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> We spend much of our time taking “professional selfies.” In fact, many of us spend more time announcing ideas than formulating them This is closest to the tr

by jdrc 4y ago

> We spend much of our time taking “professional selfies.” In fact, many of us spend more time announcing ideas than formulating them This is closest to the truth than anything. Lengthy CVs attract public science funding which makes the same CVs lengthier which attracts more funding and on and on. Hordes of people have attracted fame and notoriety by academic SEOing. It's a gamed system, and it doesn't feel great participating in it (but you never say that, you have to be perpetually 'excited' on twitter). Basically Goodhart's Law on massive scale. Perhaps the solution is indeed to build an AI because our science has become so loud and noisy that we 've become deaf.

ptsneves 4y ago
What a negative comment, and i find it hard to believe accurate. Yes there is such phenomena but ending with a "perhaps let's just pack up and deliver the problem somewhere else" is outrageous and further confirmation that the poster is out of ideas so let's apply "AI". Scientific methods and the institutions in charge of applying resources towards it are not perfect but our life has seen incredible improvements in the last few years. Hell, we just came out of a pandemic with a brand new type of vaccine! I just recently read about the rotavirus vaccine changing gastroentritis at nation's levels. A vaccine that appeared in 2006, so quite after I was born and I am a 90s guy. How can one say science is selfies? I refuse to be put down by such a world view.
- Jensson 4y ago
  > Scientific methods and the institutions in charge of applying resources towards it are not perfect but our life has seen incredible improvements in the last few years Private research is doing just fine, it is public research we are talking about here. The examples you mentioned were developed by private companies.
  - gmac 4y ago
    ... building on decades of prior research, much of it public (e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w)
- derbOac 4y ago
  You might unintentionally be proving the point of the person you're responding to: that mRNA vaccine you mention has been filled with examples of the problems with modern academic science. One of the main developers of mRNA vaccines was demoted at Penn because she tried and failed to get grant funding for how to develop them, and was told to stop working on it because "it wouldn't work" and wasn't bringing in money to the university. There were other stories by others involved in developing SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines that their papers on the topic were repeatedly rejected from journals before the pandemic. It would be a mistake to attribute mRNA vaccines to any one person or even small group of persons but it's not clear to me that it's a good example of how the standard academic system is working.
marttt 4y ago
Tangentially related, but it reminds me of a quote by Nassim Taleb: "The curse of modernity is that we are increasingly populated by a class of people who are better at explaining than understanding, or better at explaining than doing." (from Skin in the Game) I think he said this with regard to school system (teachers and teaching). Taleb's bitterness often feels tiring and pompously unfair (albeit also funny), but I have felt something similar after years of working in journalism.
mjklin 4y ago
“Clumsy writing begets clumsy thought, which begets even clumsier writing. The only way out is for the rest of us to look back to a time when authors had more to say than, “I'm a writer!” — when the novel wasn't just a three-hundred page caption for the photograph on the inside jacket.” - B.R. Myers, A Reader’s Manifesto

by jdrc 4y ago

ptsneves 4y ago

What a negative comment, and i find it hard to believe accurate. Yes there is such phenomena but ending with a "perhaps let's just pack up and deliver the problem somewhere else" is outrageous and further confirmation that the poster is out of ideas so let's apply "AI". Scientific methods and the institutions in charge of applying resources towards it are not perfect but our life has seen incredible improvements in the last few years. Hell, we just came out of a pandemic with a brand new type of vaccine! I just recently read about the rotavirus vaccine changing gastroentritis at nation's levels. A vaccine that appeared in 2006, so quite after I was born and I am a 90s guy. How can one say science is selfies? I refuse to be put down by such a world view.

Jensson 4y ago
> Scientific methods and the institutions in charge of applying resources towards it are not perfect but our life has seen incredible improvements in the last few years Private research is doing just fine, it is public research we are talking about here. The examples you mentioned were developed by private companies.
- gmac 4y ago
  ... building on decades of prior research, much of it public (e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w)
derbOac 4y ago
You might unintentionally be proving the point of the person you're responding to: that mRNA vaccine you mention has been filled with examples of the problems with modern academic science. One of the main developers of mRNA vaccines was demoted at Penn because she tried and failed to get grant funding for how to develop them, and was told to stop working on it because "it wouldn't work" and wasn't bringing in money to the university. There were other stories by others involved in developing SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines that their papers on the topic were repeatedly rejected from journals before the pandemic. It would be a mistake to attribute mRNA vaccines to any one person or even small group of persons but it's not clear to me that it's a good example of how the standard academic system is working.

marttt 4y ago

Tangentially related, but it reminds me of a quote by Nassim Taleb: "The curse of modernity is that we are increasingly populated by a class of people who are better at explaining than understanding, or better at explaining than doing." (from Skin in the Game) I think he said this with regard to school system (teachers and teaching). Taleb's bitterness often feels tiring and pompously unfair (albeit also funny), but I have felt something similar after years of working in journalism.

mjklin 4y ago

“Clumsy writing begets clumsy thought, which begets even clumsier writing. The only way out is for the rest of us to look back to a time when authors had more to say than, “I'm a writer!” — when the novel wasn't just a three-hundred page caption for the photograph on the inside jacket.” - B.R. Myers, A Reader’s Manifesto