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I disagree a bit with you. In today's world we have reached a state where next new research output requires access to advance tools and strong funding which is

by dfgert 8y ago

I disagree a bit with you. In today's world we have reached a state where next new research output requires access to advance tools and strong funding which is only available to researchers at flagship institutions. There isn't any real research happening outside of flagship institutions; other institutions may make big claims on research they are doing but they almost never deliver output. In some sense, distribution of nobel prizes per country can be attributed countries research outout.

wslh 8y ago
This, there are experiments that cost millions of dollars just to build and they can fail and need many other costly experiments. Beyond this, it is true that some researchers can find theoretical research using only "pen and pencil... and computers". OñAnother example about the former case (in computer science) is where a researcher can quickly build a team of a hundred post doc students to help in specific topics.
- peoplewrong 8y ago
  I don't think there are many (any) academic labs in CS with 100 post-docs. also post docs arent students. big engineering research efforts like that DO happen in industry though.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    There's a big difference between how much it costs to do research in CS and how much it costs to do research elsewhere. It costs $10^9/year to run the LHC.
    - peoplewrong 8y ago
      the comment I am responding to is talking about computer science
LeanderK 8y ago
> There isn't any real research happening outside of flagship institutions Does that really imply research only happens at stanford, MIT and Harvard? Or what are "flagship" institutions? What I wanted to say is that you can skew you distribution of researchers towards the absolute top by giving the few an enviroment the competitors can't match. I would think that this will probably be revealed if you compare for example nobel-prizes to overall citations a country produced. But that's harder to track.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >Does that really imply research only happens at stanford, MIT and Harvard? The research that matters, yes. There and in a few others all around the world. Papers, on the other hand, are written everywhere by the thousands...
  - ci5er 8y ago
    > The research that matters, yes. There and in a few others all around the world. Do you have any basis for this claim? I've found that (for example) the top research in cosmology and the top in material design and the top in semiconductor physics (as it moves into exploring exotics) are not only different universities (around the world), but that none of them are the three that are mentioned up-thread. Now, I can sling an anecdote with the best of them, but I am surprised at your claim, so I'm hoping you have better data than I?
    - coldtea 8y ago
      >but that none of them are the three that are mentioned up-thread. Not sure if cosmology is some exception (I guess one could find specialist universities in all kinds of subjects), but overall those three as exactly ranked as the top three, ranked by papers, quality, citations, patents, etc, here, across all kinds of fields: "To compile the 2017 ranking of the world’s most innovative universities, Clarivate Analytics (formerly the Intellectual Property & Science business of Thomson Reuters) began by identifying more than 600 global organizations – including educational institutions, nonprofit charities and government-funded labs – that publish the most academic research. Then they evaluated each candidate on 10 different metrics, focusing on academic papers (which indicate basic research) and patent filings (which point to an institution’s ability to apply research and commercialize its discoveries), and ranked them based on their performance." 1 Stanford University 2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 3 Harvard University https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amers-reuters-ranking-innovative-univ/reuters-top-100-the-worlds-most-innovative-universities-2017-idUSKCN1C209R https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amers-reuters-ranking-inn...
lrem 8y ago
Expensive experiments are needed only in physics and medicine, unless I have wrong notions about chemistry, out of the six Nobel prize categories.

by dfgert 8y ago

wslh 8y ago

This, there are experiments that cost millions of dollars just to build and they can fail and need many other costly experiments. Beyond this, it is true that some researchers can find theoretical research using only "pen and pencil... and computers". OñAnother example about the former case (in computer science) is where a researcher can quickly build a team of a hundred post doc students to help in specific topics.

peoplewrong 8y ago
I don't think there are many (any) academic labs in CS with 100 post-docs. also post docs arent students. big engineering research efforts like that DO happen in industry though.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  There's a big difference between how much it costs to do research in CS and how much it costs to do research elsewhere. It costs $10^9/year to run the LHC.
  - peoplewrong 8y ago
    the comment I am responding to is talking about computer science

LeanderK 8y ago

> There isn't any real research happening outside of flagship institutions Does that really imply research only happens at stanford, MIT and Harvard? Or what are "flagship" institutions? What I wanted to say is that you can skew you distribution of researchers towards the absolute top by giving the few an enviroment the competitors can't match. I would think that this will probably be revealed if you compare for example nobel-prizes to overall citations a country produced. But that's harder to track.

coldtea 8y ago
>Does that really imply research only happens at stanford, MIT and Harvard? The research that matters, yes. There and in a few others all around the world. Papers, on the other hand, are written everywhere by the thousands...
- ci5er 8y ago
  > The research that matters, yes. There and in a few others all around the world. Do you have any basis for this claim? I've found that (for example) the top research in cosmology and the top in material design and the top in semiconductor physics (as it moves into exploring exotics) are not only different universities (around the world), but that none of them are the three that are mentioned up-thread. Now, I can sling an anecdote with the best of them, but I am surprised at your claim, so I'm hoping you have better data than I?
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >but that none of them are the three that are mentioned up-thread. Not sure if cosmology is some exception (I guess one could find specialist universities in all kinds of subjects), but overall those three as exactly ranked as the top three, ranked by papers, quality, citations, patents, etc, here, across all kinds of fields: "To compile the 2017 ranking of the world’s most innovative universities, Clarivate Analytics (formerly the Intellectual Property & Science business of Thomson Reuters) began by identifying more than 600 global organizations – including educational institutions, nonprofit charities and government-funded labs – that publish the most academic research. Then they evaluated each candidate on 10 different metrics, focusing on academic papers (which indicate basic research) and patent filings (which point to an institution’s ability to apply research and commercialize its discoveries), and ranked them based on their performance." 1 Stanford University 2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 3 Harvard University https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amers-reuters-ranking-innovative-univ/reuters-top-100-the-worlds-most-innovative-universities-2017-idUSKCN1C209R https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amers-reuters-ranking-inn...

lrem 8y ago

Expensive experiments are needed only in physics and medicine, unless I have wrong notions about chemistry, out of the six Nobel prize categories.