Malte Elson, a psychologist at the University of Bern, is hoping to chip away at some of the seemingly widespread problem of incorrect or falsified research that is plaguing academia.
“When I build my research on top of something that’s erroneous and I don’t know about it,” he told the Chronicle of Higher Education, “that’s a cost because my research is built on false assumptions.”
That’s why Elson is leading a new initiative called ERROR. Starting with a philanthropic grant of $285,000, the project will compensate scholars each time they discover erroneous research. Some of these findings will be minor errors in citations or glitches in software, but others may be downright fraudulent. Scholars can propose papers they want to review, but the authors have to agree — in part because they have to be willing to give
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