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> It's good that you included "maybe", because that does not follow. Yes, there is much shoddy science. Medicine really is not unique in that aspect. Verificati

> It's good that you included "maybe", because that does not follow. Yes, there is much shoddy science. Medicine really is not unique in that aspect. Verification studies are not valued, so they're not performed. The lack of independent verification also makes the primary researchers lax. But luckily, the best solution to shoddy science is more science. If all the people decrying the state of overall "science" would spend just as much time arguing for more replication studies, the world would be a much better place. Let's funnel more money into a system that's suffering from Eroom's Law? A different read on the situation would be to fire the majority of scientists. We'll keep 1% - 10% of them and give them an order of magnitude more funding. Also we'll close down some branches of science entirely because they're a waste of effort. Consider that: Corporations are already doing this to entire R&D departments and the government isn't far behind them with respect to NASA and NSF funding. Why is public funding on life support in major areas? Here's one idea that may be wrong but I think it's worth consideration. Maybe there is just way too many scientists. Maybe science has a scaling problem. Maybe the signal to noise ratio is mostly noise because nobody feels the pressure to replicate that comes from intense competition between researchers and maybe nobody is reading the journals they're working so hard to publish in because it's like drinking from a fire hose. Even in computer science we're constantly reinventing 'new' ideas that were actually originally discovered in the 70s. Ceaselessly cycling through existing paradigms leads to diminishing returns. Not being able to integrate existing knowledge is a failure mode. If you look at the early history of science you see it is littered with disciplines that don't exist in the modern era, mostly because they were fraudulent bunk. Of course that could never happen today. Preposterous, > For the rest of your objections: yes, progress is incremental. It always has been. Before we put a man on the moon, we had people in low orbit, then high orbit. Before we sent humans in space, we sent other animals. Before we sent animals, we sent only a rocket. And since we've been to the moon, we have succesfully landed probes on asteroids. We have performed soil analysis on Mars. All of those steps were just as incremental as the lunar landing. This is just unconvincing. You've seen 2001, so you've seen what my parents generation expected to happen by the early 21st century. The most likely positive outcome is that after 100 years since the moon landing we'll have more robots and a handful of humans on the nearest planet. If our advancements are actually impressive we don't need the journalists to prompt us into thinking so. I recall that probe that landed on that asteroid recently went dark for most of it's life because they used solar power instead of the nuclear battery that powers the Voyagers. The Saturn 5 rusting on NASA's front lawn before it got shipped into a museum. This is pathetic. > Finally, in my view the lack of apparent progress since the 1980's is because of state divestment around that time. Many government-sponsored research benefits were privatized around that time, which meant that the benefits of the research ended up in a few rent-seeking silo's (big pharma being one of them). This is a world wide stagnation in science/engineering/technology ex-computation, it's much bigger than a country's funding drying up. If the stagnation continues and we have a major economic hiccup we could really go from plateauing to an undignified descent. All the scientists will be ekeing out a living just to make ends meet. Some of that has been happening already. I know of several influential scientists in biology and mathematics who were or are literally living hand to mouth. This irks me when I see poppingjays with trust funds playact at cargocult science. I'm sure this happened in the past also, but for it to occur in a time it is commonly supposed that anybody complaining about quality is a crank it is especially galling. http://67.media.tumblr.com/96064fb9c0b3371eec2349149dc15f11/tumblr_ncwis7r8jF1t2ig4wo1_1280.jpg http://67.media.tumblr.com/96064fb9c0b3371eec2349149dc15f11/... You had a question concerning experts and their worries? I'd point you to the life's work of John Ioannidis. There seems to be one of those guys in most fields now, Jonathan Haidt in social science, even physics has Lee Smolin. Mostly for the sake of brevity I pause here. Also; >> What is the grit in the gears? > >Hoarding of capital is probably a part of it. Downward pressure on wages is incompatible with creativity in the workplace. Agreed.

