Systemic Problems in Academia: The Positive Publication Bias and Solutions from a Human Factors Perspective

© Gaillard et al. 2022 It will come as no surprise to readers of this journal that failure is systematically ignored in academia. The entire culture of academia revolves around a notion of linear progress made in leaps and bounds by great thinkers, rather than the more realistic image of science as an ongoing process of trial and error. For those already convinced that error deserves a place in scientific discussion, it is often tempting to treat the dismissal of failure as a moral failure on the part of researchers and publishers—if only we were more courageous to do the work that science demands of us, we would publish our failures all the time; if it was not for journals rejecting my work because it is not “innovative” enough, I would tell everyone of my important failures. This perspective, while understandable, misses the mark. Specifically, it neglects the structure of modern academia that perpetuates an ideal of “success-first” science on all fronts—a structure, like any structure, that severely limits researchers’ and journals’ ability to change it. This point is described superbly in a recent editorial piece by public health researchers Rebecca Sindall and Dani Barrington (2020), who point out the many barriers to sharing and promoting scholarly understandings of failure in the public health interventionist field of Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH), which they experienced personally as well. In their in the Journal of Trial and Error’s (JOTE) first issue, the authors argue not only for the role of researchers themselves in pursuing submission and publication of reports of what went wrong, but also of funding partners in sharing information about projects that did not ”turn out as planned,” and importantly, for the responsibility of journals in welcoming such sort of publications. Critically, they argue that the widespread fixation on “novelty” contributes to a ”culture of success-ism” that is ”highly unscientific”. In short, the outward-facing sheen of scientific success—propagated by scientists, funders, and stakeholders alike—challenges the very foundations scientific development is built on: transparency, collaboration, and trial and error. Sindall and Barrington (2020) paint a compelling picture of an academic system that struggles to find a place for failure and the “multitude of sins” such a system necessarily perpetuates. Rightly so, they place the responsibility for change not only on researchers, but also funders and publication bodies. But the buck doesn’t stop here. The same culture of success-ism that limits researchers limits individual publishers as well. The problem is diffuse and the blame cannot be laid on a single “bad actor”. Accordingly, we feel it pertinent to extend Sindall & Barrington’s argument by highlighting the structural barriers that restrict the spread of failure in the sciences, even at the editorial level. To do so, we use systems theory to frame three limitations journals face when publishing failure and how these limitations cannot simply be solved by good agents engaging in good science.