Roberts, naturally, has substantial interest in avoiding any criticism, and the work of people like Ioannides and the eternal life of the publication bias says that if anything, we are insufficiently critical...
I think we’re looking at the wrong kind of criticism. Like, the kind of criticism you can make with almost equal ease of results that will and won’t turn out to replicate later.
As you know, I agree with you that Roberts is incorrigibly biased, and I liked your earlier post on this. But I think we can be critical in the sense you have in mind, and still try to cultivate the attitude that I take Roberts to be hinting at. Perhaps this is not very clear in the passage I chose to quote though.
From an outside view, how can we distinguish this virtue-of-flawed-research from insiders refraining from criticizing each other for the sake of the reputation of the research field?
Virtue of flawed research insiders won’t not criticise the flaws, but they will follow up on them with further studies expanding on a point or fixing a methodology.
The problem that Roberts might be criticising is the sort of thinking that goes: I’ve made a criticism, now we can forget about the thing.
Roberts, naturally, has substantial interest in avoiding any criticism, and the work of people like Ioannides and the eternal life of the publication bias says that if anything, we are insufficiently critical...
I think we’re looking at the wrong kind of criticism. Like, the kind of criticism you can make with almost equal ease of results that will and won’t turn out to replicate later.
As you know, I agree with you that Roberts is incorrigibly biased, and I liked your earlier post on this. But I think we can be critical in the sense you have in mind, and still try to cultivate the attitude that I take Roberts to be hinting at. Perhaps this is not very clear in the passage I chose to quote though.
From an outside view, how can we distinguish this virtue-of-flawed-research from insiders refraining from criticizing each other for the sake of the reputation of the research field?
Virtue of flawed research insiders won’t not criticise the flaws, but they will follow up on them with further studies expanding on a point or fixing a methodology.
The problem that Roberts might be criticising is the sort of thinking that goes: I’ve made a criticism, now we can forget about the thing.