3 ms·

> First of all, it's not about whether you work at a university and have a PhD. People can do excellent research without a PhD, and certainly not everything tha

> First of all, it's not about whether you work at a university and have a PhD. People can do excellent research without a PhD, and certainly not everything that a PhD-holder does deserves to called research. I appreciate this dismissed as a straw man, but there are definitely online communities (and individuals I know) who reflexively discount comments from people outside academia. I understand the instinct, it's a reasonable immune response when everyone thinks they're an expert because they read a blog post or a pop sci best seller. Sometimes, though, the antibodies kill perfectly healthy tissue too, like valid contributions from bright generalists.

the_cat_kittles 9y ago
another factor is that you are very defensive if you spent a bunch of time getting a phd and someone didnt and is still able to do research as well as you. and im sure its not very common, since getting good at something requires lots of time and energy. but i bet it does sometimes, and thats probably one of the reasons why some of the healthy tissue is killed
- DataWorker 9y ago
  And they have families to feed and their income depends on thier PhD being enough of a barrier to entry that they can pay thier bills. So much human progress has been lost because the economic model is broken. We seemed to make more progress when science was restricted to a smaller group of practitioners, many of whom were wealthy enough that they could be guided by the science rather than the funding.
  - newsbinator 9y ago
    Also in the early days there was more low-hanging fruit. You could make scientific discoveries by locking yourself in a room for a week and thinking deeply about something you read recently. Then come out and test it with items from your kitchen. Now it's harder to make breakthroughs without specialized equipment, and the area of interest has narrowed to a tiny sliver.

the_cat_kittles 9y ago

another factor is that you are very defensive if you spent a bunch of time getting a phd and someone didnt and is still able to do research as well as you. and im sure its not very common, since getting good at something requires lots of time and energy. but i bet it does sometimes, and thats probably one of the reasons why some of the healthy tissue is killed

DataWorker 9y ago
And they have families to feed and their income depends on thier PhD being enough of a barrier to entry that they can pay thier bills. So much human progress has been lost because the economic model is broken. We seemed to make more progress when science was restricted to a smaller group of practitioners, many of whom were wealthy enough that they could be guided by the science rather than the funding.
- newsbinator 9y ago
  Also in the early days there was more low-hanging fruit. You could make scientific discoveries by locking yourself in a room for a week and thinking deeply about something you read recently. Then come out and test it with items from your kitchen. Now it's harder to make breakthroughs without specialized equipment, and the area of interest has narrowed to a tiny sliver.