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Retire This Idea: Scientific Knowledge Structured as “Literature”

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Re: Retire This Idea: Scientific Knowledge Structured as “Literature”

#51

Post by dluan »

dalke wrote: post #46
return0 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the nature of spacetime and gravitation seem to have followed him to his death.

Certainly. But it was not the only idea he worked on, as I commented. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but I interpret "Most of the great scientists worked on a single idea their entire life ..." as working on a single idea, to the exclusion of others. Otherwise the statement would be "Most of the great scientists worked on an idea their entire life" FWIW, using the list from http://listverse.com/2009/02/24/top-…

Most of these people didn't even work in a single field... Tesla, Newton, Planck, Curie, Turing, Galileo...

Re: Retire This Idea: Scientific Knowledge Structured as “Literature”

#52

Post by dalke »

dluan wrote: post #51
dalke wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly. But it was not the only idea he worked on, as I commented. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but I interpret "Most of the great scientists worked on a single idea their entire life ..." as working on a single idea, to the exclusion of others. Otherwise the statement would be "Most of the great scientists worked on an idea their entire life" FWIW, using the list from http://listverse.com/2009/02/24/top-…

Most of these people didn't even work in a single field... Tesla, Newton, Planck, Curie, Turing, Galileo...

Yes, I believe that is my point.

Re: Retire This Idea: Scientific Knowledge Structured as “Literature”

#53

Post by cyphunk »

> A dependency graph would tell us, at a click, which of the pillars of scientific theory are truly load-bearing.

This is the problem with the academic form of knowledge transfer as a whole. It's too dependent on feeding of ego. And the "improvements" discussed here-in only reenforce that. If you boil knowledge down to meme, the necessity to "weight" and define pillars becomes less relevant. Without the ego's you get a remix culture where the Amen Brothers are more highly valued than say some one hit wonder... but not because we've measured them, and because we know that sample was from the Amen Brothers. It's more highly valued not because we know the source. In-fact few would know the music they are listening to has the Amen Brothers sample in it. It is more highly valued because it has taken so many forms and created actual value.

We don't need tools to allow for better attribution and knowledge measurement. We need to remove ownership from knowledge as ownership is a hindrance to the transfer and consumption of it.

Re: Retire This Idea: Scientific Knowledge Structured as “Literature”

#54

Post by tokai »

brchr wrote: post #43

Author here. Delighted to see this near the top of HN this afternoon, and to see the healthy discussion it's provoked. Happy to answer any questions as best I can if you've got 'em.

Are you familiar with the field of bibliometrics?[0] It is a not-that smalish research area that works on quantitative research studies. Qualifying types of citations have been a pipe dream there for decades. There are a lot of scientific literature on the subject out there.

[0] Or sciencemetrics, informetrics and other assorted subfields

Re: Retire This Idea: Scientific Knowledge Structured as “Literature”

#55

Post by irremediable »

return0 wrote: post #11
jgmjgm wrote: post #5

I what is missing from the article is an understanding of the incentives of academics. Quite often putting a piece of research "to bed" is the goal. Why? Because any good academic has a long list of things they want to get to. Very few people want to get mired in the (inevitable) problems that arise in a paper for eternity. This is why there are review papers that summarize the state of the knowledge at a given point…

Most of the great scientists worked on a single idea their entire life and expanded upon it, improved it, corrected it and were never really done with it (einstein comes to mind). Scientific knowledge is never final I personally have a huge beef with the way life scientists publish their results in tiny tiny bits, that makes it extremely hard to cross-check them with other studies, to find out if they were later disp…

That's not true -- not even for Einstein. His work on relativity was arguably his greatest, but remember that he won the Nobel for his work on the photoelectric effect. He also did a lot of work on particle movement, i.e. Brownian motion.

Re: Retire This Idea: Scientific Knowledge Structured as “Literature”

#56

Post by jowiar »

dluan wrote: post #40
ThomPete wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's in fact very true and there is a very good reason what that is the case. Most expert know more and more about less and less because in order to understand something you need to dig ever deeper to understand the specifics. What is needs is expert generalists that are able to understand several fields well enough to see where knowledge from one area can lead to understanding in others and vice versa.

