Specifically right, generally wrong
Have I stumbled upon a dark pattern for generating engagement?
This week I wrote a piece for the new Research on Research Institute substack, Go Meta!
Generally, I am going to keep the metascience work out of this substack, Reasonable People, so if you want to keep in touch about that please read and subscribe over there (it’s an exciting area, with some links back to psychology and decision-making - after all, evaluating which projects to provide research funding for is a decision process, and can be studied as such like any other).
The piece this week jumped off a column in Nature by Gerald Schweiger, “Point of no returns: researchers are crossing a threshold in the fight for funding”, which argued that a specific funding call offered by the EU costs more in time for researchers to apply to and review than it distributed in research funding, and was so a complete waste of time and money for everyone.
I wrote to Nature to say this wasn’t so easy a call to make, and the substack piece is an expanded version of the argument.
To summarise very very briefly, Schweiger says that if a scheme costs more than the funds distributed it is a waste of money. I say, no, if the funds distributed generate more benefit than they cost to distribute it could still be net positive (this is, after all, the intention of research funding, to allow projects which wouldn’t otherwise happen, to lead to breakthroughs which advance knowledge etc).
I am not saying we can prove this positive case. Nor am I saying that current funding mechanisms can’t be improved. I am just saying it is hard to know, and Schweiger’s confidence that he does know is misplaced.
In making this case, I feel like I have stumbled on a dark pattern which generates further engagement. I’ve had lots of reactions, first to my letter, then to the substack.
A few people (notably including those who work in funding) have said it is so obvious it hardly needs saying. But most have set out to demonstrate to me how wrong I am.
The thing is, I am fairly confident I am very specifically right on this, and have been arguing my case for the last two weeks against the original author (who is very generous with my blunt disagreement), with the editors at Nature and RoRI, with comments on the substack, and via the socials.
I think the issue is that, regardless of my being specifically right, I am in a sense ‘generally wrong’. We may not be able to do the full accounting, but we share a deep suspicion that there must be a better way to distribute scarce research funds, that excessive competition harms research, that too much time is spent by researchers applying for funding, and that it simply shouldn’t cost as much to administer a research fund as that fund awards in funding.
It’s a new feeling for me. I am more used to being generally right and wrong on specifics. I wonder if some people deliberately exploit this pattern to generate engagement with their work. Say something technically correct, or correct about a specific case, although they are wrong on the generality, so they can provoke reactions, against which they double down.
It could be intoxicating if you like disagreement more. My epistemic commitment is that disagreement can be productive, and we benefit from the exchange of arguments and the uncovering of assumptions and so on. Emotionally, however, I don’t like it, so I’ll probably try and avoid it in the future, at least until I develop a thicker skin.
I’m still right on this one thing, though.
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Below, further reading and other things I’ve been thinking about.
Full piece from me: The point of no return? Diagnosing wasted effort in research funding is harder than it looks
Piece I am responding to: Point of no returns: researchers are crossing a threshold in the fight for funding
Good context by the same author (and colleagues): The costs of competition in distributing scarce research funds
Update: Faith in Reason
Last week I wrote about a study I had done, The effects of political disappointment. I managed to slingshot myself on the momentum of writing about the study here and have now submitted a version for publication. Thanks to everyone who provided feedback and enthusiasm.
If you prefer a more scholarly preparation (complete with the glory of the statistical analysis etc), you can read the preprint. Working title: Belief in the reasonableness of others: stability and responsiveness to electoral shock1
Here’s the abstract:
An improved survey measure for the belief in the reasonableness of others - the Faith in Reason scale - is tested on a representative sample of US voters. This measure shows there is a wide natural variation in responses, including across the political spectrum, and that the measure has a moderate test-retest stability after a two week delay. The 2024 US presidential election provides an opportunity for a planned quasi-experimental longitudinal investigation, demonstrating that the measure is responsive to events. Those disappointed by the election outcome reported a lowered belief in the reasonableness of others following the election. The post-election difference between those supporting the winning and losing candidates was large (Cohen's d = 0.77). Those whose confidence was highest in the opposite outcome, as demonstrated by willingness to wager on the size of their bonus payment for participation, demonstrated the largest reduction in their faith in reason, post-election.
Off-topic: White Moss
I read and loved White Moss, by Anna Nerkagi. Published in Russian in 1996, Nerkagi belongs to an indigenous nomadic people of the Russian Arctic, the Nenets. It's a story about wisdom, loss and love and the negotiation people have to make with tradition, age and the encroachments of other cultures.
The English translation was done by the brilliant Irina Sadovina and was published in January. Full disclosure, Irina is a friend, so I read this wanting to like it and bracing myself not to. Fortunately, it is as fantastic as she told me.
Irina has a substack: Overidentification.
Steinbeck’s Dialectic Bootstrap
Elsewhere, I wrote about Steinbeck’s Journal of A Novel, the letters he wrote while writing East of Eden. There’s a part where he describes splitting himself so he can have a conversation with himself while planning the book:
I split myself into three people. I know what they look like. One speculates and one criticises and the third tries to correlate. It usually turns out to be a fight but out of it comes the whole week’s work. And it is carried on in my mind in dialogue.
It reminds me of ‘dialectical bootstrap’ where people’s estimations can be improved by imagining what someone else would estimate along with what they would estimate.
We contain multitudes!
Link: The Journal of a Novel
… And finally
Cartoon from Grickle
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Comments? Feedback? Book recommendations? I am tom@idiolect.org.uk and on Mastodon at @tomstafford@mastodon.online
At the time of writing the moderator has not approved it, so the link might not work immediately.