Utopian Science

A conworlding piece (set in his utopia Raikoth) designing how science would work to defeat the replication crisis (a sequel to 'The Control Group Is Out Of Control'). Anyone can do exploratory research to drum up interest; a centralized prediction market ('the Angel of Evidence') funds confirmatory experiments out of the negative-sum bet spread, so controversy itself funds the experiments (with national-science-foundation subsidies turning the market positive-sum for basic research like boson masses, attracting 'science hedge funds'). Experiments are run by CONSULTANT scientists who must have no stake in the hypothesis (the inventor testing their own theory is 'like asking criminals to judge their own trials'); the pre-registered draft IS the final paper with question-marks for the numbers (zero analytic degrees of freedom); and everyone in the field must publicly bet/commit on the result beforehand, so no one can post-hoc dismiss an inconvenient null. 'There are no homeopaths in Raikoth.'

Quality 72 · Strong. A genuinely clever, substantive institutional-design proposal — the prediction-market-funds-science + disinterested-consultant + pre-registration-with-public-precommitment mechanism is a real, thoughtful attack on publication bias, p-hacking, and motivated researchers, only lightly costumed as conworlding. Strong.

Claude’s paradigm shift 58 · Moderate. The prediction-market-funded, consultant-run, precommitment-based science system is a fresh, original institutional design. Notable.

Real-world impact 2 · Minor. A within-discourse design proposal; no material-world effect. Within-blog influence.