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ERROR - Bug bounty program for academic paperserror.reviews/participation/
87 sats \ 5 comments \ @Scoresby 16 Jul Education
ERROR is a comprehensive program to systematically detect and report errors in scientific publications, modelled after bug bounty programs in the technology industry. Investigators are paid for discovering errors in the scientific literature: The more severe the error, the larger the payout.
Seems pretty manual at this point. It's unclear if they have any plans to make it scalable.
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30 sats \ 0 replies \ @LibertasBR 1h
I thought this was already done during peer review. If not, the monetary incentive will give these reviews a good boost.
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102 sats \ 3 replies \ @SimpleStacker 16 Jul
I don't know if this is very well thought out. "Severe" can be very subjective and you'd need to rely on expert opinions... and of course the experts themselves have all sorts of incentive problems here.
The technology industry is way more well resourced and can run entire teams dedicated to responding to such bug reports. Individual academics and their labs don't have the capacity to field potentially erroneous bug reports.
I'm very sympathetic to the idea here, I just don't think a bug bounty program modeled after tech is gonna work
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30 sats \ 2 replies \ @Scoresby OP 16 Jul
Yeah, it seems like the kind of thing that got enough attention to land a grant, but isn't ever going to go anywhere.
They probably spent more on their web design than they have given out in rewards...
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 16 Jul
I think @south_korea_ln might have interesting thoughts about this too
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102 sats \ 0 replies \ @south_korea_ln 13h
I'm very sympathetic to the idea here
Same here.
Not sure about how it'll work out.
I know of errors in nearly all the papers that I have studied in detail. I could make a lot of money there, just reporting all those minor errors~~ Math errors, convergence issues, etc. No bad intentions by the authors, just part of the game.
They are mostly all good papers that would not deserve public shaming. The papers advanced the field despite those small errors.
It'd be good though if this system just pushes people to publish errata, but even then, it'd be without end in my field. There are just too many minor errors..
For major errors, Retraction Watch does a pretty good job as far as I know.
got enough attention to land a grant
Agree with that. What's the business model? Who will pay once the grant runs out?
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