4 ms·

> Is great science done anymore? Yes. The problem is not a lack of excellent scientific results, the problem is the sheer number of mediocre people in the fiel

by lutusp 11y ago

> Is great science done anymore? Yes. The problem is not a lack of excellent scientific results, the problem is the sheer number of mediocre people in the field and the amount of trash that's published as though it was either significant or science. These mediocre results tend to hide the high-quality work. My theory is that there are just as many original thinkers as ever lived, but the noise level is much higher now, and scientific publications tend to publish page fillers with little or no significance or that are simply wrong: http://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-fail-reproducibility-test-1.18248 http://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-f... In my opinion, the problem is not that science is over, the problem is that it's become to a large extent a business instead of an exploration of nature for the sake of exploration.

jupiter90000 11y ago
Your theory makes sense to me -- it seems the number of PhDs produced yearly increased greatly since around 1960 [1][2]. Since maintaining a career in science requires journal publication, I'm sure this correlates with incredible increases in published results over the past (say pre-1960). Perhaps the mediocre results are published by those wanting to 'look like a productive scientist' without adding much to the knowledge-base. The result being what you're mentioning, and maybe what I'm noticing too. [1] http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf06319/figures/fig02-04.htm http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf06319/figures/fig02-04.htm [2] http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf12303/ http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf12303/