy and complicated. Every working scientist has their own “That should never have gotten past peer review!” story.

We will never, ever get rid of shortcuts. People crave certainty and simple decision making rules. But we should talk about using shortcuts in science in realistic ways.

It is not reasonable to expect any shortcut to be perfectly reliable all the time. Don’t ask, “Which shortcut is better?” but “How can I use a few different shortcuts?”

Unfortunately, scientists who understand the nuances of a situation often do a shoddy job of conveying that nuance. Or maybe they just get tired of being pressed for shortcuts. So we have kind of brought this on ourselves.

External links

Academics Raise Concerns About Predatory Journals on PubMed