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I think we underestimate the amount of politics that was going on in science previously. Really compared to the shenanigans with Newton, Leibnitz or Hooke and

I think we underestimate the amount of politics that was going on in science previously. Really compared to the shenanigans with Newton, Leibnitz or Hooke and Newton, much of what we see today is quite harmless. Or take for a more recent example Teller and Oppenheimer. I think in science (but not only in science) we tend to idealise the old days and scientists, because we remember the discoveries not the politics and their personal flaws. I would even argue that this greatly demonstrates the success of the scientific process. In the end the best science won, despite all the political infighting.

derbOac 4y ago
I often wonder about this, and have talked about this all with older colleagues. My sense is some things were the same, but others were really different. Even looking at the peer review process: it was much more informal in the distant past, and maybe more akin to what happens today with invited papers in my experience, or with small open source software projects. There were certaintly very petty but intense personal squabbles in the past but that's a bit different from the pervasive structural issues in science today. At some level too, I don't care what it was like 100 years ago. I can still see the problems today.
- semi-extrinsic 4y ago
  Peer review really was different in the past. Hell, Nature even used to occasionally accept papers without any review at all until the mid-1970s, if the editor thought they would provoke good discussions. Watson and Crick's famous 1953 paper where they presented the double helix of DNA is one such example.
- cycomanic 4y ago
  Yes I didn't mean to say that there are no issues in science. I disagree that politics and personalities are a big part though. I think we have huge structural issues, requirements and pressures are increasing constantly, the way into science takes much longer and much talent is burnt out in the process, current funding favors short term "low risk" research and disincentives trying out new things or changing direction/field...
  - derbOac 4y ago
    My sense is the structural issues amplify the political and personality issues, in the sense that when those things arise they can maybe have bigger effects than in the past. But that's just speculation. I wish things like the research in this blog post got more attention, because it's important in understanding how things have and have not changed.
- Fomite 4y ago
  Heck, you can see this in the difference between member contributed submissions to PNAS and ones that go through the normal system.
snowwrestler 4y ago
Yup, the point of the “scientific method” is that it works regardless of petty personal politics, so long as empirical evidence remains the standard. To some extent it depends on the weakness of humans for status and competition, because they are powerful motivators to drive advances.
- timr 4y ago
  Science continues to work, but the work of being a "scientist" really sucks because of this stuff. I personally left science because I could see it had 98% overlap with what I'd do as an engineer (or entrepreneur, in the case of a PI), with a tiny fraction of the monetary benefit. Being a winner in that system is a great life, but it rests upon a huge pyramid of people who are working their butts off at low pay and lower prestige, for a brass ring that few will ever grasp.
  - cycomanic 4y ago
    I agree with you. Being a scientist has become worse (although I would argue that is true for many other jobs as well). A PI nowadays really works like the leader of a small startup constantly looking for money to keep the ship afloat without the prospect of a big payout at the end.
    - timr 4y ago
      > A PI nowadays really works like the leader of a small startup constantly looking for money to keep the ship afloat without the prospect of a big payout at the end. I said exactly the same thing when I first left academia for tech, and people would look at me suspiciously and ask why I'd ever do such a thing. I looked at every PI I knew, and saw a task essentially identical to running a startup, but with no financial upside -- and the downside risk of being jobless and adrift if you don't get tenure.
    - Fomite 4y ago
      This. I am a PI. What I spent my day doing was dealing with managerial tasks, fiddly stuff for funding applications, etc. I got to actually code for a whole day last week, and it was marvelous. It was also only possible because it was an all-hands-on-deck, everything else can wait situation.
sbf501 4y ago
Weren't scientists of old after endowments from kings and royalty, too? Further, I seem to recall a Vertiasium about the guy who solved the cubic, fighting for a position at a college by dethroning another professor through an academic duel.
aborsy 4y ago
Teller touches upon this subject. In an interview published on YouTube, he says, increasing scholarships and science funding further doesn’t help; because money doesn’t buy science, money buys technology; we actually don’t have enough scientists on whom to spend the money. And that, most of the advances in quantum mechanics and atomic physics were made by individuals genuinely interested in problems in these domains, and worked in modest conditions. Quantum mechanics theory took practically nothing to develop. Politics, of course, is part of the humanity, but it manifests differently in different environments (academia vs industry, or then vs now). There is undoubtedly politics in industry, however, there are also products and reality checks. The companies won’t survive if they operate entirely based on politics. In academia, on the other hand, the environmental feedback can be weaker depending on the subject; there, politics could come to the fore. Amusingly, Kissinger said, politics in academia is specially vicious precisely because the stakes are so low. As for then versus now, there used to be a lot of low-hanging fruit that could be taken until 1980s, and there weren’t many researchers. But now there are fewer accessible opportunities, with far more researchers. If you consider that the size of the cake has not increased proportionally (due to factors mentioned in the article), while the number of players has increased substantially, you may conclude that the environment has become much more competitive. Increased competition indicates increased politics, emphasis on selling, networking, and other non-scientific factors relevant to industry, except there you actually get paid. The conditions are nowadays totally different. There all sorts of performance metrics (H-index, citations, number of papers etc), that have become target, in place of good science, which are gamed.
- melony 4y ago
  I can't decide whether Teller's head is stuck up the rafters of the ivory tower he lives in or whether it is held up where the sun does not shine. There are so many students in academia searching for the magic path through graduate school where you can get a permanent role either in teaching or tenureship (research) that it is becoming a crisis for both STEM fields and otherwise. It is easy for him to preach when he is one of the few that have "made it" through a combination of intellectual pedigree, geopolitical necessity, and the plucking of low hanging fruits in an emerging field.

