Why Are Gamers So Much Better Than Scientists at Catching Fraud?
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Scientists even when working in the same area are working on different aspects or using different paradigms than other scientists so fraud can be much less evident. Also scientists aren't directly competing and there may be a cost to ones career of saying someone is a fraud when there isn't much of an incentive.
Different incentives, different barrier to entry. I think this is a pretty irresponsible article.
Catching a scientific cheater:
* You improve the collective knowledge of humanity.
* If the cheater is in your own country, you may also reduce the size of the grant-seeking pool
* Fame? I doubt it.
Catching a speed-run cheater:
* If you're a contender, you retain your place on the leaderboard
* Fame.
Note too that the baseline assumption in science is that while we can make mistakes, we're not fraudsters. The reason science advanced so far and so quickly is that we basically trust one another. The baseline assumption in competitive games is that there will be cheaters.
Several classes I had emphasized that peer reviewed journal papers were basically only good for reading their methods and results of those methods. And even those come with the baggage of "ok, but who put this out, because we know xyz groups make shit up all the time"
Whereas scientists would face backlash and some serious repercussions in their career if they falsely accused someone of something and had a collective witch hunt.
Bingo. It's usually not a good idea to expect groups to self police themselves - Doctors, Lawyers, Judges - they rarely hold themselves as accountable as outsiders.
The real issue for this in my mind - why the hell is this stuff still gatekeeping Before the internet journals made sense as a way to distribute content effectively - but content distribution is either a solved problem or should be a solved problem. Journals are relics that should die - need a scientific wiki or similar model to replace the journal concept.
Right now it's just a good 'ol boys club, like most professional organizations. Inject some external pressure and you will see the dynamics change.
In contrast Speedrunners are working on the same problem, and are intimately familiar with the details of their chosen games, are aware of all the tips and techniques one could use to get ahead, and if someone suspiciously pulls ahead of the pack, you bet they will analyze everything to the smallest minutiae.