Asking scientists to keep their paper titles hedge-drift-resistant means (1) asking each individual scientist to do something that will reduce the visibility of their work relative to others’, for the sake of a global benefit—a class of policy that for obvious reasons doesn’t have a great track record—and (2) asking them to give their papers titles that are boring and wordy.
I agree that the world might be a better place if scientists consistently did this. But it doesn’t seem very likely to happen.
(Also, here’s what might happen if they almost consistently did this: the better, more conscientious scientists all write carefully hedged articles with carefully hedged titles, and journalists ignore all of them because they all sound like “Correlational analysis of OCEAN traits weakly suggest slight association between conscientiousness and Y-chromosome haplogroup O3”. A few less careful scientists write lower-quality papers that, among other things, have titles like “The Chinese work harder: correlational analysis of OCEAN traits and genotype”, and those are the ones that the journalists pick up. These are also the ones without the careful hedging in the actual analysis, without serious attempts to correct for multiple correlations, etc. So we end up with worse stuff in the press.)
I don’t think they have to be wordy as much as conservative in their claims.
Also honestly the state of science journalism is so utterly abysmal it’s a whole other discussion. I don’t know how much point there is in worrying about how “this will select for the more clickbait-y, inaccurate takes”: we already have selection for those anyway, and it’s so bad I doubt it can get significantly worse. Yours is not a hypothetical scenario, it’s how things are now. The thing that we’d need would be journals straight up enforcing guidelines for titles that do not allow unclear or ambiguous claims.
The form of conservatism that the OP is about is (I think pretty much necessarily) one that makes for wordier and less eye-catching titles.
I agree that the state of science journalism is bad. I don’t think I agree that it couldn’t get significantly worse. I think having stronger norms saying that conscientious scientists should avoid “eye-catching, hedge-free titles and/or abstracts”, etc., might end up making it either better or worse, and my money is on worse. More specificity about the mechanism: I conjecture that journalists will quite reliably ignore anything that isn’t eye-catching and not-too-hedged; if it’s fairly common for even good scientists to give their papers such titles, then some of what journalists pick up will be good science, albeit incautiously expressed; if all the good scientists are being too careful for that, then all of what journalists pick up will be bad science.
I think roughly conscientious scientists already try doing that today, that’s why I’m saying this isn’t a hypothetical. Having a stronger norm might lead to more of them doing that; some defectors would always remain of course, but maybe they would at least be regarded less well within their own community. Forget journalists, right now we have a problem even with academic journals being biased towards catchy positive results.
if it’s fairly common for even good scientists to give their papers such titles
Depends also about what we’re talking about. Honestly my experience is that the most stand out type of paper title isn’t necessarily “sensational claim” as much as “tongue in cheek reference”, which is a pretty neutral concession to visibility. It’s a very field-dependent problem, though. But title-wise, I think the worst of the drift happens in press releases and then through journalists. You can make paper titles catchy without making them state any claim (easy pattern: just state WHAT you’re looking at, like “Studying the relationship of X and Y” instead of “Positive correlation of Y with X” or whatever).
Good points. I agree that what you write within parentheses is a potential problem. Indeed, it is a problem for many kinds of far-reaching norms on altruistic behaviour compliance with which is hard to observe: they might handicap conscientious people relative to less conscientious people to such an extent that the norms do more harm than good.
I also agree that individualistic solutions to collective problems have a chequered record. The point of 1)-3) was rather to indicate how you potentially could reduce hedge drift, given that you want to do that. To get scientists and others to want to reduce hedge drift is probably a harder problem.
In conversation, Ben Levinstein suggested that it is partly the editors’ role to frame articles in a way such that hedge drift doesn’t occur. There is something to that, though it is of course also true that editors often have incentives to encourage hedge drift as well.
Asking scientists to keep their paper titles hedge-drift-resistant means (1) asking each individual scientist to do something that will reduce the visibility of their work relative to others’, for the sake of a global benefit—a class of policy that for obvious reasons doesn’t have a great track record—and (2) asking them to give their papers titles that are boring and wordy.
I agree that the world might be a better place if scientists consistently did this. But it doesn’t seem very likely to happen.
(Also, here’s what might happen if they almost consistently did this: the better, more conscientious scientists all write carefully hedged articles with carefully hedged titles, and journalists ignore all of them because they all sound like “Correlational analysis of OCEAN traits weakly suggest slight association between conscientiousness and Y-chromosome haplogroup O3”. A few less careful scientists write lower-quality papers that, among other things, have titles like “The Chinese work harder: correlational analysis of OCEAN traits and genotype”, and those are the ones that the journalists pick up. These are also the ones without the careful hedging in the actual analysis, without serious attempts to correct for multiple correlations, etc. So we end up with worse stuff in the press.)
I don’t think they have to be wordy as much as conservative in their claims.
Also honestly the state of science journalism is so utterly abysmal it’s a whole other discussion. I don’t know how much point there is in worrying about how “this will select for the more clickbait-y, inaccurate takes”: we already have selection for those anyway, and it’s so bad I doubt it can get significantly worse. Yours is not a hypothetical scenario, it’s how things are now. The thing that we’d need would be journals straight up enforcing guidelines for titles that do not allow unclear or ambiguous claims.
The form of conservatism that the OP is about is (I think pretty much necessarily) one that makes for wordier and less eye-catching titles.
I agree that the state of science journalism is bad. I don’t think I agree that it couldn’t get significantly worse. I think having stronger norms saying that conscientious scientists should avoid “eye-catching, hedge-free titles and/or abstracts”, etc., might end up making it either better or worse, and my money is on worse. More specificity about the mechanism: I conjecture that journalists will quite reliably ignore anything that isn’t eye-catching and not-too-hedged; if it’s fairly common for even good scientists to give their papers such titles, then some of what journalists pick up will be good science, albeit incautiously expressed; if all the good scientists are being too careful for that, then all of what journalists pick up will be bad science.
I think roughly conscientious scientists already try doing that today, that’s why I’m saying this isn’t a hypothetical. Having a stronger norm might lead to more of them doing that; some defectors would always remain of course, but maybe they would at least be regarded less well within their own community. Forget journalists, right now we have a problem even with academic journals being biased towards catchy positive results.
Depends also about what we’re talking about. Honestly my experience is that the most stand out type of paper title isn’t necessarily “sensational claim” as much as “tongue in cheek reference”, which is a pretty neutral concession to visibility. It’s a very field-dependent problem, though. But title-wise, I think the worst of the drift happens in press releases and then through journalists. You can make paper titles catchy without making them state any claim (easy pattern: just state WHAT you’re looking at, like “Studying the relationship of X and Y” instead of “Positive correlation of Y with X” or whatever).
Good points. I agree that what you write within parentheses is a potential problem. Indeed, it is a problem for many kinds of far-reaching norms on altruistic behaviour compliance with which is hard to observe: they might handicap conscientious people relative to less conscientious people to such an extent that the norms do more harm than good.
I also agree that individualistic solutions to collective problems have a chequered record. The point of 1)-3) was rather to indicate how you potentially could reduce hedge drift, given that you want to do that. To get scientists and others to want to reduce hedge drift is probably a harder problem.
In conversation, Ben Levinstein suggested that it is partly the editors’ role to frame articles in a way such that hedge drift doesn’t occur. There is something to that, though it is of course also true that editors often have incentives to encourage hedge drift as well.