An incentivized system in academia and a game changer in bio-tech

An incentivized system in academia

Recently I learned Goodharts law by this article. If an incentivized system measures or evaluates people by strong force using something to achieve a goal, the something tends to be the goal itself. The overridden new goal can prevent the original goal from being completed.

I might see this case in academia. In academia, scientists are rewarded for the amount and quality of the paper. And if they also have pressure from the competition, they may want to maximize their outcome. And when they want to include their contributions to the third person's "dependent" open source projects in their own paper, the thriving open-source ecosystem is challenged.

Because the issues and pull requests for the upstream (original) projects are not reported in real time or are forgotten or ignored. Then, the quality of the open source projects is challenged unlike the big open source projects in the IT industry where the issues are reported, discussed, and improved by people beyond one organization.

Perhaps, I may be able to enjoy healthcare and biology more outside a place where rewards happen. It's like communicating with people on scientific' Youtube videos, blog articles, healthcare/bio-tech products, or services. It is not inside academia but around academia. Or may I be able to find scientists who don't need to follow the incentives and rewards for some reason?

A game-changer in bio-tech

I feel that I am too impatient to do something as scientists do. Checking how hypothesis A is likely to be true is too complicated and difficult for me. I am rather happy with "it just works", like an engineer.

I think if there will be a game changer such as a device or application or idea, it has a factor of intuitive "fun" that everyone, both non-experts, and experts in biology can experience and share the feeling.

In bio-tech, for example, FreeStyle Libre, the real-time glucose monitoring system is fun when seeing the cause-and-effect between foods and numbers. Direct consumer DNA test such as Nebula Genomics is also likely to be fun. The company recently asked users if users want a test to measure biological aging by checking the epigenetic clock. Yes, I answered, "I am interested in it". A game changer that makes biology for everyone may come in the areas of direct consumer tests in the industry in the future.