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Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 27, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Biggest cause of the replication crisis is that investigating something and finding nothing is very low status in the sciences. Testing a hypothesis and finding nothing is very useful information for future scientists / the field, and people pay lip service to supporting/publishing failure study outcomes. In practice, though, nobody cares and nobody gets promoted for not proving something and so academics are very strongly incentivized to bullshit.