4 ms·

Could it be there's just too much science being done for much of it to be any use? And that this oversupply causes these schemes, as a side-effect? If so, selli

Could it be there's just too much science being done for much of it to be any use? And that this oversupply causes these schemes, as a side-effect? If so, selling authorship is merely a symptom of the worthlessness of most modern science. For much of human history, science was something you did in your spare time - or, if you were exceptional, you might have a patron. Then nation states discovered the value of technology and science, and wanted more, and so have created science factories. But, perhaps unsurprisingly, the rate of science production cannot really be improved in this way, and yet the economics of science demand that is does. This disconnect between reality and expectation is the root of this problem, and many others.

SubiculumCode 5y ago
This is in fact incredibly wrong. At least in my field, there is so much more data than there are qualified experts to analyze it. For one reason, academia pays so much less than the private sphere that post docs are leaving.
twofornone 5y ago
Maybe it's a deeper problem related to western liberal notions that anyone can do anything if they just "set their mind to it". We have a glut of "professionals" across industries and institutions who don't really have any business being there, but the machine requires that they appear to be useful, and so mechanisms emerge to satisfy this constraint. A consequence in science is a long list of poor quality junk publications, and few people are willing to acknowledge the nakedness of the emperor for fear of losing their positions, but because doing so may betray their own redundancy.
seiferteric 5y ago
Something I was wondering is if faking results is so common, then surely these things they are researching must never be used in any application right? If they were, it would quickly be found that it does not actually work...
- HarryHirsch 5y ago
  This is exactly how it works in practice. Anyone who works at the bench learns quickly to spot the frauds and fakes and avoids them. That's the "replication" everyone talks about, no special agency to waste funds on boring stuff needed.
- btrettel 5y ago
  One problem I've observed is that people applying things often cargo-cult "proven" things from the scientific literature that aren't actually proven. It's easier to say that you're following "best practices" than it is to check that what you're doing works, unfortunately.
- gwd 5y ago
  > If they were, it would quickly be found that it does not actually work... Unfortunately some of the effect sizes are so small that it's hard to tell what's working or not. The results of papers on body building, for instance, are definitely put into practice by some people. If the claim of the paper is that eating pumpkin [EDIT] decreases muscle recovery time by 5%, how is an individual who starts eating pumpkin supposed to notice that he's not getting any particular benefit from following its advice? Particularly if he's also following random bits of advice from a dozen other papers, half of which are valid and half of which are not?
rossdavidh 5y ago
Oof. Good point. I feel like there's a similar pattern to having too much VC money chasing too few actually good ideas to invest in.
- pphysch 5y ago
  Or a government printing money to hire private contractors, completely disregarding its ability do anything on its own. To some extent, this is the curse of being the creator of the global reserve currency. The US government can, in theory, print as much money as it wants and pay off whoever it wants to do whatever it wants. This also extends to the academic and financial (VC) sectors, because a lot of that liquidity comes directly from the Government/Fed. Unfortunately this leads to a culture of corruption (who gets the grants/contracts/funding?) and widespread fraud. This causes the ROI of money printing to go down, the money printer accelerates and we get inflation too.

SubiculumCode 5y ago

This is in fact incredibly wrong. At least in my field, there is so much more data than there are qualified experts to analyze it. For one reason, academia pays so much less than the private sphere that post docs are leaving.

twofornone 5y ago

Maybe it's a deeper problem related to western liberal notions that anyone can do anything if they just "set their mind to it". We have a glut of "professionals" across industries and institutions who don't really have any business being there, but the machine requires that they appear to be useful, and so mechanisms emerge to satisfy this constraint. A consequence in science is a long list of poor quality junk publications, and few people are willing to acknowledge the nakedness of the emperor for fear of losing their positions, but because doing so may betray their own redundancy.

seiferteric 5y ago

Something I was wondering is if faking results is so common, then surely these things they are researching must never be used in any application right? If they were, it would quickly be found that it does not actually work...

HarryHirsch 5y ago
This is exactly how it works in practice. Anyone who works at the bench learns quickly to spot the frauds and fakes and avoids them. That's the "replication" everyone talks about, no special agency to waste funds on boring stuff needed.
btrettel 5y ago
One problem I've observed is that people applying things often cargo-cult "proven" things from the scientific literature that aren't actually proven. It's easier to say that you're following "best practices" than it is to check that what you're doing works, unfortunately.
gwd 5y ago
> If they were, it would quickly be found that it does not actually work... Unfortunately some of the effect sizes are so small that it's hard to tell what's working or not. The results of papers on body building, for instance, are definitely put into practice by some people. If the claim of the paper is that eating pumpkin [EDIT] decreases muscle recovery time by 5%, how is an individual who starts eating pumpkin supposed to notice that he's not getting any particular benefit from following its advice? Particularly if he's also following random bits of advice from a dozen other papers, half of which are valid and half of which are not?

rossdavidh 5y ago

Oof. Good point. I feel like there's a similar pattern to having too much VC money chasing too few actually good ideas to invest in.

pphysch 5y ago
Or a government printing money to hire private contractors, completely disregarding its ability do anything on its own. To some extent, this is the curse of being the creator of the global reserve currency. The US government can, in theory, print as much money as it wants and pay off whoever it wants to do whatever it wants. This also extends to the academic and financial (VC) sectors, because a lot of that liquidity comes directly from the Government/Fed. Unfortunately this leads to a culture of corruption (who gets the grants/contracts/funding?) and widespread fraud. This causes the ROI of money printing to go down, the money printer accelerates and we get inflation too.