"Science advances one funeral at a time." - Max Planck
The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit
101–110 of 163 posts
Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit
#102Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes but in fairness there is a fair amount of BS in any area of human endeavor. There are BS movies, BS politicians, BS music, BS programming languages; it's certainly not unique to science.
But isn't science supposed to be, by definition, the anti-bullshit?
Well, science is still human.
Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit
#104Science is an organism that needs an immune system. At a systemic level, it needs to be hard to get away with this kind of thing.
But there is a cost problem with that, and behind the cost problem is a funding problem. "The servant is the one who takes the money" - Lawrence of Arabia.
Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit
#105Instead of a sisyphean refutation of every attack, wouldn't a better strategy be to research and prove the attacker's conflict of interests (and thus discredit them)?
I suspect that that is nothing more than the fallacy of ad homenim.
Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
In life sciences, the last author is almost always the person whose grants paid for most of the research. Usually, they also helped supervise the research, but the grant aspect is more important. For example: Mike Synder, a brilliant biologist, 'supervises' 36 postdocs, 13 research assistants, 11 research scientists, 9 visiting scientists, and 8 graduate students ( http://snyderlab.stanford.edu/members3.html - thanks…
What are the differences between postdocs, research assistants, research scientists and visiting scientists?
> What are the differences between postdocs, research assistants, research scientists and visiting scientists?
These are some working definitions, based on my experiences in astronomy:
Postdocs: researchers with a a PhD who generally have fixed-term contracts. Generally these positions are full-time research, though some may include teaching components.
Research assistants: researchers, typically without PhDs, working in a group/lab. This is frequently a synonym for undergraduate or graduate students, or interns. It can also mean people with technical skills who are working in a group/lab but not working towards a degree.
Research scientists: Non-tenure track reseachers, often with PhDs. Their positions may be fixed-term or indefinite.
Visiting scientists: Researchers whose primary affiliation is with another institute. They may be fixed-term visitors (e.g., faculty on sabbatical at another University) or frequent but non-constant visitors of an institution. Their salary is often paid by their primary institute, unless the host institute has provided funding.
Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit
#107The job market right now in the US forces grad students to attempt innovative research with remarkable conclusions. As a consequence, everyone's trying to prove more outlandish things while few are bothering with replications. If the field were sane, you would train all the apprentices on replication studies. Once they demonstrated dispassionate expertise with the tools, only then would they be allowed to try to use…
That is nearly the opposite of what the PhD was designed to do. Modern academic training comes out of the church and the old guilds of middle Europe and is still in use today in many fields (chefs and plumbers to name a few).
The Bachelor's degree is loosely similar to an apprentice's role. The young boy (they were almost exclusively male) worked in a shop or with a priest for some time. He learned the trade, the tools, and gained some experience from 'level 0'. When you are done with the apprenticeship, you are 'cleared' to work in other shops and are known to not be a total moron or break tools or burn down shops.
The master's degree is just that. You are considered a master of the craft (like plumbing or prinitng) or the discipline (like The Book of Mark or Crusader History). As such, you typically have a master's level project. Something that is 'new' or shows that you know your stuff. That might be a very decorative silver bowl or a thesis.
The Doctorate means you are 'world class.' Not just a mastery in a field, but a paragon of it. Today, that means that you are the expert in your little niche of underwater basket weaving. There should be no-one better than you. This means you MUST have produced something new or novel way of thinking about the God or something. This has always been the idea, if not the practice.
To change that and say that the doctorate should be the bachelor's is very big. To suggest that PhDs should just replicate experiments is anathema to the idea of graduate education and would be a tremendous waste of time and energy. When you enter the Phd, you are assumed to already know how to do all the replication and the facts about the field. Granted, fields are exponentially larger than they were in the 1600's, but you still should know stats and biology if your PhD is in cancer biology.
I think you are totally wrong about this. What you are suggesting should be covered in undergrad and I think it largely is.
Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit
#108Instead of a sisyphean refutation of every attack, wouldn't a better strategy be to research and prove the attacker's conflict of interests (and thus discredit them)?
What conflict of interest does a Young Earth Creationist have? Not money. If you say religious belief, you'd be right, but it's not a terribly effective criticism because the majority of U.S. scientists are religious, too.
Young Earth Creationism is something that people with lots of free-floating anxiety attach that free floating anxiety to. It's a belligerent, fear-based reactionary position but what bothers them is the perceived hubris and arrogance of scientists.
Plus, some people simply can't suspend disbelief of self-organizing systems. I have to wonder if there was trauma in science class for many of them at one point.
When I mentioned (as a 5th grade student ) to a 5th-grade student that evolution isn't exclusive to Creation , he burst into tears.
In general, highly charismatic religion seems somehow related to the general changes of the 1960s, coupled with some more sinister uses of mass media. I have to wonder if decades of television have made people addicted to willing suspension of disbelief of a particularly unexamined kind.
Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit
#109The job market right now in the US forces grad students to attempt innovative research with remarkable conclusions. As a consequence, everyone's trying to prove more outlandish things while few are bothering with replications. If the field were sane, you would train all the apprentices on replication studies. Once they demonstrated dispassionate expertise with the tools, only then would they be allowed to try to use…
That is nearly the opposite of what the PhD was designed to do. Modern academic training comes out of the church and the old guilds of middle Europe and is still in use today in many fields (chefs and plumbers to name a few). The Bachelor's degree is loosely similar to an apprentice's role. The young boy (they were almost exclusively male) worked in a shop or with a priest for some time. He learned the trade, the too…
The problem is that nobody's doing replication work in undergrad, either, nor does it happen in Master's programs.
I do think it makes sense to stick with the PhD meaning you're a world class expert in some area, but if so then we need to adjust our expectations for what Master's level work means in the sciences. Right now it seems to just represent a hurdle you need to whiz past on your way to the PhD.
Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it does vary a lot by discipline. In my area of mathematics I don't recall ever hearing of it. For whatever it is worth I even published papers without my supervisor being on them at all, if he hadn't been involved in that work.
I was thinking the same thing. I think math lends itself to this because the work is so esoteric that often the advisor doesn't even completely understand the work, much less can claim credit for it.
I think the size of labs is more important. Bio and Chem labs -- especially the best ones -- are often freaking huge. There's no way the PI actually has time to meaningfully contribute to every paper when they are bringing in enough money to support dozens of full-time positions.
In math, the group sizes are way smaller. A PI might only have 1 or 2 students.