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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

#41

Post by supernovae »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #15
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.

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…

I still beg to differ... The shape of cars is even changing... We have Cyber trucks coming out, we have several EV trucks coming out - battry tech is improving, engine performance is still improving, fuel efficiency is only being attacked for political reasons - It's pretty cool that a Jeep - a brick on Wheels has several options of efficiency and power that are major improvements from just a few years from - from a 4xe hybrid to a turbocharged engine to a diesel option.

Airplanes? There is a really good Nova episode on the electric race - we're nearing an electric age with airplanes even in commercial aviation - In the next 5-10 years we'll probably have the short hops covered by quiet electric planes - that innovation isn't necessarily paced by science, but by safety, engineering and certification - things we don't want to shortcut since humans are involved in these systems.

Hell.. we've been dabbling with autonomous cars too and driver assist and lane assist... I can go on and on

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

#42

Post by f6v »

chrisamiller wrote: post #23
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…

Maybe your car hasn't changed, but your cancer care sure as hell has. The medical and biological sciences are where a lot of innovation has taken place, and the pace of technological advancement in things like DNA sequencing (as one example) is breathtaking.

> Maybe your car hasn't changed, but your cancer care sure as hell has.

https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics

> 1.8% per year among men from 2001 to 2017

Is that the rate you expect?

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

#43

Post by moffkalast »

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…

And you could make the same case for other inventions.

Hammers in 1860 looked like hammers. In 1880? Same thing. In 1900? Same old hammers. 1920? 2020? Yep you guessed it, still a hammer.

Some things are invented and then perfected to a point where you can't really improve them much in a cost effective way. That doesn't mean that new stuff isn't being discovered and worked on at the same or faster rate.

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

#44

Post by taneq »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #15
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.

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…

These are examples of technologies maturing, not scientific progress waning.

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

#46

Post by crazy_horse »

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…

Do you really expect useful discussion when you say stuff like this? Normal academia isn't like that.

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

#47

Post by kloch »

PaulHoule wrote: post #25

One thing obvious is the breakdown between theory and experiment in physics. Newton's great accomplishment was discovering a link between terrestrial and extraterrestrial physics. Today on the large scale we see it takes multiple kinds of "dark matter" to explain the rotation of galaxies, structure of galaxy clusters, and cosmology. "Dark matter" evades any attempt to detect it on Earth. Einstein's prediction of how…

I don't understand why consensus jumped to the conclusion that there must be a new form of undetectable matter instead trying to figure out what we don't know about gravity.

Theoretical particle physics is even worse. There haven't been any advances since the 1970's. Experimental particle physics has done a great job in verifying/testing the predictions from the 1960's/1970's but theoretical physicists are stuck in a rut.

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

#48

Post by rcpt »

> When the rare paper does break through, it usually does so in less than 12 months, suggesting that popularity comes from social media, news coverage, or via existing networks of people who are already well-connected in the subject area—rather than from citations in other work

I buy ads for one of my papers. Only a few dollars per month but I like to think it's worth it

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

#49

Post by LurkingPenguin »

germandiago wrote: post #39
LurkingPenguin wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

One reason is money. Government institutions are one of the biggest sources of funding, so if you're a scientist, avoiding anything that could be politically connected can be difficult to do.
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