John Arnold: evaluation

Transcript context

…Do you think other funders now demand more evidence, or that’s failed? I think they demand more evidence. I think there’s also more poor-quality evidence out there. The supply has met the demand. We started this whole line of work about what we called scientific integrity, academic integrity on how do you improve the process and the incentive system of academic research because there was this realization we had that everybody in the chain was incentivized to find the positive result, whether it was the funder, the academic, the university, the journal, or the popular press. Everybody wanted to find and publicize the positive result, and so there were a lot of positive results that were coming out that were either done with low bars of integrity and quality, or at the extreme end — and this is relatively rare — but bordering on absolute fraud in the industry. Let’s say I’m a person of great means, and I come to you. I say, “John, I think prison is immoral, but I don’t want to just release Charles Manson. Where should I put my philanthropic efforts?” What do you tell them? What have you learned?…

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