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Yes, but this sturgeons law (maybe less extreme extent) often applies to within labs or within scientists as well. Newton did first rate work, but he also spen
by j7ake 5y ago
Yes, but this sturgeons law (maybe less extreme extent) often applies to within labs or within scientists as well.
Newton did first rate work, but he also spent a lot of time working on alchemy and theology which didn’t get anywhere.
Research grants are generally competitive, if you haven’t shown you’ve ever done something my significant or haven’t done something significant in a long time, it is difficult to survive. But indeed even the top scientists spend a lot of time on dead ends.
It is true that often only top 5 labs or so doing good work, but those top 5 labs are not constant over time, they wax and wane like fashion trends.
The lesson is just because over last few years the top work came from only a few labs, it’s premature to eliminate all other labs because those top labs could be lower in the next cycle.
- lisper 5y agoIt's also important to distinguish between things that turn out to be crap in retrospect and things that can be known to be crap given the information available at the time. Those are two very different things. Yes, alchemy is crap, but there's no way Newton could have known that given the data he had at his disposal at the time.
- WalterBright 5y ago> things that can be known to be crap given the information available at the time Sometimes people do investigate the crap, and discover it's actually fertilizer. The trouble is, one cannot tell in advance.
- lambdatronics 5y agoYou understate your point. Many advances were 'known' in advance to be crap.
- tmn 5y agoIt’s somewhat laughable to say he worked on alchemy and theology and that got no where, while we are discussing him and his accomplishments 400 years later. Alchemy is an esoteric inner journey. Ramanujan was by all accounts a one of a kind genius. Just from wiki ‘Ramanujan credited his substantial mathematical capacities to divinity, and said the mathematical knowledge he displayed was revealed to him by his family goddess Namagiri Thayer’. Belief systems can be very powerful or destructive to ones own accomplishments