derbOac 4y ago

I often wonder about this, and have talked about this all with older colleagues. My sense is some things were the same, but others were really different. Even looking at the peer review process: it was much more informal in the distant past, and maybe more akin to what happens today with invited papers in my experience, or with small open source software projects. There were certaintly very petty but intense personal squabbles in the past but that's a bit different from the pervasive structural issues in science today. At some level too, I don't care what it was like 100 years ago. I can still see the problems today.

semi-extrinsic 4y ago
Peer review really was different in the past. Hell, Nature even used to occasionally accept papers without any review at all until the mid-1970s, if the editor thought they would provoke good discussions. Watson and Crick's famous 1953 paper where they presented the double helix of DNA is one such example.
cycomanic 4y ago
Yes I didn't mean to say that there are no issues in science. I disagree that politics and personalities are a big part though. I think we have huge structural issues, requirements and pressures are increasing constantly, the way into science takes much longer and much talent is burnt out in the process, current funding favors short term "low risk" research and disincentives trying out new things or changing direction/field...
- derbOac 4y ago
  My sense is the structural issues amplify the political and personality issues, in the sense that when those things arise they can maybe have bigger effects than in the past. But that's just speculation. I wish things like the research in this blog post got more attention, because it's important in understanding how things have and have not changed.
Fomite 4y ago
Heck, you can see this in the difference between member contributed submissions to PNAS and ones that go through the normal system.

snowwrestler 4y ago

Yup, the point of the “scientific method” is that it works regardless of petty personal politics, so long as empirical evidence remains the standard. To some extent it depends on the weakness of humans for status and competition, because they are powerful motivators to drive advances.

timr 4y ago
Science continues to work, but the work of being a "scientist" really sucks because of this stuff. I personally left science because I could see it had 98% overlap with what I'd do as an engineer (or entrepreneur, in the case of a PI), with a tiny fraction of the monetary benefit. Being a winner in that system is a great life, but it rests upon a huge pyramid of people who are working their butts off at low pay and lower prestige, for a brass ring that few will ever grasp.
- cycomanic 4y ago
  I agree with you. Being a scientist has become worse (although I would argue that is true for many other jobs as well). A PI nowadays really works like the leader of a small startup constantly looking for money to keep the ship afloat without the prospect of a big payout at the end.
  - timr 4y ago
    > A PI nowadays really works like the leader of a small startup constantly looking for money to keep the ship afloat without the prospect of a big payout at the end. I said exactly the same thing when I first left academia for tech, and people would look at me suspiciously and ask why I'd ever do such a thing. I looked at every PI I knew, and saw a task essentially identical to running a startup, but with no financial upside -- and the downside risk of being jobless and adrift if you don't get tenure.
  - Fomite 4y ago
    This. I am a PI. What I spent my day doing was dealing with managerial tasks, fiddly stuff for funding applications, etc. I got to actually code for a whole day last week, and it was marvelous. It was also only possible because it was an all-hands-on-deck, everything else can wait situation.

sbf501 4y ago

Weren't scientists of old after endowments from kings and royalty, too? Further, I seem to recall a Vertiasium about the guy who solved the cubic, fighting for a position at a college by dethroning another professor through an academic duel.

aborsy 4y ago

Teller touches upon this subject. In an interview published on YouTube, he says, increasing scholarships and science funding further doesn’t help; because money doesn’t buy science, money buys technology; we actually don’t have enough scientists on whom to spend the money. And that, most of the advances in quantum mechanics and atomic physics were made by individuals genuinely interested in problems in these domains, and worked in modest conditions. Quantum mechanics theory took practically nothing to develop. Politics, of course, is part of the humanity, but it manifests differently in different environments (academia vs industry, or then vs now). There is undoubtedly politics in industry, however, there are also products and reality checks. The companies won’t survive if they operate entirely based on politics. In academia, on the other hand, the environmental feedback can be weaker depending on the subject; there, politics could come to the fore. Amusingly, Kissinger said, politics in academia is specially vicious precisely because the stakes are so low. As for then versus now, there used to be a lot of low-hanging fruit that could be taken until 1980s, and there weren’t many researchers. But now there are fewer accessible opportunities, with far more researchers. If you consider that the size of the cake has not increased proportionally (due to factors mentioned in the article), while the number of players has increased substantially, you may conclude that the environment has become much more competitive. Increased competition indicates increased politics, emphasis on selling, networking, and other non-scientific factors relevant to industry, except there you actually get paid. The conditions are nowadays totally different. There all sorts of performance metrics (H-index, citations, number of papers etc), that have become target, in place of good science, which are gamed.

melony 4y ago
I can't decide whether Teller's head is stuck up the rafters of the ivory tower he lives in or whether it is held up where the sun does not shine. There are so many students in academia searching for the magic path through graduate school where you can get a permanent role either in teaching or tenureship (research) that it is becoming a crisis for both STEM fields and otherwise. It is easy for him to preach when he is one of the few that have "made it" through a combination of intellectual pedigree, geopolitical necessity, and the plucking of low hanging fruits in an emerging field.