11–20 of 35 posts
Lots of conflicting views held by the scientific community: * Science is progressing too fast * Science is progressing too slow with not enough breakthroughs * The barrier to publish is too high and is wrought with politics * There's too many papers published and we need a higher bar as not everyone is a genius * My research is important and deserves funding * Others research is trivial and they don't deserve funding…
> Science would become something like a parlor game. Some things would be considered interesting, others not. There would be fashions. Those who followed the fashion would get grants. Those who wouldn’t would not, and pretty soon they would learn to follow the fashion, too. Have fashions taken over? What was science like before fashions took over?
I think the biggest problem facing science right now is the scale at which it is occurring. My field does not have this problem, but I can't imagine what it's like trying to stay on top of the literature in e.g. medical sciences. Paper writing and peer review work at much smaller scales - there are order hundreds scientist in my field and I think it's functioning just fine. For fields with thousands and 10s of thousands of active researchers, I think there needs to be a different way to vet and organize information. I don't know what that is exactly but it might look something like twitter (can't believe I'm writing this!). On second thought, maybe it looks more like HN!
The misalignment of incentives can be problematic as well, but arguably, not the biggest problem.
For those that accept the author's premise and thought experiment. What's the recommended alternative? Let's take a humanist approach and say the biggest problems humanity need to solve right now that we aren't doing enough on are life extension and energy generation/storage/distribution. Even 5 years ago, "AI" might've been on the list, but that seems to be booming with progress, and between CRISPR/mRNA we also seem…
> Science would become something like a parlor game. Some things would be considered interesting, others not. There would be fashions. Those who followed the fashion would get grants. Those who wouldn’t would not, and pretty soon they would learn to follow the fashion, too. Have fashions taken over? What was science like before fashions took over?
not an insider, but apparently it's almost impossible to get funding in (theoretical?) physics outside outside of quantum mechanics.
As one who actively participates in this parlor game, I disagree with the premise. Prior to writing proposals, I would have thought writing proposals was a huge waste of time and effort. However, we have a saying that no good idea goes to waste. When writing, you have to be clear and concise and your idea has to be good to get funding. If you don't get funded, you usually get good, useful feedback. You get better, yo…
OTOH, life scientists I have talked to or worked with (both in basic & medical research) seem to be writing proposals all the time, and that just seems really unpleasant in all sorts of ways, on top of problems that have been discussed here ad nauseum.
> Science would become something like a parlor game. Some things would be considered interesting, others not. There would be fashions. Those who followed the fashion would get grants. Those who wouldn’t would not, and pretty soon they would learn to follow the fashion, too. Have fashions taken over? What was science like before fashions took over?
not an insider, but apparently it's almost impossible to get funding in (theoretical?) physics outside outside of quantum mechanics.
As one who actively participates in this parlor game, I disagree with the premise. Prior to writing proposals, I would have thought writing proposals was a huge waste of time and effort. However, we have a saying that no good idea goes to waste. When writing, you have to be clear and concise and your idea has to be good to get funding. If you don't get funded, you usually get good, useful feedback. You get better, yo…