7 ms·

Lets take a page from Marx. Science is many things, in particular a relationship between capital and labor. The scientific method is a wonderful idea, but it is

Lets take a page from Marx. Science is many things, in particular a relationship between capital and labor. The scientific method is a wonderful idea, but it is subordinate to the economic forces that underlie scientific activity. Look at the conflicts and contradictions between those doing science (labor) and those deciding the science to be done (capital), and that is the ultimate source of these crises. The executive summary lists 40 points on how to improve the reproducibility of science. A bit over half of them are addressed to the sources of capital such as private organizations, universities, and governments. I think many of those points are good. However, I don't think the other points, the ones that recommend doing science in different ways, have a good punch. Even if you fix the problems there are today, so long as science is a rat race of trying to get grant money to stay afloat while burning out grad student after grad student, I think other pathological practices will creep in as a completely rational response on the parts of scientists to a hostile ecosystem. There's just a very big gap between how science should be done and what capital owners want from science.

deleted 9y ago
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TangoTrotFox 9y ago
I think this is pretty self evident, but the issue is that let's say you have some system where economic forces are removed. Essentially a researcher basic income in one scenario. This would suddenly massively incentivize people towards this direction since it's basically a career path that guarantees a stable livelihood, which is something that's extremely rare today. Well you need to ensure there's nobody just completely gaming the system and so inextricably you'll end up with some sort of qualifier for results. And now suddenly you've done nothing but kick the can since this new qualifier is what's going to be gamed. Maybe the biggest problem is what you mention, but in another direction. For whatever reason there seems to be extremely little interest in the private direct funding of science. In times past the aristocracy would often fund scientific research on all sorts of topics. Today the practice seems to have all but disappeared, certainly if we measure relative ratios of the practice.
- JackFr 9y ago
  > For whatever reason there seems to be extremely little interest in the private direct funding of science. Too much income equality. You can't have Rockefeller University without Rockefeller.
- throwawaymarx 9y ago
  Small correction. A basic income is guaranteed no matter what; there’s no means testing or anything like that. You can’t game the system because there’s nothing to game: you get the money regardless. You seem to be describing the system we have now, where you’re paid for results.
  - PeterisP 9y ago
    A universal basic income is guaranteed no matter what; but it's certainly possible to have basic income schemes that are not universal but limited to some (small) subpopulation, and the criteria for being in that subpopulation can be gamed.
  - dyarosla 9y ago
    I think what the parent is saying is that with a basic income only for researchers that creates a scenario where ‘Well you need to ensure there's nobody just completely gaming the system and so inextricably you'll end up with some sort of qualifier for results.’ That you don’t have ‘fake researchers’ gaming the ‘basic income only for researchers’ reward.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- geofft 9y ago
  I don't see why you would want to solve this with a researcher basic income (and overhead/bureaucracy of figuring out who is a researcher) and not the simpler solution of an actual universal basic income.
  - jxub 9y ago
stevedonovan 9y ago
While we're talking political economy, I was thinking that academia tends towards a degenerate form resembling subsistence agriculture: defending a small patch of turf and making just enough meaning to support a career. Even if the raw economic incentive is removed (e.g "publish or perish") there is sufficient ego investment to preserve this pattern.
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> There's just a very big gap between how science should be done and what capital owners want from science It was "a team from Bayer Healthcare" who "tried to replicate the results of basic cancer studies," failed, "and kicked off a media storm questioning the legitimacy of cancer science—and science in general" [1]. The "capital owners" looking out for their own buck are performing more effectively, narrowly speaking, than academia. [1] https://www.wired.com/2017/01/fighting-cancers-crisis-confidence-one-study-time/ https://www.wired.com/2017/01/fighting-cancers-crisis-confid...
- danharaj 9y ago
  Even if that's true, that only science that can have a profit motive slapped on it can be done effectively in the current system is a problem. If only such science were done, then we would have different crises of science to deal with because profit seeking is at odds with much science, in particular basic research. It's also quite obviously the case that profit seeking research has incentives to be bad science in other ways.
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    > It's also quite obviously the case that profit seeking research has incentives to be bad science in other ways I agree. My point is the Marxist framework is a bad one for modern science. We have endowed academics and ones working for private institutions and getting grants from public bodies run by scientists. Privately-financed biotech companies founded by academics taking moon shots and getting acquired by marketing and distribution powerhouses. Even delineating who is "capital" and who is "labour" quickly becomes pedantic more than useful.
    - danharaj 9y ago
