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The academy has also done exceptionally well. Individual institutions like the University of Oxford have unbroken chains of governance going back centuries, and

The academy has also done exceptionally well. Individual institutions like the University of Oxford have unbroken chains of governance going back centuries, and so do scholarly societies. And of course, the institution of (say) science as a whole could also be regarded as a common endeavour lasting centuries where the highest-status individuals routinely make decisions with the far future in mind (although you would usually say that they're doing it for their legacy).

biomcgary 4y ago
Despite the history, it is clear that the academy is also failing in the current error. I was in academia (science) for a very long time and watched the collapse of the cultural norms that made it successful. I had mentors and friends that are a generation older than me who confirmed my observations of accelerating decline. The reproducibility crises in multiple fields are just the tip of the iceberg.
- solveit 4y ago
  I don't think the academy is failing any more than is the historical norm. The collapsing cultural norms are not centuries old, they are a product of the academic boom of the latter half of the twentieth century, where the first world (and certainly America) was more or less peaceful, the population was sharply rising, and access to and demand for higher education was exploding. The academic norms of the 1980s would be unrecognisable to an academic of the 1920s, yet I claim that both academics are part of a longstanding lineage of people working towards a common endeavour. And the reproducibility crisis is not an example of decline. It's not like social science used to be reproducible then stopped. It's that for the first time in history, we've realised that things are bad, and now we're (slowly) starting to do good science. The reproducibility crisis is an example of improvement!
mftb 4y ago
I like this answer, but it would be more compelling if a concrete case of planning and execution over a long time frame could be cited. The kind of concrete example I'm talking about is, "We set out to build x or reduce y, over 300 years and it took us 450, but it's done.".

biomcgary 4y ago

Despite the history, it is clear that the academy is also failing in the current error. I was in academia (science) for a very long time and watched the collapse of the cultural norms that made it successful. I had mentors and friends that are a generation older than me who confirmed my observations of accelerating decline. The reproducibility crises in multiple fields are just the tip of the iceberg.

solveit 4y ago
I don't think the academy is failing any more than is the historical norm. The collapsing cultural norms are not centuries old, they are a product of the academic boom of the latter half of the twentieth century, where the first world (and certainly America) was more or less peaceful, the population was sharply rising, and access to and demand for higher education was exploding. The academic norms of the 1980s would be unrecognisable to an academic of the 1920s, yet I claim that both academics are part of a longstanding lineage of people working towards a common endeavour. And the reproducibility crisis is not an example of decline. It's not like social science used to be reproducible then stopped. It's that for the first time in history, we've realised that things are bad, and now we're (slowly) starting to do good science. The reproducibility crisis is an example of improvement!

mftb 4y ago

I like this answer, but it would be more compelling if a concrete case of planning and execution over a long time frame could be cited. The kind of concrete example I'm talking about is, "We set out to build x or reduce y, over 300 years and it took us 450, but it's done.".