For every paper you publish, you must repeal two.
Give researchers a lifetime word limit
31–40 of 49 posts
Re: Give researchers a lifetime word limit
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had not read this before and that's a valid point, thanks for sharing. I think I would say two things to this. First, theoretically we could attack the problem from both sides. We could constrain supply in the way that med school prevents an oversupply of physicians while also increasing the total amount of resources available to those practicing science. More practically, I tend to believe that basic and translati…
The supply constraints med schools impose most certainly are not to prevent "oversupply" of doctors. Depending on who you ask, there are two main reasons they exist. One view is that there's a finite amount of doctors willing to work at academic hospitals, and thus there's a limited amount of new medical students that can be adequately trained. Another view is that medical schools collude to form a guild to better se…
In a normal economy the only thing regulating supply, is demand.
The kind of organization that imposes supply constraints to sarcastically prevent "oversupply" are called cartels. You know, like a drug cartel?
Re: Give researchers a lifetime word limit
#33I got a better idea. Force the researcher to create and submit a little mini documentary on the subject along with the paper.
Re: Give researchers a lifetime word limit
#34It's amazing how much hand wringing is done about the symptoms of problems in academia (especially life sciences) without anyone actually addressing the root causes. The reason all of these problems exist is because the space is over populated, ruthlessly competitive, and under funded. It's really that simple. Create many more professorship positions for post docs, raise the NIH, NSF, and DOD research budgets to wher…
I don't get it. The problem: A lot of lousy research gets published in order to game the academic system. Your solution: More funding. Do you really think those guys who are already gaming the system will not make a grab at the extra funding?
Re: Give researchers a lifetime word limit
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
The supply constraints med schools impose most certainly are not to prevent "oversupply" of doctors. Depending on who you ask, there are two main reasons they exist. One view is that there's a finite amount of doctors willing to work at academic hospitals, and thus there's a limited amount of new medical students that can be adequately trained. Another view is that medical schools collude to form a guild to better se…
In a normal economy the only thing regulating supply, is demand. The kind of organization that imposes supply constraints to sarcastically prevent "oversupply" are called cartels. You know, like a drug cartel?
True to the definition of the word, but you have a wrong example. "Drug cartels" are anything but, and the only actual cartel in the drug trade is the United States government.
Re: Give researchers a lifetime word limit
#36On the subject of short papers: http://fermatslibrary.com/s/shortest-paper-ever-published-in...
Re: Give researchers a lifetime word limit
#37Reminds me of some Warren Buffet advice on investing: Imagine you could only make 5 investments in your life. Would be one of them?
Re: Give researchers a lifetime word limit
#38I got a better idea. Force the researcher to create and submit a little mini documentary on the subject along with the paper.
That's actually already done to some extent. See New Journal of Physics for example.
Re: Give researchers a lifetime word limit
#39Please no. Papers are sufficiently terse, jargon-filled and hard to follow as it is
And that is because of the journals having limits.
I've had papers where we carefully wrote a long explanation of exactly how some feature was implemented. If papers were websites, just hide it behind a link, don't read it if you don't care.
Instead we were told to take it out as it wasted space.
Re: Give researchers a lifetime word limit
#40It's amazing how much hand wringing is done about the symptoms of problems in academia (especially life sciences) without anyone actually addressing the root causes. The reason all of these problems exist is because the space is over populated, ruthlessly competitive, and under funded. It's really that simple. Create many more professorship positions for post docs, raise the NIH, NSF, and DOD research budgets to wher…
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