I agree that compatibility with traditional papers is important. It was not stated explicitly, but I do want the results to be publishable in traditional journals. I plan on publishing the results for my company's product. It seemed to me like being overly rigorous might be a selling point initially -- "sure we did the study cheap / didn't use a university, but look how insanely rigorous we were"
The thing is this seems like an ab-initio approach to doing research by people who are not researchers by trade. The vast majority of tech startups are lead by engineers not researchers, though there is no visible line between the two.
Going after professional researchers seems much harder. They actually know how to perform the research, so the value proposition is much weaker -- they are already trusted, and know how to use R :p
By the principle of comparative advantage researchers should be willing to delegate some of their work to a third party, so look for the repetitive parts that could be automated by either protocol or program. If, for example, the journal requires a replication before the full study is published, the original researcher(s) might have an incentive to plan for a replication from another party.
My idea for you would be to follow the same line most other improvements on traditional procedures follow: Automate the parts that can be automated, standardise the parts that can be standardised and continue. Designing a whole system tends to fail from my reading of history.
A two-pronged approach might even be more favourable: Work with a traditional journal that has the "perfect" scientific standards so the requirements infect traditional science and meanwhile fill the journal with the papers generated from the program.
I'll have to think about this some more.
I'm a LW reader, two time CFAR alumnus, and rationalist entrepreneur.
Today I want to talk about something insidious: marketing studies.
Until recently I considered studies of this nature merely unfortunate, funny even. However, my recent experiences have caused me to realize the situation is much more serious than this. Product studies are the public's most frequent interaction with science. By tolerating (or worse, expecting) shitty science in commerce, we are undermining the public's perception of science as a whole.
The good news is this appears fixable. I think we can change how startups perform their studies immediately, and use that success to progressively expand.
Product studies have three features that break the assumptions of traditional science: (1) few if any follow up studies will be performed, (2) the scientists are in a position of moral hazard, and (3) the corporation seeking the study is in a position of moral hazard (for example, the filing cabinet bias becomes more of a "filing cabinet exploit" if you have low morals and the budget to perform 20 studies).
I believe we can address points 1 and 2 directly, and overcome point 3 by appealing to greed.
Here's what I'm proposing: we create a webapp that acts as a high quality (though less flexible) alternative to a Contract Research Organization. Since it's a webapp, the cost of doing these less flexible studies will approach the cost of the raw product to be tested. For most web companies, that's $0.
If we spend the time to design the standard protocols well, it's quite plausible any studies done using this webapp will be in the top 1% in terms of scientific rigor.
With the cost low, and the quality high, such a system might become the startup equivalent of citation needed. Once we have a significant number of startups using the system, and as we add support for more experiment types, we will hopefully attract progressively larger corporations.
Is anyone interested in helping? I will personally write the webapp and pay for the security audit if we can reach quorum on the initial protocols.
Companies who have expressed interested in using such a system if we build it:
(I sent out my inquiries at 10pm yesterday, and every one of these companies got back to me by 3am. I don't believe "startups love this idea" is an overstatement.)
So the question is: how do we do this right?
Here are some initial features we should consider:
Any placebos used in the studies must be available for purchase as long as the results are used in advertising, allowing for trivial study replication.
Significant contributors will receive:
I'm hoping that if a system like this catches on, we can get an "effective startups" movement going :)
So how do we do this right?