3 ms·

On the other hand, to list some random newish things: * Genome sequencing. * New malaria drugs. * Graphene. * Better batteries. * Deep learning. * fMRI.

On the other hand, to list some random newish things: * Genome sequencing. * New malaria drugs. * Graphene. * Better batteries. * Deep learning. * fMRI. * CRISPR. From the outside, the public doesn't care about the trials and tribulations of PhDs. Or irrelevant puffed up papers. Or the organisational politics of research.

bonoboTP 7y ago
That's true, there is a lot of good work out there of course. And I'd say the system is still of concern for the public. Few readers of pop science articles recognize when they are essentially reading a pr marketing piece, and not something like a consensus textbook-like description of consolidated knowledge. The authors have special interests and biases beyond uncovering the truth, such as pressure for publication counts, tenure possibilities, filling your CV, all sorts of political considerations, flag planting, etc. Another thing is how these discoveries are made. I think people imagine it as if researchers research and ponder about things, then when they find something, they write it up to share it with the world and contribute their new found interesting knowledge. I know someone who did that in his PhD, he quit after several years without any paper submissions. When asked, he said he hasn't found anything yet worth publishing. In most places, people decide in advance that they're going to have a paper this year for this journal/conference and then they plan a solid way there. You decide what result would be sexy (keeping some secondary plans in place) and then do the whole thing. Several times things will not go as you expect, but the paper must be written. Then you rewrite history and come up with ridiculous "storylines" to make it seem like all your hypotheses naturally flow from prior work and everything fits in this nice story. Then you torture the data until it sings because there must be a paper. You look for the smallest indication of something interesting, inflate it to sound like a breakthrough, speculate about far reaching conclusions etc. And then if your university has a good pr department, journalists will eat it all up and you'll be out in the media, impacting normal people's understanding as well. (I realize I may be a bit too cynical here, and I exaggerate somewhat to get the message through.)
- conjectures 7y ago
  I get that, and you may not be wrong. It's that you may be right about the wrong thing. All this stuff matters a lot if you're pursuing a career in academia. But from the outside it just means the machine of science is a bit less efficient than it could be. Also I put it to you that serious researchers are rarely misled by low quality, vacuous papers. That kind of work will be ignored by history. So I agree that what you're pointing out is something of a problem, but may not constitute a cataclysm.

bonoboTP 7y ago

That's true, there is a lot of good work out there of course. And I'd say the system is still of concern for the public. Few readers of pop science articles recognize when they are essentially reading a pr marketing piece, and not something like a consensus textbook-like description of consolidated knowledge. The authors have special interests and biases beyond uncovering the truth, such as pressure for publication counts, tenure possibilities, filling your CV, all sorts of political considerations, flag planting, etc. Another thing is how these discoveries are made. I think people imagine it as if researchers research and ponder about things, then when they find something, they write it up to share it with the world and contribute their new found interesting knowledge. I know someone who did that in his PhD, he quit after several years without any paper submissions. When asked, he said he hasn't found anything yet worth publishing. In most places, people decide in advance that they're going to have a paper this year for this journal/conference and then they plan a solid way there. You decide what result would be sexy (keeping some secondary plans in place) and then do the whole thing. Several times things will not go as you expect, but the paper must be written. Then you rewrite history and come up with ridiculous "storylines" to make it seem like all your hypotheses naturally flow from prior work and everything fits in this nice story. Then you torture the data until it sings because there must be a paper. You look for the smallest indication of something interesting, inflate it to sound like a breakthrough, speculate about far reaching conclusions etc. And then if your university has a good pr department, journalists will eat it all up and you'll be out in the media, impacting normal people's understanding as well. (I realize I may be a bit too cynical here, and I exaggerate somewhat to get the message through.)

conjectures 7y ago
I get that, and you may not be wrong. It's that you may be right about the wrong thing. All this stuff matters a lot if you're pursuing a career in academia. But from the outside it just means the machine of science is a bit less efficient than it could be. Also I put it to you that serious researchers are rarely misled by low quality, vacuous papers. That kind of work will be ignored by history. So I agree that what you're pointing out is something of a problem, but may not constitute a cataclysm.