      > My broader point is the Marxian framework is a bad one for modern science. I will concede that it's reasonable to think it's an incomplete and limited framework, but I have to take issue with calling it bad. For example, I think this starting point is more productive than the premises of this report. > Privately-financed biotech companies founded by academics taking moon shots and getting acquired by marketing and distribution powerhouses. Even delineating who is "capital" and who is "labour" quickly becomes pedantic more than useful. In this example it's plain to me that VCs are capital and entrepreneurs are labor. That's usually the game in such moonshots. Here we can analyze what sort of science is being done through this relationship through a Marxian lens too. VC's want to make big bets with potentially astronomical upside. That means only certain kinds of science will ever be done in this way. Yea, this kind of science is probably more replicable on average, but what about something like Theranos? This sort of science funding has its own problems with inefficient and incomplete allocation of resources. I'm not a hardcore Marxist; I don't think you can reduce the world to one grand theory based on hot takes inspired by Hegel, but I think it's a more powerful tool than most care to admit.
jonmc12 9y ago
You might enjoy the book, The Fellowship: Gilbert, Bacon, Harvey, Wren, Newton, and the Story of a Scientific Revolution. The book is set around 1660, as the center of the scientific universe shifted from Italy to England. Interestingly, the formation of the Royal Society occurred in the midst of the English Civil war. Not only economic forces, but military forces and political forces had a dramatic impact on shaping what became the formalization of of the scientific method, and peer review process. Consider that the very existence of Oxford (and other universities) hung on the arbitrary conceptions of military generals and the political implications of their decisions.
quantumofmalice 9y ago
The reproducibility crisis is most severe in the social sciences. Hard sciences like physics are on much firmer ground, and conflating the two is clownish. Social science research is funded almost entirely by the government[1]. It's a nice story you've got there, but the reason there is a replication crisis in the softer sciences is not due to the evil capitalists of the marxist imagination. In fact, much of it is due to cultural marxist insistence on outcomes conforming to political correctness, as well as uncritical acceptance of politically conforming work. See the ongoing fight against the idea of a high genetic basis for adult IQ. All of this is obvious enough: capitalists aren't interested in non-reproducable results unless it is obviating them from blame for a given externality. But that sort of research is a small fraction of overall research (and should absolutely be done by impartial third parties.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funding_of_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funding_of_science
- danharaj 9y ago
  > Hard sciences like physics are on much firmer ground, and conflating the two is clownish. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_affair > It's a nice story you've got there, but the reason there is a replication crisis in the softer sciences is not due to the evil capitalists of the marxist imagination. You understand literally nothing about Marxism. For example, "capitalist" isn't a moral designation, it is a description of an economic agent's role in an economic relationship. Capital owners have access to resources and they give permission to laborers to use those resources. That's it. > cultural marxist You can't be serious. > See the ongoing fight against the idea of a high genetic basis for adult IQ. This plays out more in the public sphere than in scientific communities. It's also the case that a few popular intellectuals try to sell psychometric science as saying more than it actually does about how social policies should be designed. This, again, happens moreso outside of scientific circles.
- cfadvan 9y ago
  Maybe none of this ideological bullshit is the real issue? Maybe the major problem is that hard vs soft sciences are subject to different experimental controls and confounding factors, not to mention standards of rigor. If you claim to discover a new particle your n will be in the billions, and a whole community will analyze your results with a fine comb. Meanwhile if you make a claim about implicit bias or the nutritional value of coffee it’s based on tiny samples with huge variability. It’d be cool if your and the other poster’s ideological spat could try to not use science as the battleground, or at least eliminate more likely issues before going there. Social sciences are hardly even science from the perspective of a chemist or physicist, there’s no need to delve into petty ideology. Methodology is a much richer source of hurdles to overcome than old and sad debates.
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spikels 9y ago
Marx!? Marx can teach us very little about economics and almost nothing about science. Science is NOT “a relationship between capital and labor”. If you see everything through a such a strong lens, you see very little.
- dang 9y ago
  Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents, which never lead anywhere new. I know the GP pointed there, but that's no reason to follow the pointer. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - spikels 9y ago
    Fair enough but I was reacting to the clearly idealogical. To suggest Marx has something to add in this issue is both provocative and ridiculous. To entertain drivel this degrades HN.
    - dang 9y ago
      As I tried to explain, it's a matter of degree. If a comment contains both bait and substance, it falls to the rest of us not to take the bait, since doing that guarantees a useless tangent or worse. The acceptable options are either (1) react to the substance, or (2) don't react. Getting triggered happens to everyone but is not an act of intellectual curiosity. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

