Many folks keep pointing out how published research is itself biased towards positive results, and how replication (and failed replication!) trumps mere "first!!!11" publication.

Clarity check: "trumps" = "is (normatively) more important than"?

Also,

("he can't implant engineered tissue in a rat heart and he calls himself a scientist?!")

will be really confusing if/when that entry drops off the front page.

The current system of scientific publishing is clearly outdated.

There are issues with the biases, but also with for-profit nature of the system that charges huge sums of money for accessing the work of researchers funded by public grants and reviewed by researchers for free, financed by public money.

Then add to this all those phony journals, that are theoretically peer reviewed, but have very low (or non-existent) standards and accept everything to make money or simply exist because some big-pharma company uses them to publish skewed tests to get FDA approvals, etc.

I think one or two additional special-purpose journals would not really change the landscape.

IMO, what we need is a complete modern infrastructure based on state of the art IT/social networking. One that allows the review of articles even after they officially appeared with an elaborate voting system that factors in the credibility of the reviewers, It should make it possible to add (publish) refutations and the publication of positive or negative attempts of replications, etc and organize the articles with their support/refutations/endorsements in an easily accessible database.

Ideally, such a system could work both as a rating and publication medium, but with the current scientific publishing lobby, it would not have much chance to take off. The only chance is to do this by extending an existing meta-system (e.g. citeseer) with a general discussion/rating/publishing forum, that would allow the publication of critics/refusals/extensions of existing papers maybe even in a peer-reviewed manner.

In the field that I work, I see that the scientific community discusses and generally supports such changes and given all the efforts and progress of the last decade I'd be surprised if we won't see such (or similar) one or more systems emerging in the next 10 years.

A novel negative result isn't the same as failing to replicate a study published by someone else.

If regular journals don't have good incentives to publish "mere" (failed) replication studies, why not create a journal that would be dedicated entirely to them?

There are a few Journals of negative results already out there:

http://www.jnrbm.com/

http://www.jnr-eeb.org/index.php/jnr

It's interesting that China's leadership is full of engineers and economists; as a whole they're probably far more qualified to do their jobs than the leadership of most Western countries. I think there's some truth to the idea that you can have qualified leaders or you can have elected leaders but you can't have both. Getting elected just doesn't translate into being the best candidate for the job. If positions in the private sector were filled by popular vote, industry would grind to a halt. I think if you honestly consider that as a though experiment, it's obvious that only a truly absurd and impractical amount of voter rationality would solve the inherent problem, which is just that it isn't a sensible way to fill vacancies.

Can you propose a better use of our time?

Downvoted.

As a gut feeling, I agree with the sentiment. But... Most if not all of us agree that neither politicians nor voters are as educated or as rational as they should be, and we voice our agreements frequently. Is this the best use of our time? Considering that many folks have called for "thinking-based" education for a long time now, we're not even innovating. So, what are we doing? Reinforcing virtually uncontroversial beliefs? Priming our own private affective death spiral?

Post in this thread if you live outside Europe, the US, or Canada.

For what it's worth:

Ampakines are a new class of compounds known to enhance attention span and alertness, and facilitate learning and memory. ...

Unlike earlier stimulants (e.g. caffeine, methylphenidate (Ritalin), and the amphetamines), ampakines do not seem to have unpleasant, long-lasting side effects such as sleeplessness.

Apparently, only the military is interested in its mind-enhancing effects. Any chemists here interested in a start-up? ;-)