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The article is basically saying that the quantity of papers published per year has a negative influence on the quality. Quite off-topic, but it reminded me of

The article is basically saying that the quantity of papers published per year has a negative influence on the quality. Quite off-topic, but it reminded me of an interesting book I read some time ago titled "The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times". It is a bit obscure and metaphysical, but it develops the same idea across all aspects of society: economics, society, politics, religion, etc, etc. Of science it basically proposes that science itself is a product of "quantitative thinking": > The founding of a science more or less on the notion of repetition brings in its train yet another delusion of a quantitative kind, the delusion that consists in thinking that the accumulation of a large number of facts can be of use by itself as ‘proof' of a theory; nevertheless, even a little reflection will make it evident that facts of the same kind are always indefinite in multitude, so that they can never all be taken into account, quite apart from the consideration that the same facts usually fit several different theories equally well. It will be said that the establishment of a greater number of facts does at least give more ‘probability' to a theory; but to say so is to admit that no certitude can be arrived at in that way, and that therefore the conclusions promulgated have nothing ‘exact' about them; Anyway, quite an interesting book.

jkhdigital 5y ago
Nice quote, and a very concise diagnosis of what ails much of science: lots of data jockeys, few true scientists. The output of scientific endeavor is not simply truth, but true theories. Or, more accurately, theories which accurately predict (i.e. are not falsified by) the broadest set of relevant observations. The real tragedy is that genuine theoretical advances are often ignored or overlooked because everyone is too busy collecting more data to notice.
- jltsiren 5y ago
  The real tragedy is that even theorists often have a hard time staying current with the theoretical developments in their field, because there are so many other theorists publishing new results. The same incentives that value publishing novel results apply to theoretical work as well. Theorists can often publish at a faster pace than experimentalists, because they don't have to spend time and money on experiments. Genuine theoretical advances are often ignored or overlooked, because the incentives value novel results over simplifying and synthetizing known results. Fixing this, like many other issues with incentives, is much easier said than done.

jkhdigital 5y ago

Nice quote, and a very concise diagnosis of what ails much of science: lots of data jockeys, few true scientists. The output of scientific endeavor is not simply truth, but true theories. Or, more accurately, theories which accurately predict (i.e. are not falsified by) the broadest set of relevant observations. The real tragedy is that genuine theoretical advances are often ignored or overlooked because everyone is too busy collecting more data to notice.

jltsiren 5y ago
The real tragedy is that even theorists often have a hard time staying current with the theoretical developments in their field, because there are so many other theorists publishing new results. The same incentives that value publishing novel results apply to theoretical work as well. Theorists can often publish at a faster pace than experimentalists, because they don't have to spend time and money on experiments. Genuine theoretical advances are often ignored or overlooked, because the incentives value novel results over simplifying and synthetizing known results. Fixing this, like many other issues with incentives, is much easier said than done.