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What does conservative mean in this context? Could you explain it a bit? Thanks!
by pas 6y ago
What does conservative mean in this context? Could you explain it a bit? Thanks!
- arethuza 6y agoApologies, I meant conservative in the sense of resistance to contemplate new ideas rather than the political sense. Somewhat naively I had assumed that academic research was where people would be most welcoming of at least discussing new ideas, whereas I found the opposite to be true.
- andi999 6y agoActually in some sciences they are. But anything touching medicine... forget it.
- pas 6y agoThanks! Could you give a few examples? About what were folks so conservative? Were they stubborn proving/supporting their own paradigm/hypothesis or ... they were just simply not open to any ideas? About methods or about theory? Both?
- arethuza 6y agoIt was quite a long time ago (~30 years) but I suspect a lot of it was simply because senior academics didn't realise they were actually managers, had no interest in managing or even understand that there were problems.
- gryn 6y agoIf I had to guess, in the academic context it would mean no actual novel thinking, just churning out more papers on the same `winning` theories in the field, things where before even starting you have a clear idea of what the result would look like.