TangoTrotFox 9y ago

I think this is pretty self evident, but the issue is that let's say you have some system where economic forces are removed. Essentially a researcher basic income in one scenario. This would suddenly massively incentivize people towards this direction since it's basically a career path that guarantees a stable livelihood, which is something that's extremely rare today. Well you need to ensure there's nobody just completely gaming the system and so inextricably you'll end up with some sort of qualifier for results. And now suddenly you've done nothing but kick the can since this new qualifier is what's going to be gamed. Maybe the biggest problem is what you mention, but in another direction. For whatever reason there seems to be extremely little interest in the private direct funding of science. In times past the aristocracy would often fund scientific research on all sorts of topics. Today the practice seems to have all but disappeared, certainly if we measure relative ratios of the practice.

JackFr 9y ago
> For whatever reason there seems to be extremely little interest in the private direct funding of science. Too much income equality. You can't have Rockefeller University without Rockefeller.
throwawaymarx 9y ago
Small correction. A basic income is guaranteed no matter what; there’s no means testing or anything like that. You can’t game the system because there’s nothing to game: you get the money regardless. You seem to be describing the system we have now, where you’re paid for results.
- PeterisP 9y ago
  A universal basic income is guaranteed no matter what; but it's certainly possible to have basic income schemes that are not universal but limited to some (small) subpopulation, and the criteria for being in that subpopulation can be gamed.
- dyarosla 9y ago
  I think what the parent is saying is that with a basic income only for researchers that creates a scenario where ‘Well you need to ensure there's nobody just completely gaming the system and so inextricably you'll end up with some sort of qualifier for results.’ That you don’t have ‘fake researchers’ gaming the ‘basic income only for researchers’ reward.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
geofft 9y ago
I don't see why you would want to solve this with a researcher basic income (and overhead/bureaucracy of figuring out who is a researcher) and not the simpler solution of an actual universal basic income.
- jxub 9y ago

stevedonovan 9y ago

While we're talking political economy, I was thinking that academia tends towards a degenerate form resembling subsistence agriculture: defending a small patch of turf and making just enough meaning to support a career. Even if the raw economic incentive is removed (e.g "publish or perish") there is sufficient ego investment to preserve this pattern.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

> There's just a very big gap between how science should be done and what capital owners want from science It was "a team from Bayer Healthcare" who "tried to replicate the results of basic cancer studies," failed, "and kicked off a media storm questioning the legitimacy of cancer science—and science in general" [1]. The "capital owners" looking out for their own buck are performing more effectively, narrowly speaking, than academia. [1] https://www.wired.com/2017/01/fighting-cancers-crisis-confidence-one-study-time/ https://www.wired.com/2017/01/fighting-cancers-crisis-confid...

danharaj 9y ago
Even if that's true, that only science that can have a profit motive slapped on it can be done effectively in the current system is a problem. If only such science were done, then we would have different crises of science to deal with because profit seeking is at odds with much science, in particular basic research. It's also quite obviously the case that profit seeking research has incentives to be bad science in other ways.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > It's also quite obviously the case that profit seeking research has incentives to be bad science in other ways I agree. My point is the Marxist framework is a bad one for modern science. We have endowed academics and ones working for private institutions and getting grants from public bodies run by scientists. Privately-financed biotech companies founded by academics taking moon shots and getting acquired by marketing and distribution powerhouses. Even delineating who is "capital" and who is "labour" quickly becomes pedantic more than useful.
  - danharaj 9y ago
    > My broader point is the Marxian framework is a bad one for modern science. I will concede that it's reasonable to think it's an incomplete and limited framework, but I have to take issue with calling it bad. For example, I think this starting point is more productive than the premises of this report. > Privately-financed biotech companies founded by academics taking moon shots and getting acquired by marketing and distribution powerhouses. Even delineating who is "capital" and who is "labour" quickly becomes pedantic more than useful. In this example it's plain to me that VCs are capital and entrepreneurs are labor. That's usually the game in such moonshots. Here we can analyze what sort of science is being done through this relationship through a Marxian lens too. VC's want to make big bets with potentially astronomical upside. That means only certain kinds of science will ever be done in this way. Yea, this kind of science is probably more replicable on average, but what about something like Theranos? This sort of science funding has its own problems with inefficient and incomplete allocation of resources. I'm not a hardcore Marxist; I don't think you can reduce the world to one grand theory based on hot takes inspired by Hegel, but I think it's a more powerful tool than most care to admit.

