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Too many new papers may mean novel ideas rarely rack up citations

blog.pnas.org

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Re: Too many new papers may mean novel ideas rarely rack up citations

#31

Post by xor99 »

ping00 wrote: post #12
xor99 wrote: post #9

I think this comes down to the growth of scientific management and technocracy in research and that bureaucracy's attempt to fight over dwindling public funding for the sciences coupled with lack of private non-commercial sources of funding. Universities are mostly made up of managers or researchers that end up acting like managers in order to justify their position. This leads to a set of bureaucratic rules for scie…

Would you mind sharing the author's name as well please? I'm interested in checking this book out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Body_Electric_(book)

This one, the main relevance is that the author came up against bio and medical establishment that refused to accept even the scientific interest of studying the effect of small voltage profiles/current on tissue and bone growth. One reason was that the main source of info in the mid-20th century was a soviet scientist, but thats definitely not the whole reason as it comes back to debates about vitalism and the role of electricity in bodily functions/philosophy (etc). Theres a whole lot of similar work in studies on bioelectricity at the moment which if successful seems like it could become a dominant approach too lol. Pretty tricky to think about how that process works over decades or hundreds of years.

Re: Too many new papers may mean novel ideas rarely rack up citations

#32

Post by LurkingPenguin »

supernovae wrote: post #10

No, it isn't waning. There are struggles, but that doesn't mean its waning. We're having massive progress in medicine, space, cosmology, environment, biology, food, transportation. Hell, the only thing that's waning is public perception of science and that seems to be a deliberate political attack.

> Hell, the only thing that's waning is public perception of science and that seems to be a deliberate political attack.

No doubt there are political attacks on science, but it's also true that science is often politicized and also corporatized, both by forces outside of science and those who practice it.

Re: Too many new papers may mean novel ideas rarely rack up citations

#33

Post by crmd »

I enjoyed this podcast[0] with Peter Thiel and Eric Weinstein, where one of their central discussion points is the current stagnation of technological innovation, beginning in the mid 1970s, with the sole exception of computer software.

[0] https://youtu.be/nM9f0W2KD5s

Re: Too many new papers may mean novel ideas rarely rack up citations

#34

Post by merpnderp »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #27

There are probably 100 times more scientists doing research than in the 1920's and the technological means for research are incomparably more advanced, so in that regard we're definitely moving at a much faster pace. Progress in fields like physics is definitely more incremental though as compared to e.g. the first half of the last century when the foundations of modern physics were laid (quantum mechanis, special an…

But what about the replication crisis? Was there such a crisis in the 1920's? Because the motivations for things like p-hacking all point at something broken in science.

Re: Too many new papers may mean novel ideas rarely rack up citations

#36

Post by f6v »

walls wrote: post #22
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's obviously waning if you look at any field that deals with physical world: a car from 1940 looks totally different than one from 1980's, but the one from 2020 and 1980 looks almost the same. Space rockets are same as they were in 80's, where are nuclear engines, fusion propultion, etc? Its the same for airplanes, appliances, and everything execept computers. https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/145134227466…

Cars, planes, and rockets all have optimal shapes for their environment, of course they're not going to change much once they get to that point. Cars are still vastly different today than in the 80s in (at least) performance, efficiency, and safety. Planes are also getting quite a bit better, although adoption of these planes is slow as most airlines want to get as much as they can out of the old fleet.[0] SpaceX has…

I was watching the Boardwalk Empire not so long ago. When the main character was a boy, people were wearing fancy clothes, sending letters, and riding horses. As a grown man, he talked on the phone and flew a plane. Whereas my parents were flying planes when they were young. I fly almost the same planes(yes, more safe and efficient) and it takes the same time to get from A to B.

Re: Too many new papers may mean novel ideas rarely rack up citations

#37

Post by germandiago »

supernovae wrote: post #10

No, it isn't waning. There are struggles, but that doesn't mean its waning. We're having massive progress in medicine, space, cosmology, environment, biology, food, transportation. Hell, the only thing that's waning is public perception of science and that seems to be a deliberate political attack.

Agree with your last sentence. Everything is analyzed/used from a political point of view.

We need de-polarization. First thing would be to get rid of so much power by these people that rule at their convenience all of us. I really think it would be a better environment for everyone.

Re: Too many new papers may mean novel ideas rarely rack up citations

#38

Post by ClumsyPilot »

walls wrote: post #22
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's obviously waning if you look at any field that deals with physical world: a car from 1940 looks totally different than one from 1980's, but the one from 2020 and 1980 looks almost the same. Space rockets are same as they were in 80's, where are nuclear engines, fusion propultion, etc? Its the same for airplanes, appliances, and everything execept computers. https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/145134227466…

Cars, planes, and rockets all have optimal shapes for their environment, of course they're not going to change much once they get to that point. Cars are still vastly different today than in the 80s in (at least) performance, efficiency, and safety. Planes are also getting quite a bit better, although adoption of these planes is slow as most airlines want to get as much as they can out of the old fleet.[0] SpaceX has…

"SpaceX has been landing their rockets for several years now, and are about to take an even bigger step with Starship."

From 1940s, in 20 years we invented jet planes and rockets, and since then for the next 60 years we are fiddling with the same basic rocket design. Are you seriously pretending that taking 3 generation to learn to land them is as big of an achievement?

If we kept up the pace of progress, we would have skyhooks in service, nuclear thermal rockers, nuclear electric propultion, fission fragment rocket and dozens of others.

We have arguably regressed, as starship will just take us to where we were before, being able to reach the moon.

Re: Too many new papers may mean novel ideas rarely rack up citations

#39

Post by germandiago »

LurkingPenguin wrote: post #32
supernovae wrote: post #10

No, it isn't waning. There are struggles, but that doesn't mean its waning. We're having massive progress in medicine, space, cosmology, environment, biology, food, transportation. Hell, the only thing that's waning is public perception of science and that seems to be a deliberate political attack.

> Hell, the only thing that's waning is public perception of science and that seems to be a deliberate political attack. No doubt there are political attacks on science, but it's also true that science is often politicized and also corporatized, both by forces outside of science and those who practice it.

How come a person that is interested in doing science politizes it? I think the first party interested in doing it is people who live from politics, not from science.

At least not people who honestly live from science.

Re: Too many new papers may mean novel ideas rarely rack up citations

#40

Post by ren_engineer »

citizenpaul wrote: post #21

The entire college phd system is toxic and self serving. At my local college the guy the physic department building was named after was obsessed with some weird thing that no one understood and when he died they just mothballed all his "projects" equipment. No one had any idea what it was or what to do with it and it filled a good part of the building. He was not easy to get along with and shot down anything that he…

Academia now selects for people who are good at navigating bureaucracy and getting research funding rather than people who are good at doing actual research
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