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Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time

nature.com

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Re: Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time

#41

Post by Maursault »

rich_sasha wrote: post #11

I wonder if this is to do with major vs minor breakthrough. Take physics. As I read it, modern fundamental physics is mostly some combination of general relativity and quantum mechanics, which are both early 20th century inventions. They weren't necessarily genius in particular in-depth analysis, rather they were genius new concepts that created a whole new blank canvas to fill in. What did the field look like just b…

> but was it lord Kelvin who said, physics just needs to figure out the ultraviolet catastrophe and it's done?

This is apparently a common misconception regarding a lecture given by Lord Kelvin in 1900 concerning "two clouds" in physics.[1] In fact, Max Planck solved the ultraviolet catastrophe, also in 1900, by assuming electromagnetic radiation can only be emitted or absorbed in discrete packets of energy called quanta. Albert Einstein also solved the ultraviolet catastrophe in a paper he published in 1905, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1922, by, as always, standing on the shoulders of giants, hypothesizing that Planck's quanta were actual particles. These particles are known today by a word coined by physical chemist Gilbert Newton Lewis in a letter to Nature in 1926, namely, photons.

[1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2106.16033.pdf

Re: Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time

#42

Post by pclmulqdq »

yobbo wrote: post #37
vanderZwan wrote: post #22

I get that in this context "patents" should be seen as the announcement of a new innovation, a surrogate of the innovation itself if you will, but setting that aside for a moment I'm struggling to imagine how patents could ever do anything but slow down disruption. Take any revolutionary discovery. Compare making it freely available to anyone, or limiting the availability to those holding the patents. EDIT: And perha…

> Compare making it freely available to anyone The original idea of a patent is that it must reveal the "secrets" behind an invention, in return for a "temporary monopoly". It's supposed to help diffusion of technology by publishing trade secrets, not to "incentivise" research. I think what is actually happening is that patents are made obtuse/opaque containing little meaningful information. They are then used as pla…

Patents have always been written in precise but vague terms. If you take that as the language and understand the structure of them, they can be quite readable, although you will often need to use outside knowledge and critical thinking to determine how to actually replicate the invention.

Re: Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time

#43

Post by fckgnad »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #40
rich_sasha wrote: post #11

I wonder if this is to do with major vs minor breakthrough. Take physics. As I read it, modern fundamental physics is mostly some combination of general relativity and quantum mechanics, which are both early 20th century inventions. They weren't necessarily genius in particular in-depth analysis, rather they were genius new concepts that created a whole new blank canvas to fill in. What did the field look like just b…

It also seems unlikely that a patent clerk, even one with a PhD in physics, would be allowed to publish in a physics journal today. The gatekeeping has gotten a lot more strict.

Filters out a lot of kook theories but I'm sure some revolutionary stuff from some Goodwill Hunting genius has been filtered out as well.

Re: Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time

#44

Post by bilsbie »

A big part is that science has become very “sanitized”. Work on the wrong issues and you won’t get funding or will even get ridiculed out of a career.

It’s not even just going against headline consensus issues that will get you in trouble. Any findings that overturn what a large group of scientists have spent their careers working on won’t be well received.

Re: Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time

#45

Post by zmgsabst »

fckgnad wrote: post #43
pclmulqdq wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also seems unlikely that a patent clerk, even one with a PhD in physics, would be allowed to publish in a physics journal today. The gatekeeping has gotten a lot more strict.

Filters out a lot of kook theories but I'm sure some revolutionary stuff from some Goodwill Hunting genius has been filtered out as well.

I’m not sure it filters out kook theories, given the replication crisis.

Rather, journals promote well-connected kooks at the expense of less well-connected kooks and happen to occasionally publish some science as a byproduct.

Re: Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time

#46

Post by zmgsabst »

seydor wrote: post #38
asdff wrote: post #7

I blame the grant funding process. What gets published is what gets funded when written up as a grant proposal. What gets written up as a grant proposal is what is called for by grant funding agencies for their own research initiatives. If you want disruptive science, fund it then. That's all everyone wants to do in science, but the bills need to be payed somehow, so you play the game the funding agencies want you to…

The current small-independent-grant culture is flat. This means that all projects are small and there are is almost no hierarchical 'higher level' science. PIs are happy to publish minor descriptions of the clouds, and journals are happy to publish them , in lack of something more impressive. So much value is lost in creating processes and bureaucracy. The focus is clearly on "getting the grant". And the grant acts a…

That’s because our financial system is controlled by power hungry but small minded sociopaths.

Re: Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time

#47

Post by zmgsabst »

vanderZwan wrote: post #28
jean_tta wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make two assumptions: - There are as many revolutionary discoveries with and without patents - Without patents, discoveries would be freely avalaible As far as I know, two (related) arguments are generally made for patents: - Patents create an indirect (by preventing the competition from using your invention) or direct (by licensing it) monetary return to innovation, potentially leading to more innovation - If a…

> There are as many revolutionary discoveries with and without patents I explicitly don't: I mentioned the patent stops others from innovating on top of the patent. The necessity of patents to be public is one I had not considered though, being a force against trade secrets is a good counterpoint. > Whether patents lead to more or less innovation is, as far as I know, contentious. Honestly, I really have trouble acce…

3D printing seems a good example:

Extruded plastic took off before resin printers because the patents expired a few years earlier.

As far as I can tell, we could have had the 3D printing revolution in the 90s or early 2000s, but instead we locked the technology away to only be used in a few esoteric commercial applications until the patents expired.

Re: Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time

#48

Post by ctchocula »

derbOac wrote: post #20
ablatt89 wrote: post #12

I think that the expectation that "ground-breaking" discoveries in science should follow some linear or predictable timetable is not reasonable. Is the time period between "ground-breaking" discoveries supposed to be every 5 years, every 10 years? The volume of papers has increased significantly, and publish or perish kinda stinks, but it's not just an issue of funding, but some (many?) researchers publish and exagge…

What you're pointing to is far more insidious than I think is usually recognized. People can point to incentive structures like grants etc, and to the implications in terms of the meaning of metrics etc but the real harm is in how it shifts mental focus and attention collectively. It's not ok to let minor things or things you think are obvious go anymore to focus on bigger picture issues, that might be "riskier" but…

Higgs, who hypothesized the Higgs boson back in the 70s, has only published 2-3 papers in the decades since. Before it was announced that he won the Nobel prize, his University was deciding between forcing him out or gambling on him potentially winning the Nobel prize which would bring more reknown to the department. He has commented recently saying if he were a young, freshly minted PhD today he would not have gotten tenure with his publication record. That seems insane to me and a bitter critique of today's incentive structures created by the funding system we have that rewards incremental work over real breakthroughs.

Re: Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time

#50

Post by zmgsabst »

karmakurtisaani wrote: post #10

From my training as a computer scientist, I am used to the idea that some problems are easy and some are plainly intractable. Perhaps that's also true in science and technology, and we are starting to exhaust all the easy directions. Still, many less techy problems remain, at least climate change and wealth inequality come to mind. Perhaps we'll see the biggest innovations in solving those in the future.

As a software developer, I’d want to see a rewrite to clean up the legacy bodges before we conclude we can’t add more.

Also, wealth inequality isn’t a problem: how wealthy the people at the bottom are is. Wealth inequality is associated with fewer poor people and a higher standard of living because wealth inequality requires a wealthy society.

What exactly are you “fixing”?

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