The Solution to Science's Replication Crisis

TL;DR

This paper proposes a new ecosystem called capitalist science, where scientists sell research findings through transactions that incentivize accuracy, aiming to solve the replication crisis by rewarding truthful information and penalizing inaccuracies.

Contribution

It introduces a novel economic framework for scientific exchange that aligns incentives with truthfulness, addressing the replication crisis in science.

Findings

Incentive structures promote honest reporting of research results.

Transactions enforce accountability and accuracy in scientific communication.

The ecosystem aims to improve reproducibility and reliability of scientific findings.

Abstract

The solution to science's replication crisis is a new ecosystem in which scientists sell what they learn from their research. In each pairwise transaction, the information seller makes (loses) money if he turns out to be correct (incorrect). Responsibility for the determination of correctness is delegated, with appropriate incentives, to the information purchaser. Each transaction is brokered by a central exchange, which holds money from the anonymous information buyer and anonymous information seller in escrow, and which enforces a set of incentives facilitating the transfer of useful, bluntly honest information from the seller to the buyer. This new ecosystem, capitalist science, directly addresses socialist science's replication crisis by explicitly rewarding accuracy and penalizing inaccuracy.