So, there’s this thing that happens in certain intellectual communities, like (to give a totally random example) social psychology. This thing is that novel takes are rewarded. New insights are rewarded. Figuring out things that no one has before is rewarded. The high-status people in such a community are the ones who come up with and disseminate many new insights.

On the face of it, this is good! New insights are how we get penicillin and flight and Pad Thai burritos. But there’s one itty bitty little problem with building a culture around it.

Good (and correct!) new ideas are a finite resource.

This isn’t news. Back in 2005, John Ioannidis laid out the case for “most published research findings” being false. It turns out that when you have a small chance of coming up with a correct idea even using statistical tests for to find false positives can...

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