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The Credit Incentive to Be a Maverick

Heesen, Remco (2018) The Credit Incentive to Be a Maverick. [Preprint]

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Abstract

There is a commonly made distinction between two types of scientists: risk-taking, trailblazing mavericks and detail-oriented followers. A number of recent papers have discussed the question what a desirable mixture of mavericks and followers looks like. Answering this question is most useful if a scientific community can be steered toward such a desirable mixture. One attractive route is through credit incentives: manipulating rewards so that reward-seeking scientists are likely to form the desired mixture of their own accord. Here I argue that (even in theory) this idea is less straightforward than it may seem. Interpreting mavericks as scientists who prioritize rewards over speed and risk, I show in a deliberatively simple model that there is a fixed mixture which is not particularly likely to be desirable and which credit incentives cannot alter. I consider a way around this result, but this has some major drawbacks. I conclude that credit incentives are not as promising a way to create a desirable mixture of mavericks and followers as one might have thought.


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Item Type: Preprint
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Heesen, Remcoremco.heesen@uwa.edu.au0000-0003-3823-944X
Keywords: Philosophy of science; Mavericks; Social epistemology; Formal epistemology; Credit economy
Subjects: General Issues > Decision Theory
General Issues > Science Education
General Issues > Science and Policy
Depositing User: Remco Heesen
Date Deposited: 26 Sep 2018 15:35
Last Modified: 26 Sep 2018 15:35
Item ID: 15059
Subjects: General Issues > Decision Theory
General Issues > Science Education
General Issues > Science and Policy
Date: 12 June 2018
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/15059

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