5 ms·

There have been converastions for years about the slow down in scientific discovery. Often times the explanation is that science is getting more expensive, som

There have been converastions for years about the slow down in scientific discovery. Often times the explanation is that science is getting more expensive, something i've often felt was a bit of a straw man argument. Instead pointing at the current incentive structure (that everyone already agrees is broken) makes a lot more sense. So lets start a conversation about a better incentive structure. What do we want to incentivize? How do we do that? How do we fix science?

bjelkeman-again 7y ago
What is broken with the current system? (I have an idea what is broken, but it would be good to see it explained.)
- wegs 7y ago
  A lot of things, but this paper points to one issue: * In order to get an academic position, you need to have letters from a research community. * In order to get citations, you need your papers to be used by a research community. This gives a strong advantage to work done within existing lines of research. Virtually anything outside of one of the existing "academic cottage industries" or "mutual adoration societies" is at a huge disadvantage. You end up with research communities going down long rabbit holes with tunnel vision, and big broad areas of potential research are never explored.
hef19898 7y ago
Incentives, and the corresponding KPIs, are always a good place to start looking if one is trying to find out why systems and people behave the way they do. When I read the title I thought the paper was about business ideas and similar things. Having quickly read the paper, citations is a likely reason for, what the authors called, me too science. Maybe it's time to be more bold.
- jjoonathan 7y ago
  Well, yeah, but bold is nearly impossible to tell from crazy, and people really don't like being told that "actually, the most efficient management technique in this case is to throw money randomly at a lightly-filtered set of projects." People want to believe that blue-sky research can be predicted, managed, and optimized, no matter the staggering mountains of evidence to the contrary.
  - hef19898 7y ago
    That seems to problem, doesn't it? How to identify the truly crazy ideas from the simply bold ones. Especially as nobody "gets fired to buy IBM", which kind of applies to everything from buying and hiring, over startup funding all the way to research.
wegs 7y ago
I would start by cutting academic salaries at elite schools. These are $150k-$200k for a typical professor, and $1 million at the top. Maybe $100k at the bottom. I'd place these at $60k-$100k: enough to live on, but not enough to go into it for anything other than love-of-science. A university president might hit $200k. I'd hire many more academics, and given them much more freedom. Not as much publish-or-perish, and more intellectual exploration. Anyone qualified to do research should have the option to do so in their field of interest. That's kind of how academia used to work before massive endowments. I might also do something about tenure. It seems like an obsolete idea as structured right now. It's not a horrible idea, but it's obsolete in a lot of ways. It forces people to put in massive efforts early-career. That, for example, it doesn't line up with biological clocks, and puts in many other bizarre incentives. I don't mind someone gaining tenure if they've done fantastic work, mind you, but it shouldn't be a 7-year clock. For example, perhaps you're a professor with a 5-year renewable contract. If you do fantastic work, you become a professor-with-tenure, whether that's 4 years in or 40.
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  I don’t think you really understand what professors make already. Even a CS professor at UCLA is barely breaking $100k, and they would be in dire straights for their market if the university didn’t back their housing loan. Sometimes professors have the option of topping up their salary out of their research grants, but that has a few problems in itself.
  - qchris 7y ago
    It's a little tough to generalize about salary in academia. Obviously, a 'professor' covers multiple ranks in the academic hierarchy, but if you look at the published pay scales for assistant professors (I believe the lowest professor ranking with tenure) at University of California, it looks like large majority of them are breaking $100k [1]. I don't see a way of breaking those results into discipline, I'd imagine that those individuals in fields like CS vs. more academia-exclusive fields like literature or geography (relatively, anyway) are making towards the higher scale of that. Some of them in with clearly medical-related title are making much more, but I think that's to be expected. Also, it's possible I'm mistaken, but I believe professors are allowed to be paid to act as advisors or "resources" for external organizations to act as a secondary revenue stream? Combined with topping off their salary with research grants as you pointed out, and the nice perks academia offers if you can get tenure (job security, etc.), I'm not sure that even this data fully encapsulates compensation either way [1] https://ucannualwage.ucop.edu/wage/ https://ucannualwage.ucop.edu/wage/ (type in "asst prof" to title search, with ALL location selected)
mhh__ 7y ago
> There have been converastions for years about the slow down in scientific discovery. In what field?

