To appear: Proc. Eighth Intl. Conf. on Risk and Gambling, London, July 1990

Could Gambling Save Science

Encouraging an Honest Consensus

by Robin Hanson

The pace of scientific progress may be hindered by the tendency of our academic institutions to reward being popular, rather than being right. A market-based alternative, where scientists more formally "stake their reputation", is presented here. It offers clear incentives to be careful and honest while contributing to a visible, self-consistent consensus on controversial (or routine) scientific questions. In addition, it allows funders to choose questions to be researched without choosing people or methods. The bulk of this paper is spent examining potential problems with the proposed approach. After this examination, the idea still seems plausible and worth further study.

Introduction

The Problem

Within a century or so, the intellectual descendants of these outsiders became the new insiders in a process now called the "Scientific Revolution". They introduced a new respect for observations along with new social institutions, such as the Royal Society of England, inspired by those utopian ideals. Since then science has made impressive progress. Most controversial issues of four centuries ago seem long settled by now, and continued research may well settle most of the today's controversies. Academia can claim some credit for this, and academic institutions have continued to evolve in response to perceived problems, formalizing publication in journals, credit in citations, and evaluation in anonymous peer review.

PROBLEMS WITH ACADEMIA Yet little has really changed. Academia is still largely a medieval guild, with a few powerful elites, many slave-like apprentices, and members who hold a monopoly on the research patronage of princes and the teaching of their sons. Outsiders still complain about bias, saying their evidence is ignored, and many observers [Gh,Re,Syk,Tu] have noted some long-standing problems with the research component of academia. (Teaching is not considered here.)

Peer review is just another popularity contest, inducing familiar political games; savvy players criticize outsiders, praise insiders, follow the fashions insiders indicate, and avoid subjects between or outside the familiar subjects. It can take surprisingly long for outright lying by insiders to be exposed [Re]. There are too few incentives to correct for cognitive [Kah] and social [My] biases, such as wishful thinking, overconfidence, anchoring [He], and preferring people with a background similar to your own.

Publication quantity is often the major measure of success. This encourages redundant publication of "smallest publishable units" by many co-authors. The need to have one's research appear original gives too little incentive to see if it has already been done elsewhere, as is often the case, and neglects efforts to integrate previous research.

Perhaps the core problem is that academics are rewarded mainly for telling a good story, rather than for being right. (By "right" I include not only being literally correct, but also being on the right track, or enabling work on the right track.) Publications, grants, and tenure are based what other insiders think today, independent of whether one's ideas and results are proved correct or valuable later. Even for researchers with a good track record, grant proposals must usually describe in some detail exactly what will be discovered and how; true exploratory work is done on the sly. This emphasis on story-telling rewards the eloquent, who know how to persuade by ignoring evidence that goes against their view, and by other standard tricks [Ci].

Admittedly, someone who has published an unusual idea that has proven right is thought of more highly, all else being equal. But all else is usually not equal. Outsiders find it hard to get an unusual idea published, and being able to say "I told you so" is of little help to academics who have failed to gain tenure. The powerful often get credit for the successes of those under them [Re]. Only in the most experimental fields, where feedback is direct and frequent, can we expect people who are disliked -- but usually right -- to be rewarded through informal reputations.

Perhaps our biggest problem is the distortion evident when a science question becomes relevant for public policy, as in the recent debates over "Star Wars" or the greenhouse effect. The popular media tend to focus on those scientists prone to hyperbole. Any honest consensus of relevant experts is usually lost from public view, as advocates on each side accuse the other of bias and self-interest. Public policy can suffer dramatically as a result, a consequence that becomes more serious as the pace of technological change quickens.

On the whole, current academic institutions seem less than ideal [Ki], with incentives that reward being popular, fashionable, and eloquent, instead of being right.

INCENTIVES MATTER Are these complaints just sour grapes? Those who do well by an existing system tend to believe problems are minor. But even if the best ideas eventually win, we should worry if the people who advocate those ideas don't win. The social organization of any human effort can have a tremendous effect on its efficiency. For example, the heated debate over national health care is mostly about which way to fund and organize health care provides the best incentives to promote the general health. And different past cultures with different ways of organizing have had very different rates of scientific progress; compare Europe with China over the last five centuries. Our rate of progress may be less than 2% of what it could be [Be].

Are we wasting precious resources? Imagine what would happen if we used academic peer review to decide what products to manufacture. Proposals for new products would be reviewed anonymously by powerful people who produce similar products. These reviewers would pass judgement without taking any personal risk, and those judged favorably would win regardless of how useful their product turned out to be.

I much prefer our current business system, with all of its problems, where investors must take a personal risk when they endorse a product. Institutions like the stock market are comparatively egalitarian and flexible, allowing most anyone to participate in the ongoing debate about the profit potential of any public business or the relative potential of various industries, management styles, etc. Why can't we have academic research institutions like these?

