Within the academic community, many people do important research in things like medicine, technology, etc that require a lot of money up-front but can pay back very well/ do a lot of good in the long term.
However, a general issue with research is that there is small monetary incentive to reproduce research. This is a huge issue because it undermines one of the axioms of why science is so important: repeatability.
For example, in 2022, a fundamental study for the theory of where Alzheimer's comes from (from 16 years prior) was found to have been forged. Prior to awareness of the forgery, the FDA approved a drug that, based on this research, should significantly decrease intensity or even completely cure Alzheimer’s. In that same fiscal year, the NIH even spent $1.6 billion on research that mentions the results of the study, representing about half of overall Alzheimer’s funding (see the article attached).
Therefore, I propose that money ought to be raised to ensure that this sort of thing does not happen again by incentivizing academics to repeat studies.
Comment below additional events similar to the Alzheimer’s one below or any criticisms to this point
Double-checking research seems really important and neglected. This can be valuable even if you don't rerun the experiments and just try to replicate the analyses.
A couple of years ago, I was hired to review seven econometric papers, and even as an outsider to the field it was easy to contribute to find flaws and assess the strength of the papers.
Writing these reviews seems like a great activity, especially for junior researchers who want to learn good research practices while making a substantial contribution.