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

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

#191

Post by ativzzz »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #38
walls wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

Turns out we dedicate tons of resources to advanced technology when we are at war (WW2/cold war). Sounds like we need another good war with a power who is actually a threat to rapidly innovate.

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

#192

Post by [deleted] »

chinchilla2020 wrote: post #183
screye wrote: post #149

Imo, it has to do with incentives and rewards.(in CS at the very least) The Hindex is a measure thats become the target. So 1 seminal paper is much much worse than 10 completely forgettable papers. It is also common to divide seminal work into smaller publishable morsels to rack up the hindex at the cost of novelty and clarity. The lack of incentive to pursue novel works, also means that most papers are incremental b…

The incentives in academia are to publish and receive citations. This is often very political and citations are made as a favor or trade, completely independent of the research. Unfortunately this structure forces out productive scientists who want to do interesting research rather than churn papers.

[deleted]

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

#193

Post by Ensorceled »

323 wrote: post #81
crazy_horse wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of comments does HN select for?

The kind which agree with the HN group think - "nuclear energy is good", "Electron is bad", "Chrome is good", oh wait, that was 2009 HN group think, today is "Chrome is bad".

Wait, nuclear energy is actually bad and electron is actually good?

What is your reasoning behind nuclear energy is bad? Asking as a Canadian who gets 60% of their power needs met by Candu reactors.

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

#195

Post by jltsiren »

screye wrote: post #149

Imo, it has to do with incentives and rewards.(in CS at the very least) The Hindex is a measure thats become the target. So 1 seminal paper is much much worse than 10 completely forgettable papers. It is also common to divide seminal work into smaller publishable morsels to rack up the hindex at the cost of novelty and clarity. The lack of incentive to pursue novel works, also means that most papers are incremental b…

The bigger problem is structural. Academic research is mostly done by early-career researchers in short-term positions. When you are a PhD student or a postdoc with only a few years to do research, you don't have the time for long-term projects. And because your career prospects are determined by your success in your current position, you have to manage the risks by working on multiple projects. By the time they graduate, the average successful PhD will then have several publishable results where they were the primary contributor.

There are very few positions for mid-career individual contributors in the academia. After ~10 years, you are expected to take a leadership position. Instead of doing research yourself, you are now expected to convince your peers that your ideas are worth funding and that they should collaborate with you. If you get the funding, you will hire people to do your research. Your job is then guiding them through the early career. You can start thinking about ambitious long-term projects, but in order to make them viable, you have to break them down into smaller publishable subprojects suitable for your students.

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

#196

Post by TuLithu »

nostrebored wrote: post #165
xadhominemx wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean there are “no constraints” on dark matter. There are plenty of constraints. I think you just have no idea what you are talking about.

Calculations involving dark matter might as well be an experiment in curve fitting. We won’t find dark matter in your or my lifetime, because it doesn’t exist. It is a convenient, flexible, and inelegant fudge factor.

A "kludge," if you will?

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

#197

Post by Ericson2314 »

We needs fewer PhD candidates, and more auxiliary roles.

Pay people to work on wikis — ever field needs an n-lab.

Pay people to work on open source software, and distros.

Pay people to develop existing research independent of their being enough demand (because Say's law is not a thing — monetarily)

Confining the academy to the R of R&D kills virtuous cycles and saps productivity as no one can take risks to improve the process separate from chasing outcomes.

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

#198

Post by TuLithu »

gameswithgo wrote: post #113
dredmorbius wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source?

Book: "The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation"

An excellent book that needs to be read carefully by many college students, including engineers, scientists, political scientists, and business students.

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

#199

Post by supernovae »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #181
supernovae wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Landing a winged aircraft is different than landing a rocket. Starship is designed for mars and its design changes pending mission realities. The fact they're progressing so quick is awesome. First engines to use Methane are great - and it shows a mission profile that is correct for a trip to mars - since they can use science to generate fuel while on mars. Uranium wouldn't be a revolution and there is no way it woul…

"Just because you don't agree with the cool shit going on, doesn't mean it isn't cool." Dota is cool shit too, but I am not pretending it's an achievement that will be remembered in 3 generations, like the invention of an airplane. I feel your categorisation is fed by being a fan of SpaceX and fails to put things into proper perspective.

No, not a "fan" of spacex, i'm a fan of space in general. my passion is cosmology, where were discovering more about black holes and gravity waves and new kinds of stars and getting closer and closer to possibly figuring out what all the dark matter and dark energy is.

But hey, two can play this game, you seem to hate SpaceX so you throw out the sciences and engineering too..

There are multiple space companies sending up tourists now and dropping the cost per kilo of space travel down while creating new tech to do it. Sure, it may look like a rocket is a rocket, but its certainly not the same rockets from the 1960s - these are rockets that can take off, launch multiple payloads and have components return to earth and land from where they started.

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

#200

Post by supernovae »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #186
dghlsakjg wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars are vastly different than they were in 1980. Fuel injection, aerodynamics, airbags, driver assist, hybrid and electric drivetrains, etc… the difference between a 1980 Honda Civic and a 2020 civic is massive. In 1980 we weren’t landing self piloting rocket stages on drone ships and reusing them a month later. The engines powering our rockets were completely different chemistry and metallurgy. We weren’t building…

"We weren’t building hyper efficient carbon fiber airframes with high bypass turbofans (Dreamliner)." Sir Joseph Wilson Swan first created carbon fiber in 1860. Carbon nanotubes were discovered in 1950's. If Dreamliner was built out of carbon nanotube, then I would concede. Like this, meh. "There is a strong argument that the past 40 years has seen some of the fastest progress in the history of the human race when it…

now you're just being silly

Let's just get back to tech. In the 1980s a 4mhz computer with 360k floppy disks and cga monitor cost about 2500 bucks... Today, you have a phone in your pocket exponentially faster and smaller - all in a few decades.

The apple watch - has 100s of times more compute/storage and resolution than that computer... and some of those watches have 4g / gps and things we could have only dreamed about.

In the late 90s, we used to watch "videos" in "realplayer" in a 1" block.. 20 years later, we're streaming 4k on demand on ever device in a home across wifi networks and gigabit connections to our homes.

It wasn't that long ago most of the world was excited about 56k

The only thing that's happening, is you seem hellbent on taking the science/engineering marvels of our generation for granted.

We could go on and on but nothing would change your apparent disdain for the future

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