4 ms·

The hard part of research is the domain/scientific knowledge, not the scripting. If you look at the original paper, the method is informed by their knowledge of

The hard part of research is the domain/scientific knowledge, not the scripting. If you look at the original paper, the method is informed by their knowledge of astrophysics, and their knowledge of the current state of the field and existing methods. Many (maybe most) researchers are terrible programmers, it's a non-issue. If you want to learn how to do this kind of work you have to learn the science.

dontbenebby 4y ago
I guess my question is what you mean by "know the science". For example I know different types of stars and how their compositions differ, but not detailed mathematical models. If by "the science" you mean the latter, great, I can drop the idea, if the former I might be able to add value. (For example, I've read a lot about black holes, Hawking radiation etc, but not in a detailed mathematical sense, just more general ideas like the concept of an event horizon.)
- pvg 4y ago
  You don't have to 'know the science' to the degree of detail the people driving the research part of the project are, I think the bigger problem is many of the opportunities for grunt work go to undergrads and graduate students where the hope (in theory at least) is that it also helps advance their educational goals.
  - dontbenebby 4y ago
    No, the goal is cheap labor, they hire more PhD students than there are tenure track positions, this was a common gripe when so many undergrads commited suicide at IU, they threatened to shut down the newspaper if they reported it and told grad students who were basically extorted into finishing under the threat their advisers would forever gatekeep roles that would take them out of precarity. (That's why I dropped out, worked briefly in policy, learned to hack, then sold stock out of my retirement fund to get an open source intelligence certification from Bellingcat -- because THAT MANY sets of people refused to follow basic social norms.)
- ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
  Having a cursory knowledge of science is not enough, you are competing against people who read hundreds of papers on extremely specialized topics and spend 1000s of hours every year thinking and researching these topics. The first part of research is reading the literature, if you are new to a field you usually realize all your ideas have been explored thoroughly 10s or 100s of years prior. Research is not a spectator sport, it's highly specialized and competitive. That's not to say you can't contribute, if you want to participate the prerequisite is being willing to put a significant amount of time and effort into learning the skills of research, and learning about the specific domain you are interested in. You'll need to go from the basic theory to more specialized topics, read review papers, understand where the state of the art is, etc... As you read more and more you'll get insights on what's been done and what hasn't, you might find a niche that you can contribute to. In some fields the obstacle is gathering data and doing field work, you could make a contribution there as well. You could also contribute to open-source scientific software, I'd imagine it's be less competitive than doing research, you'd still need domain knowledge though.
  - dontbenebby 4y ago
    >Having a cursory knowledge of science is not enough, you are competing against people who read hundreds of papers I've read hundreds of papers on security and privacy. People make flippant comments like "You can't work on my team unless you have a PhD" followed shortly out of band by comments like "I'm the head of the Montreal office". I currently find it difficult to study those topics anymore, since there seems to be some fundemental disconnect between my actions and results. (And then, in parallel, thanks to deleting Facebook, I know a lot more about celebrity gossip and geopolitcs than I used to, so sometimes the old self soothing method of watching a movie isn't as fun, depending on who was involved.) If you have suggestions taking into account the above, feel free to reply here or 1:1 to the email listed on my profile.
  - cgriswald 4y ago
    The domain knowledge needed for this particular paper is literally just math, first semester undergrad physics, a chapter or two of an introductory astrophysics text, and some image processing—which, if you understand the underlying math, is easy to pick up. The novelty here is the algorithm, which I imagine, given the prerequisite knowledge, most people here could conceivably develop. Astronomy is currently a highly accessible field. Amateurs are still making meaningful research contributions. There is also a lot of grunt work available using other people's methods. Edit to add: You don't even need to gather your own data. There are many, many datasets lying around waiting to be processed by new techniques.
- greenhorn123 4y ago
  Reading some papers and having superficial knowledge about a field is not the same as knowing the science.
- jcims 4y ago
  The replies you’re receiving seem to be reinforcing your original point.
- barkingcat 4y ago
  You treat it like any other job. The people who are writing these kinds of papers are actual career scientists. You start with a literature review and textbook search. read 5-10 different undergraduate astronomy and physics text books, then undertake a current literature review. Do searches in science journals that you might get free from your local library, or the library associated with your alma mater if you have connections there still. That gets you the basic knowledge needed. Next is the hard part, using current state of knowledge, finding current data sets, finding your own algorithms for "scratching your own itch" Writing the script/programming is the last step - the least skilled step. Imagine you are John Carmack writing Doom for the first time. He had to know the math, look for "at the time state of the art" university dissertations regarding 3d rendering and occlusion, etc and combine that with his own knowledge about coding, assembly language, and put all that together to make Doom run on the hardware he had access to at the time. It's exactly the same for any field. Be humble, learn the basics, get caught up on current research, read deeply, read other people's disserations and ideas, then using what you have, and combine it with other people's ideas, and then you start the programming part (or you can hire people to code it for you, nothing wrong with that). and that's how it works. We all stand on the shoulders of giants who come before us.
  - dontbenebby 4y ago
    > You treat it like any other job. The people who are writing these kinds of papers are actual career scientists. I would have done that, but my future advisor repeatedly broke their promises about basic things like whether a thesis by publication (several papers vs one on a common theme) was an acceptable path, then when I tried to pivot to industry folks made emotional decisions any time I interviewed for a role that was not a precarious smart money position. >Be humble, learn the basics I've made career decisions for over a decade because anytime I encounter complex math, the person instructing me has an attitude like yours, paired with a complete inability to teach. (For example, I took a course that was on statistics specifically for use in psychology... we did many, many exercises with specific software and techniques, then did an exam using... none of them. That kind of rapid shift, paired with an attitude of "if you can't learn from my schitzoid teaching style, you don't belong here" drove me into a deep depression, since everyone I knew who had about the same level of statistics and programming knowledge as me had years of teaching in K-12, not a smarthering of summer camps and self learning in between a school year where if you used the wrong tone, they'd draw blood on you. >We all stand on the shoulders of giants who come before us. Despite the harsh tone of the two comments prior to this, I agree, but be very mindful if you say things like "learn the basics" you can connect someone who is willing with a teacher who will do so, or be prepared for a string of angry internet comments on nights when someone doesn't feel like quietly watching pirated movies another night in a row to self soothe their economic precarity.
- mhh__ 4y ago
  If you know calculus try the Feynman lectures, if you don't know calculus you need to learn calculus first. Aim to understand things for your own pleasure rather than being useful.
  - dontbenebby 4y ago
    I've never been able to teach myself calculus, it's one of the reasons I went down the infosec path -- I'm in a weird space where I can read most papers from anonbib and grok them, but anything involving curves etc, and I'm lost. I know a lot of things for pleasure, but it always felt like folks would zero in on whatever I didn't, to the point it destroyed my interest in a few things that didn't require calc.

