CAREER: Incentives, Diversity, and Scientific Problem Choice

该职业奖支持研究使用广泛的经济方法开发更统一的科学激励理论。该项目的教育和培训方面包括一系列活动，如课程开发、本科生暑期学校和研究生指导。利用经济建模和计算机模拟，该项目旨在了解科学家通常面临的激励（获得资金，获得晋升，发表论文等）如何促进或损害科学的进步。政策制定者、科学评论员和科学家自己已经开始担心，这种激励措施会鼓励科学家从事对整个科学产生反作用的行为，比如选择不会显著推进知识的项目，或者歪曲甚至捏造他们的发现。这个项目的目的是揭示科学家所面临的激励与他们的最终行为之间的潜在关系，而不是专注于单个案例研究，这有时可能会产生误导。该项目的结果将有助于揭示是否有理由担心当代科学的状况。在动机不一致的地方，调查人员将尝试提出替代方法。潜在的更广泛的影响这个项目的结果可能最终有助于指导科学政策制定者理解如何建立一个奖励科学的制度，使科学事业最有效。他们可能会提出建议，通过提高科学发现的速度和可靠性来更有效地利用公共资金。该项目还包括一些教学活动，如新生研讨会、经济学哲学课程、哲学家数学建模暑期学校课程的材料，以及改进的逻辑和形式认识论本科暑期学校课程材料的传播。这种工作非常适合让学生在相当短的时间内参与到相当高的水平。

IntroductionThis CAREER award supports research to develop a more unified theory of scientific incentives using a broadly economic methodology. The educational and training aspects of the project includes a number of activities such as course development, a summer school for undergraduates, and mentoring of graduate students. Intellectual MeritUtilizing economic modeling and computer simulation, this project aims to understand how incentives typically faced by scientists (to secure funding, get promoted, publish papers, etc.) facilitate or harm the advancement of science. Policymakers, science commentators, and scientists themselves have begun to worry that such incentives encourage scientists to engage in behaviors that would be counterproductive to science as a whole such as choosing projects that will not significantly advance knowledge, or misrepresenting or even fabricating their findings. Rather than focusing on single case studies, which can sometimes be misleading, this project aims to uncover the underlying relationships between the incentives faced by scientists and their ultimate behavior. The results from the project will help to uncover whether there is reason to worried about the state of contemporary science. Where the incentives are misaligned, the investigators will attempt to suggest alternative methods.Potential Broader ImpactsThe results from this project could eventually help to guide science policymakers in understanding how to create a reward system for science that will make the enterprise of science most efficient. They may serve to suggest recommendations that would make more efficient use of public money by enhancing the rate and reliability of scientific discoveries. The project also includes a number of pedagogical activities such as a freshman seminar, a philosophy of economics course, materials for a summer school course in mathematical modeling for philosophers, and improved dissemination of materials for an undergraduate summer school course in logic and formal epistemology. This sort of work is well suited to getting students involved at a fairly high level in fairly short order.