jonmc12 9y ago

You might enjoy the book, The Fellowship: Gilbert, Bacon, Harvey, Wren, Newton, and the Story of a Scientific Revolution. The book is set around 1660, as the center of the scientific universe shifted from Italy to England. Interestingly, the formation of the Royal Society occurred in the midst of the English Civil war. Not only economic forces, but military forces and political forces had a dramatic impact on shaping what became the formalization of of the scientific method, and peer review process. Consider that the very existence of Oxford (and other universities) hung on the arbitrary conceptions of military generals and the political implications of their decisions.

quantumofmalice 9y ago

The reproducibility crisis is most severe in the social sciences. Hard sciences like physics are on much firmer ground, and conflating the two is clownish. Social science research is funded almost entirely by the government[1]. It's a nice story you've got there, but the reason there is a replication crisis in the softer sciences is not due to the evil capitalists of the marxist imagination. In fact, much of it is due to cultural marxist insistence on outcomes conforming to political correctness, as well as uncritical acceptance of politically conforming work. See the ongoing fight against the idea of a high genetic basis for adult IQ. All of this is obvious enough: capitalists aren't interested in non-reproducable results unless it is obviating them from blame for a given externality. But that sort of research is a small fraction of overall research (and should absolutely be done by impartial third parties.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funding_of_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funding_of_science

danharaj 9y ago
> Hard sciences like physics are on much firmer ground, and conflating the two is clownish. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_affair > It's a nice story you've got there, but the reason there is a replication crisis in the softer sciences is not due to the evil capitalists of the marxist imagination. You understand literally nothing about Marxism. For example, "capitalist" isn't a moral designation, it is a description of an economic agent's role in an economic relationship. Capital owners have access to resources and they give permission to laborers to use those resources. That's it. > cultural marxist You can't be serious. > See the ongoing fight against the idea of a high genetic basis for adult IQ. This plays out more in the public sphere than in scientific communities. It's also the case that a few popular intellectuals try to sell psychometric science as saying more than it actually does about how social policies should be designed. This, again, happens moreso outside of scientific circles.
cfadvan 9y ago
Maybe none of this ideological bullshit is the real issue? Maybe the major problem is that hard vs soft sciences are subject to different experimental controls and confounding factors, not to mention standards of rigor. If you claim to discover a new particle your n will be in the billions, and a whole community will analyze your results with a fine comb. Meanwhile if you make a claim about implicit bias or the nutritional value of coffee it’s based on tiny samples with huge variability. It’d be cool if your and the other poster’s ideological spat could try to not use science as the battleground, or at least eliminate more likely issues before going there. Social sciences are hardly even science from the perspective of a chemist or physicist, there’s no need to delve into petty ideology. Methodology is a much richer source of hurdles to overcome than old and sad debates.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

spikels 9y ago

Marx!? Marx can teach us very little about economics and almost nothing about science. Science is NOT “a relationship between capital and labor”. If you see everything through a such a strong lens, you see very little.

dang 9y ago
Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents, which never lead anywhere new. I know the GP pointed there, but that's no reason to follow the pointer. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- spikels 9y ago
  Fair enough but I was reacting to the clearly idealogical. To suggest Marx has something to add in this issue is both provocative and ridiculous. To entertain drivel this degrades HN.
  - dang 9y ago
    As I tried to explain, it's a matter of degree. If a comment contains both bait and substance, it falls to the rest of us not to take the bait, since doing that guarantees a useless tangent or worse. The acceptable options are either (1) react to the substance, or (2) don't react. Getting triggered happens to everyone but is not an act of intellectual curiosity. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html