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SUMMARY:Why the priority rule does not exist - Remco Heesen (Faculty of Ph
 ilosophy)
DTSTART:20170315T130000Z
DTEND:20170315T143000Z
UID:TALK70725@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:31287
DESCRIPTION:Scientists are rewarded for their work with prestige\, and thi
 s prestige \nis allocated according to the priority rule. The priority rul
 e says that \nthe first scientist to make a discovery takes all the credit
  for it. \nThis helps philosophers predict what kinds of behavior scientis
 ts are \nincentivized to engage in. We argue that there is no such thing a
 s the \npriority rule: what counts as a discovery and how much credit is a
 warded \nfor a given discovery makes all the difference insofar as determi
 ning \nscientists’ actual incentives is concerned. We show this in two w
 ays. \nFirst\, we briefly review Strevens’ account of the optimality of 
 the \npriority rule for the division of cognitive labor and show that his 
 \nargument breaks down when slightly more complicated cases are \nconsider
 ed. Second\, we introduce a new game-theoretic model of \nscientists aimin
 g to maximize credit in a context where only \nstatistically significant r
 esults are publishable (as is roughly the \ncase for a number of scientifi
 c fields). We show that under some prima \nfacie plausible interpretations
  of the priority rule this model \ngenerates very bad results – scientis
 ts claiming discoveries on the \nbasis of essentially no evidence. This pr
 oblem is avoided when the \npriority rule is augmented with a rule that sa
 ys more credit is awarded \ndepending on the level of rigor with which a d
 iscovery is shown to hold\, \nbut this represents a significant departure 
 from the priority rule.\n\nThe talk is based on joint work with Kevin Zoll
 man (Carnegie Mellon \nUniversity).
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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