Expert generalists are precisely the thing that's missing, especially with how younger scientists are trained. It's harder to fund an expert generalist. Freeman Dyson is a great example because at 89 he published the solution to the prisoner's dilemma, decades later than the original theoretical physics work.

The Ph.D. process weeds out anyone who has any desire to become an expert generalist.

Re: Retire This Idea: Scientific Knowledge Structured as “Literature”

#57

Post by return0 »

dalke wrote: post #46
return0 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the nature of spacetime and gravitation seem to have followed him to his death.

Certainly. But it was not the only idea he worked on, as I commented. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but I interpret "Most of the great scientists worked on a single idea their entire life ..." as working on a single idea, to the exclusion of others. Otherwise the statement would be "Most of the great scientists worked on an idea their entire life" FWIW, using the list from http://listverse.com/2009/02/24/top-…

I may have not stated it well, i did not mean an idea to the exclusion of others but rather that they but that they didn't stop working on every single idea they took upon for a long long time. From the list you give, there arent any scientists who put their research on a subject "to bed" , unless it proved a failure.

Re: Retire This Idea: Scientific Knowledge Structured as “Literature”

#58

Post by return0 »

entee wrote: post #39

Speaking from the perspective of life science, I think the idea of the "article" and "review" as two separate complimentary parts of constructing knowledge actually makes a lot of sense. An individual article is an argument, with evidence for how some process works. A review looks at all the papers, getting the more global view of "knowledge" the OP seems to want. Perhaps in the spirit of the article we should have r…

I think that's the spirit of what he proposes. A possible way to organize the fluid current knowledge would be as a network of scientific questions, which depend on one another (like a bugzilla for science). Having a list of articles that answer positively vs negatively to every question would give an immediate view of the scientific consensus, would allow everyone to make their own judgement about the quality of research and importantly, would pinpoint gaps in knowledge thus pointing out possible research directions.

Re: Retire This Idea: Scientific Knowledge Structured as “Literature”

#59

Post by dalke »

return0 wrote: post #57
dalke wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly. But it was not the only idea he worked on, as I commented. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but I interpret "Most of the great scientists worked on a single idea their entire life ..." as working on a single idea, to the exclusion of others. Otherwise the statement would be "Most of the great scientists worked on an idea their entire life" FWIW, using the list from http://listverse.com/2009/02/24/top-…

I may have not stated it well, i did not mean an idea to the exclusion of others but rather that they but that they didn't stop working on every single idea they took upon for a long long time. From the list you give, there arent any scientists who put their research on a subject "to bed" , unless it proved a failure.

Umm, Newton? The latter part of his life was research in alchemy and biblical chronology.

If you say that Newton "worked on a single idea [his] entire life", then what was the idea?

In any case, the observation is incomplete. All great scientists slept at least once a month doesn't mean that sleeping at least once a month is a distinctive attribute of great scientists.

If most great scientists work on a given topic all of their scientific career, is that not mostly because most scientists do the same?

Re: Retire This Idea: Scientific Knowledge Structured as “Literature”

#60

Post by return0 »

tormeh wrote: post #42
entee wrote: post #39

Speaking from the perspective of life science, I think the idea of the "article" and "review" as two separate complimentary parts of constructing knowledge actually makes a lot of sense. An individual article is an argument, with evidence for how some process works. A review looks at all the papers, getting the more global view of "knowledge" the OP seems to want. Perhaps in the spirit of the article we should have r…

Well, now Wikipedia is the review. Depending on the field, you may just do all the real research on Wikipedia and then add in citations in your paper to look professional. How about a Wikipedia with original research? "Sciencepedia"? Each article gets a section for each editor. If you want to contribute you can either submit a pull request to an editor you view favourably or you can write your own section. Sections c…

There is scholarpedia, which was initially crippled by the fact that each article (which was similar to a review) would often be limited to the (invited and authoritative) author's point of view. In fact they have iterated their policies . Still their contents are often adapted copies of review articles published in "real" journals.
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