ACADEMIC REFORMS Most efforts to improve academic institutions focus on incremental reform. Should reviewers be anonymous? Should submissions be anonymous? Occasionally someone proposes a more radical reform within the current framework, such as abolishing tenure or government funding [Fe], or scrapping the whole thing in favor of some existing alternative like patents. And once in a while a whole new social institution is proposed.

For example, science courts [Kan] (also called "scientific adversary procedures") were invented to blunt hyperbole on science controversies by using court-like proceedings to encourage cross-examination and to document areas of agreement. Hypertext publishing [Dr,Han88] imagines an advanced electronic publishing media where any critic could directly link a criticism to any published item, and where readers could combine the direct evaluations of previous readers they respect to decide what is worth reading. A recent suggestion [Ts] imagines governments paying private labs for each citation of one of their employee's papers, allowing a decentralized market to set research priorities. And prizes are often suggested as a way to fund specific verifiable achievements like sequencing the human genome.

In this paper, I propose a new academic institution, tentatively called "idea futures". Also market-based, it is intended to counter many existing problems. It is utopian in the sense of describing a coherent vision of how things might be rather different, but hopefully practical in the sense of considering what could go wrong and how to start small.

WHAT WE WANT Before considering specific mechanisms, let us reflect a moment on what we want from academic incentives. We want to encourage honesty and fair play; the game should be open to anyone to prove him/herself. Funders of research, either private foundations or governments, presumably want research to be directed toward the academic subjects and questions of interest to those funders. (Funders also include the researchers themselves, to the extent that reduced salaries are understood to be in exchange for some research autonomy.) On controversial questions, we want a clear measure of the current opinion of relevant experts, a measure which political advocates could not easily distort. And those who contribute to such a measure should have clear incentives to be careful and honest.

Presumably we want as much progress as possible per effort invested, at least in situations where the following notion of "progress" makes sense. Consider a well-posed question, such as "Is the Earth basically spherical?", with a handful of possible answers (such as "No, its flat"). Experience indicates that, with enough study and evidence, one of the answers will eventually stand out as best to most anyone who considers the question carefully. At least this seems to happen for most questions that have been traditionally labeled "scientific"; questions about the morality of abortion or the nature of God may not fare as well. Where there is such a limiting "right" answer, "progress" can mean the rate at which general scientific opinion converges to that answer. This definition of progress hopefully avoids debates about whether more knowledge is good, or whether there is really an ultimate truth.

Translating these goals to an individual level, we want our institutions to reward academics for pushing scientific opinion toward the "right" answer, presumably by somehow increasing their reputation, influence, or resources. Let us imagine an academic who, after some reflection or observation, comes to a tentative conclusion which he/she would like others to consider. If most everyone already agrees with this conclusion, even without seeing the new supporting evidence or analysis, the academic should receive little credit for just making an "obvious" claim. However, credit should be possible if the claim is surprising, i.e., if people who have not yet seen the evidence are not yet willing to agree. If, upon reviewing the evidence, most everyone now agrees with the surprising claim, then the academic should certainly receive some credit. And, in fact, peer review can handle this case. But what if there is not uniform agreement? It still seems that the academic should be rewarded, if the claim is eventually born out. And others who supported the claim in the face of disagreement should also gain credit [Led], since they helped push the general opinion in the right direction.

Why shouldn't savvy academics now win credit by supporting as many claims as possible, or by multiplying controversies? Clearly they should risk losing credit when they are wrong, so that credit is in some ways conserved. The ratio of possible loss to gain should depend on how unusual one's position is. Siding with the majority and being right should gain one less than siding with a minority and being right. The total amount gained or lost should depend on how much of their reputation each academic has chosen to stake on this issue, as well as on how interesting the issue is to the ultimate research funders.

In summary, part of what we want from academic incentives is a fair game for staking our reputation, so that on questions of interest to funders, we converge as fast as possible to the "right" answer.

THE PROPOSAL

And it is ancient. We need only revive and embellish a suggestion made back during the utopian scientific revolution. Chemical physicians, excluded by the standard physicians from teaching in the British schools, repeatedly offered challenges like the following (circa 1651):

Oh ye Schooles. ... Let us take out of the hospitals, out of the Camps, or from elsewhere, 200, or 500 poor People, that have Fevers, Pleurisies, etc. Let us divide them into halfes, let us cast lots, that one halfe of them may fall to my share, and the other to yours; ... we shall see how many Funerals both of us shall have: But let the reward of the contention or wager, be 300 Florens, deposited on both sides: Here your business is decided. [De]

They proposed to bet on the question, apparently believing bets to be a useful augmentation of the existing academic incentives! Bets are a long- established and robust reputation mechanism, widely seen as a cure for excessive verbal wrangling; you "put your money where your mouth is". In science and elsewhere, phrases like "you bet" are standard ways to express confidence. Offers to make token bets are particularly compelling, and scientists of equal stature often make and publicize such bets, with recent bets on resource depletion, computer chess, black holes [Hal], solar neutrinos, and cold fusion [Gar,Lew,WSJ].

