First off, why are you talking to me as if I don't have a PhD? I understand you've been in academia longer, but we are peers. You don't need to talk to me like I don't know the first thing about how academia works.
Second off, we do work in different fields. Do you truly believe the way things work in your field are going to directly apply to STEM fields? Because
> Most foundational research also has no quantifiable ROI
This is a strange statement to me, even if we're applying to pure mathematics. I even gave one example already.
> If someone's area is deeply unpopular and most people think the area or approach has no merits, then nobody will replicate it either
This is completely orthogonal. There's a huge difference between nothing being replicated because no one wants to attempt it and no one replicating something because you are actively discouraged to do so. A neutral incentive is not the same as a stick.
> Otherwise, the "misfit" is bound to publish in fringe journals with no quality control and nobody will ever check whether the work makes sense.
Well it seems you absolutely ignored my point about how I review. Those concerns go away if you start evaluating works by their own merit and not comparatively. There's no physical limit to how many works a journal can publish, so there's no reason to target a rejection rate.
How do you not see this as a huge problem? If a *factually correct*[0] paper is unable to publish in main stream venues then we have entirely fucked up the system.
[0] We're not talking philosophy here where things are entirely subjective. We're talking about systems with verifiable results. If you disagree with this, then let's work with the philosophical thought experiment and pretend such verifiable results are possible.
Second off, we do work in different fields. Do you truly believe the way things work in your field are going to directly apply to STEM fields? Because
This is a strange statement to me, even if we're applying to pure mathematics. I even gave one example already. This is completely orthogonal. There's a huge difference between nothing being replicated because no one wants to attempt it and no one replicating something because you are actively discouraged to do so. A neutral incentive is not the same as a stick. Well it seems you absolutely ignored my point about how I review. Those concerns go away if you start evaluating works by their own merit and not comparatively. There's no physical limit to how many works a journal can publish, so there's no reason to target a rejection rate.How do you not see this as a huge problem? If a *factually correct*[0] paper is unable to publish in main stream venues then we have entirely fucked up the system.
[0] We're not talking philosophy here where things are entirely subjective. We're talking about systems with verifiable results. If you disagree with this, then let's work with the philosophical thought experiment and pretend such verifiable results are possible.