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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

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.

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.