Consider the example of Piers Corbyn, a London astrophysicist who has been unable to get academic metrologists interested in his unusual theory of long-term weather cycles [NS]. Since June 1988 he has been making bets to gain publicity, betting against the bookmaker William Hill, who uses odds posted by the British Metrological Service. Over the last six months alone, he has won 80% of his 25 bets a month, gaining an over 90% average rate of return per bet. (There is a one in 200 to 10^20 chance, depending on what independence you assume, of this happening randomly.) Yet the Service still refuses to take Piers seriously, or make even token bets against him. Which doesn't seem quite fair; hasn't Pier earned the right to be considered? William Hill has taken on the bets for the publicity, but is tired of losing, and has adjusted their odds accordingly. Why shouldn't these be the odds used for official British agricultural policy, instead of the Service's predictions?

If the primary way that academics are now rewarded for being right, rather than popular, is an informal process for staking their reputation, which has various biases because of its informality, and if we want a better reputation game, why not literally make bets and formalize the process?

Imagine a betting pool or market on most disputed science questions, with the going odds available to the popular media, and treated socially as the current academic consensus. Imagine that academics are expected to "put up or shut up" and accompany claims with at least token bets, and that statistics are collected on how well people do. Imagine that funding agencies subsidize pools on questions of interest to them, and that research labs pay for much of their research with winnings from previous pools. And imagine that anyone could play, either to take a stand on an important issue, or to insure against technological risk.

This would be an "idea futures" market, which I offer as an alternative to existing academic social institutions. Somewhat like a corn futures market, where one can bet on the future price of corn, here one bets on the future settlement of a present scientific controversy. This is admittedly an unusual suggestion. But consider what might happen.

Scenarios

CONTINENTAL DRIFT In 1915 German meteorologist Alfred Wegener published his theory of continental drift, which he had collected extensive evidence in support of. But contemporaries considered his theory to be "impossible", and Wegener died an intellectual outcast in 1930 [Mar]. Yet in the 1960's his theory began to be taken seriously, and is now the established view. Wegener eventually gained fame, but overall academia seems to discourage activity like his. Some of Wegener's peers, for example, probably found his thesis plausible, but decided that to say so publicly would be a poor career move.

With idea futures, Wegener could have opened a market for people to bet on his theory, perhaps to be judged by some official body of geologists in a century. He could have then offered to bet a token amount at, say, 1-4 odds, in effect saying there was at least at 20% chance his claim would be vindicated. His opponents would have had to either accept this estimate, and its implications about the importance of Wegener's research, or bet enough to drive the market odds down to something a little closer to "impossible". They could not suppress Wegener merely by silence or ridicule.

As Wegener increased his stake, buying more bets to move the price back up, his opponents would hopefully think just a little more carefully before betting even more to move the price back down. Others might find it in their interest to support Wegener; anyone who thought the consensus odds were wrong would expect to make money by betting, and would thereby move the consensus toward what they believe. Everyone would have a clear incentive to be careful and honest!

The market would encourage more research related to continental drift, as one could make money by being the first to trade on new relevant information. Eventually the evidence would more clearly tip in Wegener's favor, and the price of his bets would rise. Wegener, or his children, could then sell those bets and reap some rewards. While those rewards would not make up for years of neglect, at least he would get something.

As the controversy became settled, and opinions converged, people would gradually sell and leave the market. Few people, if any, need be left for the final judging, which could usually be avoided (using mechanisms to be described below).

COLD FUSION A more recent controversy began in March 1989, when Pons and Fleishman announced "fusion in a jar" at a dramatic press conference. In the months that followed, media aftershocks of confirmation attempts were tracked by thousands of scientists and others, who argued with each other about the chances of cold fusion being real. Proposals to bet came up often, even in the public debates. Critics, uncomfortable with airing scientific disputes in public, complained that Pons and Fleishman broke the rules by going to the popular media instead of through normal peer review channels, unfairly gaining extra attention and funding. Supporters countered that popular media spread information quickly to other scientists; cold fusion, if right, was too important to wait for normal channels.

In the journal Science, Robert Pool speculated that a market in cold fusion might have gone something like Figure 1 [Poo]. If there really had been a betting market, then there would have been a market price that journalists like Pool could publish as news. A table of going prices might appear on the science page in the newspaper, much like the stock page in the business section, conveying current scientific opinion better than the current "balanced" interviews with extremists on all sides. It's been suggested [Ze] that the added information in betting market prices might have helped resolve the debate more quickly