So if it’s true that most publications are uninteresting and if it’s true that most academics have to publish at a high rate in order to protect their career and send the right signals we don’t want to punish and humiliate academics for publishing stupid ideas or badly executed experiments. And when you publish a paper that demonstrates the other party did a terrible job it does exactly that. The signal to noise ratio in academic journals wouldn’t increase by much but suddenly academics can simply reach their paper quota by picking the ideas of other academics apart
Surely it’s better to have academics picking apart crap than producing crap.
Not necessarily. Ignoring crap may be a better strategy than picking it apart.
Cooperation is also easier when different groups in the same research area don’t try too hard to invalidate each other’s claims. If the problem in question is interesting you’re much better off writing your own paper on it with your own claims and results. You can dismiss the other paper with a single paragraph: “Contrary to the findings of I.C. Wiener in [2] we observe that...” and leave it at that.
The system is entirely broken but I don’t see an easy way to make it better.
Surely it’s better to have academics picking apart crap than producing crap.
Not necessarily. Ignoring crap may be a better strategy than picking it apart.
Cooperation is also easier when different groups in the same research area don’t try too hard to invalidate each other’s claims. If the problem in question is interesting you’re much better off writing your own paper on it with your own claims and results. You can dismiss the other paper with a single paragraph: “Contrary to the findings of I.C. Wiener in [2] we observe that...” and leave it at that.
The system is entirely broken but I don’t see an easy way to make it better.