A recent article in Nature profiles a new project that provides financial compensation to reviewers who catch mistakes in highly cited papers. The Estimating the Reliability and Robustness of Research (ERROR) project is led by Malte Elson (University of Bern), Ian Hussey (University of Bern) and Ruben Arslan (Leipzig University). It is inspired by the “bug bounty” programs used by major technology companies that reward hackers who identify and report product vulnerabilities. Likewise, ERROR pays reviewers a set amount for finding mistakes in psychology papers, with larger sums awarded for more significant errors. The project leaders aim to address the current “haphazard system of error detection” and underline the importance of funding systematic error scrutiny.
