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> But the social sciences are this virus that crept into academia and have taken over. OK, naval – what are you actually talking about?

• rektide 5y ago
  Great comment, right q. Imo the message is at least delivered early. It's the subtitle. My read: you have to be uncool to be good. > Science’s biggest breakthroughs came from unpopular people
  • HKH2 5y ago
    Drawing attention to relevant inconsistencies does not seem to be a good way to become popular, so you most probably have to risk being somewhat less popular to get closer to the truth of a matter.
    • jfengel 5y ago
      I'm not so sure that's true. Scientists enjoy breakthroughs. There are always oxen gored and there are certainly instances where science advanced one funeral at a time, but I think people overstate the role of the lone, contrarian genius. Especially in cases where they say "I am lone and contrarian therefore I am a genius". There are many who seem to want to make themselves unpopular as if this somehow singles them out for achievement, but it just makes them a*holes the vast majority of the time. We just don't hear about them, while we do hear about those rare circumstances where somebody really did manage to achieve something despite being a jerk about it.
      • HKH2 5y ago
        Aiming to be unpopular might be worse than aiming to be popular. What I meant was that if one is concerned about truth, they need not be so fixated on what their peers or the status quo thinks. I was thinking about examples where corners are cut such as data being shaped to fit conclusions. Maybe replication crises don't hinder scientific progress as much as I think they do, but things do get lost in the noise, considering what has been rediscovered.