bjelkeman-again 7y ago

What is broken with the current system? (I have an idea what is broken, but it would be good to see it explained.)

wegs 7y ago
A lot of things, but this paper points to one issue: * In order to get an academic position, you need to have letters from a research community. * In order to get citations, you need your papers to be used by a research community. This gives a strong advantage to work done within existing lines of research. Virtually anything outside of one of the existing "academic cottage industries" or "mutual adoration societies" is at a huge disadvantage. You end up with research communities going down long rabbit holes with tunnel vision, and big broad areas of potential research are never explored.

hef19898 7y ago

Incentives, and the corresponding KPIs, are always a good place to start looking if one is trying to find out why systems and people behave the way they do. When I read the title I thought the paper was about business ideas and similar things. Having quickly read the paper, citations is a likely reason for, what the authors called, me too science. Maybe it's time to be more bold.

jjoonathan 7y ago
Well, yeah, but bold is nearly impossible to tell from crazy, and people really don't like being told that "actually, the most efficient management technique in this case is to throw money randomly at a lightly-filtered set of projects." People want to believe that blue-sky research can be predicted, managed, and optimized, no matter the staggering mountains of evidence to the contrary.
- hef19898 7y ago
  That seems to problem, doesn't it? How to identify the truly crazy ideas from the simply bold ones. Especially as nobody "gets fired to buy IBM", which kind of applies to everything from buying and hiring, over startup funding all the way to research.

wegs 7y ago

I would start by cutting academic salaries at elite schools. These are $150k-$200k for a typical professor, and $1 million at the top. Maybe $100k at the bottom. I'd place these at $60k-$100k: enough to live on, but not enough to go into it for anything other than love-of-science. A university president might hit $200k. I'd hire many more academics, and given them much more freedom. Not as much publish-or-perish, and more intellectual exploration. Anyone qualified to do research should have the option to do so in their field of interest. That's kind of how academia used to work before massive endowments. I might also do something about tenure. It seems like an obsolete idea as structured right now. It's not a horrible idea, but it's obsolete in a lot of ways. It forces people to put in massive efforts early-career. That, for example, it doesn't line up with biological clocks, and puts in many other bizarre incentives. I don't mind someone gaining tenure if they've done fantastic work, mind you, but it shouldn't be a 7-year clock. For example, perhaps you're a professor with a 5-year renewable contract. If you do fantastic work, you become a professor-with-tenure, whether that's 4 years in or 40.

seanmcdirmid 7y ago
I don’t think you really understand what professors make already. Even a CS professor at UCLA is barely breaking $100k, and they would be in dire straights for their market if the university didn’t back their housing loan. Sometimes professors have the option of topping up their salary out of their research grants, but that has a few problems in itself.
- qchris 7y ago
  It's a little tough to generalize about salary in academia. Obviously, a 'professor' covers multiple ranks in the academic hierarchy, but if you look at the published pay scales for assistant professors (I believe the lowest professor ranking with tenure) at University of California, it looks like large majority of them are breaking $100k [1]. I don't see a way of breaking those results into discipline, I'd imagine that those individuals in fields like CS vs. more academia-exclusive fields like literature or geography (relatively, anyway) are making towards the higher scale of that. Some of them in with clearly medical-related title are making much more, but I think that's to be expected. Also, it's possible I'm mistaken, but I believe professors are allowed to be paid to act as advisors or "resources" for external organizations to act as a secondary revenue stream? Combined with topping off their salary with research grants as you pointed out, and the nice perks academia offers if you can get tenure (job security, etc.), I'm not sure that even this data fully encapsulates compensation either way [1] https://ucannualwage.ucop.edu/wage/ https://ucannualwage.ucop.edu/wage/ (type in "asst prof" to title search, with ALL location selected)

mhh__ 7y ago

> There have been converastions for years about the slow down in scientific discovery. In what field?