tremon 10y ago
Let's funnel more money into a system that's suffering from Eroom's Law? I didn't say more money, I said more science. Wouldn't it be great if all patients taking a particular drug would have direct access to a scientifically-trained researcher/assistant that could interpret the effect on that patient, and publish their results as a single data point on that drug? For many conditions, there are patient support groups. I would want these groups to participate in the evaluation of drug effectiveness, but most lack scientific rigour and have little means to corroborate with other groups or manufacturers. We'll keep 1% - 10% of them and give them an order of magnitude more funding. I think this will not prevent agenda-driven research (AKA corruption of science). At the most, you will get higher inflation of the cost of buying specific results with money. And since you've reduced the total scientific capacity, there is even less capacity for verification of results. Also we'll close down some branches of science entirely because they're a waste of effort. I'm afraid the first that would be closed down are the purely theoretical sciences, such as advanced math and string theory. After all, they don't have a practical use, don't they? And wouldn't it be useful if you could classify the entire field of climate research as "waste of effort", because you happen to be in power and don't like its results? The problem is that we don't have a universal, uncontested definition of "waste of effort". Serendipitous discoveries are a real thing, and have spawned entirely new areas of research or tools. Some of the major accidental breakthroughs: penicillin, microwave ovens, teflon, vulcanization of rubber, viagra. We will never know what breakthrough we missed out on by not pursuing some research. I think narrowing the scope of research is a bad idea. Maybe science has a scaling problem [..] maybe nobody is reading the journals [..] because it's like drinking from a fire hose Science has an accessibility problem. When researchers have to pay thousands of dollars before they can even read other studies, that automatically sets a minimum bar for their own scientific research to break even. Since replication studies can not lead to new patent applications, they're only money sinks. And you are correct that there are too many publications adding next to nothing to the overall knowledge. But that too, in my eyes, is a problem of accessibility. Not money-wise, but content-wise. We really need better search and classification systems. But as long as the content is locked up, the content holders have no incentive to improve our access. Not being able to integrate existing knowledge is a failure mode Fully agreed. You've seen 2001, so you've seen what my parents generation expected to happen by the early 21st century. Not sure what you mean here. If you mean "2001: A Space Odyssey", then no, I haven't seen it. I have seen "Airplane 2" though... If our advancements are actually impressive we don't need the journalists to prompt us into thinking so. But that was exactly my point. The lunar landing wasn't actually that impressive, yet we had thousands of journalists prompting us to think so. The space race was overhyped because it was used as propaganda on the cold war front. Yes, it was a major milestone in human engineering, but as a scientific achievement it was just incremental. To me, it is exactly because of journalist hype that we think that the lunar landing was a greater accomplishment than the Mars exploration missions, or than the permanently-inhabited International Space Station. that probe that landed on that asteroid recently went dark for most of it's life because they used solar power instead of the nuclear battery that powers the Voyagers. Yes, the aversion against nuclear energy is a great tragedy for modern life, especially for space exploration. But that is a political problem brought on by the weaponization of nuclear power, it's not a scientific or engineering problem. This is a world wide stagnation in science/engineering/technology ex-computation I think we'll just have to disagree on that.

tremon 10y ago

Let's funnel more money into a system that's suffering from Eroom's Law? I didn't say more money, I said more science. Wouldn't it be great if all patients taking a particular drug would have direct access to a scientifically-trained researcher/assistant that could interpret the effect on that patient, and publish their results as a single data point on that drug? For many conditions, there are patient support groups. I would want these groups to participate in the evaluation of drug effectiveness, but most lack scientific rigour and have little means to corroborate with other groups or manufacturers. We'll keep 1% - 10% of them and give them an order of magnitude more funding. I think this will not prevent agenda-driven research (AKA corruption of science). At the most, you will get higher inflation of the cost of buying specific results with money. And since you've reduced the total scientific capacity, there is even less capacity for verification of results. Also we'll close down some branches of science entirely because they're a waste of effort. I'm afraid the first that would be closed down are the purely theoretical sciences, such as advanced math and string theory. After all, they don't have a practical use, don't they? And wouldn't it be useful if you could classify the entire field of climate research as "waste of effort", because you happen to be in power and don't like its results? The problem is that we don't have a universal, uncontested definition of "waste of effort". Serendipitous discoveries are a real thing, and have spawned entirely new areas of research or tools. Some of the major accidental breakthroughs: penicillin, microwave ovens, teflon, vulcanization of rubber, viagra. We will never know what breakthrough we missed out on by not pursuing some research. I think narrowing the scope of research is a bad idea. Maybe science has a scaling problem [..] maybe nobody is reading the journals [..] because it's like drinking from a fire hose Science has an accessibility problem. When researchers have to pay thousands of dollars before they can even read other studies, that automatically sets a minimum bar for their own scientific research to break even. Since replication studies can not lead to new patent applications, they're only money sinks. And you are correct that there are too many publications adding next to nothing to the overall knowledge. But that too, in my eyes, is a problem of accessibility. Not money-wise, but content-wise. We really need better search and classification systems. But as long as the content is locked up, the content holders have no incentive to improve our access. Not being able to integrate existing knowledge is a failure mode Fully agreed. You've seen 2001, so you've seen what my parents generation expected to happen by the early 21st century. Not sure what you mean here. If you mean "2001: A Space Odyssey", then no, I haven't seen it. I have seen "Airplane 2" though... If our advancements are actually impressive we don't need the journalists to prompt us into thinking so. But that was exactly my point. The lunar landing wasn't actually that impressive, yet we had thousands of journalists prompting us to think so. The space race was overhyped because it was used as propaganda on the cold war front. Yes, it was a major milestone in human engineering, but as a scientific achievement it was just incremental. To me, it is exactly because of journalist hype that we think that the lunar landing was a greater accomplishment than the Mars exploration missions, or than the permanently-inhabited International Space Station. that probe that landed on that asteroid recently went dark for most of it's life because they used solar power instead of the nuclear battery that powers the Voyagers. Yes, the aversion against nuclear energy is a great tragedy for modern life, especially for space exploration. But that is a political problem brought on by the weaponization of nuclear power, it's not a scientific or engineering problem. This is a world wide stagnation in science/engineering/technology ex-computation I think we'll just have to disagree on that.