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There are now 100s of studies from behaviour change sciences that show that humans take mental shortcuts to make decisions.

For instance we eat at a busy restaurant, because, as a rule of thumb, they will be better (social proof). Or we are more likely to trust somebody in a white coat (authority).

Has anybody studied academics to see if they make these same mental shortcuts?

Or do academics genuinely think and act differently?

This is prompted by articles below on predatory journal findings influencing government policy and Retraction Watch as well as research I've seen on the correlation between social media impact and citations.

If scientists do behave more like other humans, then there are substantial implications, not least for scientific communications.

https://retractionwatch.com/the-retraction-watch-leaderboard/top-10-most-highly-cited-retracted-papers/

https://blog.overton.io/do-articles-from-predatory-journals-make-their-way-into-policy

https://www.annalsthoracicsurgery.org/article/S0003-4975(20)30860-2/pdf

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    I would say we don't, on average, act substantially differently to the general population. Academics are human too and have biases and flaws just like everyone else. Even if we know better it doesn't mean we necessarily act differently (medical doctors smoking for example). The near universal (and usually mandatory) training in unconscious bias, diversity, etc which faculty are required to complete is further evidence that we still need to work on these things. I would argue that with any communication we need to keep in mind that humans are doing the communicating and none of us are perfect.
    – atom44
    Commented Oct 27, 2021 at 9:42
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    That busy restaurant? “Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded.” ~ Yogi Berra.
    – henning no longer feeds AI
    Commented Oct 27, 2021 at 10:26
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    @henning there's an interesting bit of research I've seen in one of the Robert Cialdini books on this. It suggests that sticking out from the crowd is an efficient behaviour in good times - it's a differentiation play. But in dangerous times we default to the herd.
    – Rob Blackie
    Commented Oct 27, 2021 at 11:10
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    It's one of the catchphrases of Academia SE that professors are people too :)
    – astronat supports the strike
    Commented Oct 27, 2021 at 12:03
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    It may help to define your target class more precisely. You mention both "academics" and "scientists" -- is the latter because you are asking about people familiar with psychology, or did this word inadvertently exclude the rest of academia? More broadly: are you using "academic" as a proxy for "smart, well-educated people", or are you intentionally making a distinction between academic research/teaching and other "cerebral" fields like law or medicine?
    – cag51 ♦
    Commented Oct 27, 2021 at 19:41

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Of course scientists are not super-humans. They are just as flawed as everybody else.

The point of the scientific method, however, is to use processes that make it harder for these types of failures to persist despite the fact that we are all merely humans with cognitive biases operating in a context of social, economic, and political pressures.

Things can get horribly distorted by those contexts, sometimes for long periods of time and at terrible human cost. At the end of the day, however, reality persists and science is the word we use for the methods that let us come to consensus on its nature.

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  • All true. I wonder though if 'just as flawed' has been quantified? ie Can we simply have a rule of thumb that scientists should communicate to other scientists as if they are also like other humans? If so then there are some big things to change. Starting with making academic papers massively more readable.
    – Rob Blackie
    Commented Oct 27, 2021 at 9:55
  • I believe that you are under-estimating the capabilities of non-scientist humans. We are all quite capable of scientific thinking, and scientists are quite capable of lucid communication when their peer communities demand it.
    – jakebeal
    Commented Oct 27, 2021 at 10:02
  • Daniel Kahneman talks about thinking fast (ie intuitive, short cuts) and slow (consciously thinking things through). I think this is a good model - ie all of us are capable of sophisticated thinking, but our default is to take short cuts. As I understand it (I'm an economist by training, not neuroscientist) this is probably because it takes less energy for your brain.
    – Rob Blackie
    Commented Oct 27, 2021 at 11:06
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    @RobBlackie and probably because when the saber-toothed tiger comes round the corner, thinking slowly about the best way to get out is an evolutionary disadvantage in most cases :)
    – henning no longer feeds AI
    Commented Oct 27, 2021 at 11:16
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    @RobBlackie The reason academic papers are the way they are is that (1) scientists are not only just as flawed but also just as bad at writing as other humans and (2) science demands precise and careful writing, because we are communicating precise and careful ideas; you can be precise, careful, and still readable, but it's hard.
    – user92734
    Commented Oct 27, 2021 at 18:00

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