文章指出在科学领域，模因性并非由最有能力的研究者决定，而是由中位数研究者决定，此为“中位数研究者问题”。以科学领域中多数从业者对统计学等理解不足为例进行说明，并提及该问题的一些证据。还阐述了中位数研究者问题的两个有趣影响，一是小而聪明的研究社区可能凭借更好的内部模因选择压力胜过整个领域，但该领域可能不认可；二是像LessWrong这样的社区符合可能胜过整个大领域的条件，但那些领域未必认可它为思想领袖。

🧐文章提出在科学领域中存在'中位数研究者问题'，即该领域的模因性主要由中位数研究者而非最有能力的研究者决定。例如在一些科学领域，多数从业者对统计学等理解不佳，导致很多工作虽存在问题但仍广泛传播。

📜文中提到一些支持该观点的证据，如在复制危机前就有人对不良统计实践发出警告，但实践并未改变；且在复制危机中，不同领域学生的平均智商差距较大，这表明该模型在一定程度上是真实的。

🌟中位数研究者问题有两个有趣影响。一是小而优秀的研究社区可能因有更好的内部模因选择压力而相对容易地超越整个领域，但该领域大多不会认可。二是像LessWrong这样具有高智商用户、熟悉统计学和经济学的社区，虽有可能胜过整个大领域，却未必被那些领域认可为思想领袖。

Published on November 2, 2024 8:16 PM GMT

Claim: memeticity in a scientific field is mostly determined, not by the most competent researchers in the field, but instead by roughly-median researchers. We’ll call this the “median researcher problem”.

Prototypical example: imagine a scientific field in which the large majority of practitioners have a very poor understanding of statistics, p-hacking, etc. Then lots of work in that field will be highly memetic despite trash statistics, blatant p-hacking, etc. Sure, the most competent people in the field may recognize the problems, but the median researchers don’t, and in aggregate it’s mostly the median researchers who spread the memes.

(Defending that claim isn’t really the main focus of this post, but a couple pieces of legible evidence which are weakly in favor:

People did in fact try to sound the alarm about poor statistical practices well before the replication crisis, and yet practices did not change, so clearly at least some people did in fact see the problem and were in fact not memetically successful at the time. The claim is more general than just statistics-competence and replication, but at least in the case of the replication crisis it seems like the model must be at least somewhat true.Again using the replication crisis as an example, you may have noticed the very wide (like, 1 sd or more) average IQ gap between students in most fields which turned out to have terrible replication rates and most fields which turned out to have fine replication rates.

… mostly, though, the reason I believe the claim is from seeing how people in fact interact with research and decide to spread it.)

Two interesting implications of the median researcher problem:

A small research community of unusually smart/competent/well-informed people can relatively-easily outperform a whole field, by having better internal memetic selection pressures.… and even when that does happen, the broader field will mostly not recognize it; the higher-quality memes within the small community are still not very fit in the broader field.

In particular, LessWrong sure seems like such a community. We have a user base with probably-unusually-high intelligence, community norms which require basically everyone to be familiar with statistics and economics, we have fuzzier community norms explicitly intended to avoid various forms of predictable stupidity, and we definitely have our own internal meme population. It’s exactly the sort of community which can potentially outperform whole large fields, because of the median researcher problem. On the other hand, that does not mean that those fields are going to recognize LessWrong as a thought-leader or whatever.

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