arXiv subjects

Toby Handfield

Publications and source records attributed to Toby Handfield.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Can We Volunteer Out of the Peer Review Crisis?

The volume of scientific manuscripts is growing faster than the capacity to evaluate them, yet the institutions that govern peer review have remained largely unchanged. The result is a widening mismatch: reviewer scarcity, noisier assessments, and declining confidence in editorial decisions. Every scientist wants better reviews, but review quality depends on the total burden, which no single author can shift. To isolate this tension, we provide a game-theoretic thought experiment: a voluntary lottery in which authors accept a chance of random pre-review rejection, reducing reviewer burden and improving the quality of surviving evaluations. We show that a Nash equilibrium emerges in which authors voluntarily enter the lottery. Scientists who care about the literature they read, not just the papers they publish, will opt in, raising the quality of published science for all.

cs.GT↗

arXiv2025

The Evolution of Scientific Credit: When Authorship Norms Impede Collaboration

Scientific authorship norms vary dramatically across disciplines, from contribution-sensitive systems where first author is the greatest contributor and subsequent author order reflects relative input, to contribution-insensitive conventions like alphabetical ordering or senior-author-last. We develop evolutionary game-theoretic models to examine both how these divergent norms emerge and their subsequent effects on collaborative behavior. Our first model reveals that contribution-insensitive norms evolve when researchers who sacrifice positional advantage face the strongest adaptive pressure -- for example senior authors managing larger collaboration portfolios or bearing heavier reputational stakes. This "Red King" dynamic potentially explains why fields in which senior researchers command large labs, major grants, and extensive collaboration portfolios may paradoxically evolve conventions that favour junior-author positioning. Our second model demonstrates that established norms influence researchers' willingness to collaborate, with contribution-sensitive norms consistently outperforming insensitive alternatives in fostering successful partnerships. Contribution-insensitive norms create systematic coordination failures through two mechanisms: "main contributor resentment" when exceptional work goes unrecognized, and "second contributor resentment" when comparable efforts receive unequal credit. These findings suggest that widely adopted practices like senior-last positioning and alphabetical ordering may function as institutional frictions that impede valuable scientific collaborations rather than neutral organizational conventions, potentially reducing overall scientific productivity across affected disciplines.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2025

Cooperative Dilemmas in Rational Debate

As an epistemic activity, rational debate and discussion requires cooperation, yet involves a tension between collective and individual interests. While all participants benefit from collective outcomes like reaching consensus on true beliefs, individuals face personal costs when changing their minds. This creates an incentive for each debater to let others bear the cognitive burden of exploring alternative perspectives. We present a model to examine the strategic dynamics between debaters motivated by two competing goals: discovering truth and minimizing belief revisions. Our model demonstrates that this tension creates social dilemmas where strategies that are optimal for individuals systematically undermine the collective pursuit of truth. Paradoxically, our analysis reveals that increasing debaters' motivation to seek truth can sometimes produce equilibria with worse outcomes for collective truth discovery. These findings illuminate why rational debate can fail to achieve optimal epistemic outcomes, even when participants genuinely value truth.

cs.SI↗