Other approaches like post-publication review or open peer review are interesting but don't really solve the labour problem. As Melinda says, the main thing that would help is more permanent funded academic jobs where researchers have the time and space to conduct peer reviews, but that's unlikely!

few major peer reviewed journals and everything else just preprinted wouldn't work in a world where peer reviewed articles are the hard currency of promotion in the sciences - although narrative CVs that prioritise a "top 3 papers" approach can help combat a race for quantity over quality.

in peer review at the moment but its very difficult to see a solution. Paying reviewers is antithetical to many who think reviewers need to be unbiased and 'disinterested' (its also unclear how it would work in a world of 10 second AI reviews - would you pay based on quality?). Having a system of a

defending the institution of science from outside influences (e.g. government officials questioning why they couldn't just decide what to fund rather than having academic grant panels). I also found the discussion on the future of peer review interesting: There is undoubtedly a labour problem

purpose was to take the pressure off overworked editorial boards or allow editors to avoid embarrassment when rejecting their peers' work! The idea that peer review is a crucial part of a 'legitimizing' process that separates real scientific knowledge from pseudoscience came later from scientists

There’s some interesting ideas around different funding models – e.g. century grants that last for 100 years – that could provide alternatives. Whether radical ideas like this are practical or palatable in the current neoliberal political climate is another question though.

Why is it that our system is designed in such a way that a research career is typically made up of multiple 2-3 year project-focused positions rather than just getting a job for life straight out of your PhD? Is this the best way to make scientific progress?

But what it tends to neglect are labour relations – casualisation, precarity, etc, that may contribute more to researchers’ actual experience of a ‘culture’ at work. What’s interesting is how these ideas relate to metascience’s core agenda of improving scientific progress.

by @felicitycallard.bsky.social here (doi.org/10.1111/area...) that argues the term is closely linked to the concept of an “organizational culture”, which predominantly focuses on psychological concepts of leadership, employee relationships, institutional social norms etc. These can be important...

From my personal experience, and maybe because of its close links with the REF, I’ve encountered “Research culture” as a bit of a vague concept associated with research strategy buzzwords, consultation events, and organizational PR. There’s an excellent article...

and essential (ditto the damaging gender stereotypes)” and that “improving research isn't just about tools. It's about people, values, and the conditions under which great research gets done”. However, there’s critical opinion about the limitations of actual research culture initiatives.

with @catdavies.bsky.social when she points out the unhelpful stereotypical distinctions, that “research culture has been incorrectly framed as something soft and nice-to-have, with all the gender implications that brings… Metascience on the other hand is construed as objective, robust...

The point isn't about pharma in particular anyway, it's about any industry potentially laundering its evidence and promoting its product through close links with academic research. Big Tobacco funding health research, Big oil funding climate change research etc. Metascience is not immune.

There's entire books written about the flawed research practices and aggressive marketing of Big pharma so I'm not gonna try and convince you in 280 characters. I also can't really understand how you square "it's extremely naive to distrust tech companies" with "you should always be skeptical"

Big pharma and big tech might have *slightly* more influence and money to spend on advertising, PR, media spin, obfuscation of COIs, and other methods of epistemic corruption than a grad student

I'm not :( just living it vicariously through hashtags I'm afraid.. but thanks for the recommendations!