4 ms·

I think neuroscience is much like exploration. You can make hypotheses, but we barely know what is going on, so the hypotheses aren't really well grounded. Find

I think neuroscience is much like exploration. You can make hypotheses, but we barely know what is going on, so the hypotheses aren't really well grounded. Find hats there, publish the result, build the map, so to speak, so that future scientists can make more informed hypotheses.

cbkeller 8y ago
Yeah. In areas where we know so little that it's hard to make informed hypotheses, there's probably a substantial component of discovery science. It's a bit of a yin-yang situation IMO: discovery science often leads to testable hypotheses for future work, and things we learn from hypothesis-testing can open up new avenues for discovery
tgb 8y ago
Genetics too. RNA sequencing data is almost exclusively considered exploratory and is expected to be replicated at least technically (by using the same biological samples for qPCR to measure a small number of genes) but also biologically with novel samples and experiments.
Balgair 8y ago
Oh man, in neuro, discovery-centric science is really controversial. Not the findings themselves, but the funding. If you propose to just stain/viral-inject some tissue, electro-physiologically map some connections, etc, you'll just get back comments that say 'fishing expedition'. Maybe you can do this with NIH when you propose to contrast it with diseased tissues, but even then, it's unlikely (Well, less likely than the 'normal' low rate of proposals being funded).
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  I'm appalled. That fundamental science is called 'a fishing expedition' in a derogatory way, says whole volumes about how academia is failing.
  - robotresearcher 8y ago
    Don’t be appalled. This is not a failure. There are limited funds. Hypothesis driven work is thought to be more probably productive. If you were handing out the funding, assuming equally good teams, do you choose the work that targets Parkinson’s mechanisms or the functional map of a less-explored bit of CNS? We are doing basic exploration as well. We are just prioritizing targeted work in a resource constrained environment.
    - Balgair 8y ago
      Maaaaybe. Truth be told, it's all about networking. Grants go to the friends of the reviewers more so than to those deemed most deserving [0]. Granted, it's really hard to read a bunch of proposals and determine whose is 'most' deserving. So reviewers act like the humans they are and give the grants to their friends. [0]Total anecdata, I have no source for this.
      - robotresearcher 8y ago
        I don't review grants for my friends. This is a strong community norm. It's unethical to do so. This causes a shortage of qualified reviewers, but that's less of a moral hazard than conflicts of interest.
      - SubiculumCode 8y ago
        If you admit you do not know this, then why say it? I've had opportunities to review papers from people I have co-authored with before and declined the opportunity. I've reviewed a paper, then got an invitation from another journal to review the same paper. I declined, but sent the editor my former review. I thing there are strong social mores in the scientific community.
    - marcosdumay 8y ago
      In a field where we know nearly nothing about, putting any one of those above the other looks like a problem to me. A field should go from purely exploratory, to both, to mostly hypothesis driven as it matures, but no sooner (with fractal subdivisions where subfields go through all those stages too). Thus either neurology is way more mature than I'm aware of (a real possibility, I'm far from knowledgeable on it) or we do have a problem.
- kkylin 8y ago
  I suppose this kind of discovery science would be considered "preliminary results," meaning funding agencies like to see it done but won't fund it? Sigh.
- cbkeller 8y ago
  Discovery science is definitely harder to fund than hypothesis science. To take geologic mapping as the example again, the economic ROI has fallen over the past few centuries, when there were bigger unknown areas and you were more likely to literally or figuratively strike gold with only a coarse survey. So while there's still funding for pure mapping, there's not as much as there used to be. I would argue that the scientific benefits of pure discovery are often still quite high, but it's typically easier to convince reviewers to fund a project when you can point to specific well-defined hypotheses that you'll be testing rather than just "because we don't know what's out there".
- SubiculumCode 8y ago
  Most neuroscience work have hypotheses, but I am arguing that it is more similar to discovery science even so.

cbkeller 8y ago

Yeah. In areas where we know so little that it's hard to make informed hypotheses, there's probably a substantial component of discovery science. It's a bit of a yin-yang situation IMO: discovery science often leads to testable hypotheses for future work, and things we learn from hypothesis-testing can open up new avenues for discovery

tgb 8y ago

Genetics too. RNA sequencing data is almost exclusively considered exploratory and is expected to be replicated at least technically (by using the same biological samples for qPCR to measure a small number of genes) but also biologically with novel samples and experiments.

Balgair 8y ago

Oh man, in neuro, discovery-centric science is really controversial. Not the findings themselves, but the funding. If you propose to just stain/viral-inject some tissue, electro-physiologically map some connections, etc, you'll just get back comments that say 'fishing expedition'. Maybe you can do this with NIH when you propose to contrast it with diseased tissues, but even then, it's unlikely (Well, less likely than the 'normal' low rate of proposals being funded).

JoeAltmaier 8y ago
I'm appalled. That fundamental science is called 'a fishing expedition' in a derogatory way, says whole volumes about how academia is failing.
- robotresearcher 8y ago
  Don’t be appalled. This is not a failure. There are limited funds. Hypothesis driven work is thought to be more probably productive. If you were handing out the funding, assuming equally good teams, do you choose the work that targets Parkinson’s mechanisms or the functional map of a less-explored bit of CNS? We are doing basic exploration as well. We are just prioritizing targeted work in a resource constrained environment.
  - Balgair 8y ago
    Maaaaybe. Truth be told, it's all about networking. Grants go to the friends of the reviewers more so than to those deemed most deserving [0]. Granted, it's really hard to read a bunch of proposals and determine whose is 'most' deserving. So reviewers act like the humans they are and give the grants to their friends. [0]Total anecdata, I have no source for this.
    - robotresearcher 8y ago
      I don't review grants for my friends. This is a strong community norm. It's unethical to do so. This causes a shortage of qualified reviewers, but that's less of a moral hazard than conflicts of interest.
    - SubiculumCode 8y ago
      If you admit you do not know this, then why say it? I've had opportunities to review papers from people I have co-authored with before and declined the opportunity. I've reviewed a paper, then got an invitation from another journal to review the same paper. I declined, but sent the editor my former review. I thing there are strong social mores in the scientific community.
  - marcosdumay 8y ago
    In a field where we know nearly nothing about, putting any one of those above the other looks like a problem to me. A field should go from purely exploratory, to both, to mostly hypothesis driven as it matures, but no sooner (with fractal subdivisions where subfields go through all those stages too). Thus either neurology is way more mature than I'm aware of (a real possibility, I'm far from knowledgeable on it) or we do have a problem.
kkylin 8y ago
I suppose this kind of discovery science would be considered "preliminary results," meaning funding agencies like to see it done but won't fund it? Sigh.
cbkeller 8y ago
Discovery science is definitely harder to fund than hypothesis science. To take geologic mapping as the example again, the economic ROI has fallen over the past few centuries, when there were bigger unknown areas and you were more likely to literally or figuratively strike gold with only a coarse survey. So while there's still funding for pure mapping, there's not as much as there used to be. I would argue that the scientific benefits of pure discovery are often still quite high, but it's typically easier to convince reviewers to fund a project when you can point to specific well-defined hypotheses that you'll be testing rather than just "because we don't know what's out there".
SubiculumCode 8y ago
Most neuroscience work have hypotheses, but I am arguing that it is more similar to discovery science even so.