dontbenebby 4y ago

I guess my question is what you mean by "know the science". For example I know different types of stars and how their compositions differ, but not detailed mathematical models. If by "the science" you mean the latter, great, I can drop the idea, if the former I might be able to add value. (For example, I've read a lot about black holes, Hawking radiation etc, but not in a detailed mathematical sense, just more general ideas like the concept of an event horizon.)

pvg 4y ago
You don't have to 'know the science' to the degree of detail the people driving the research part of the project are, I think the bigger problem is many of the opportunities for grunt work go to undergrads and graduate students where the hope (in theory at least) is that it also helps advance their educational goals.
- dontbenebby 4y ago
  No, the goal is cheap labor, they hire more PhD students than there are tenure track positions, this was a common gripe when so many undergrads commited suicide at IU, they threatened to shut down the newspaper if they reported it and told grad students who were basically extorted into finishing under the threat their advisers would forever gatekeep roles that would take them out of precarity. (That's why I dropped out, worked briefly in policy, learned to hack, then sold stock out of my retirement fund to get an open source intelligence certification from Bellingcat -- because THAT MANY sets of people refused to follow basic social norms.)
ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
Having a cursory knowledge of science is not enough, you are competing against people who read hundreds of papers on extremely specialized topics and spend 1000s of hours every year thinking and researching these topics. The first part of research is reading the literature, if you are new to a field you usually realize all your ideas have been explored thoroughly 10s or 100s of years prior. Research is not a spectator sport, it's highly specialized and competitive. That's not to say you can't contribute, if you want to participate the prerequisite is being willing to put a significant amount of time and effort into learning the skills of research, and learning about the specific domain you are interested in. You'll need to go from the basic theory to more specialized topics, read review papers, understand where the state of the art is, etc... As you read more and more you'll get insights on what's been done and what hasn't, you might find a niche that you can contribute to. In some fields the obstacle is gathering data and doing field work, you could make a contribution there as well. You could also contribute to open-source scientific software, I'd imagine it's be less competitive than doing research, you'd still need domain knowledge though.
- dontbenebby 4y ago
  >Having a cursory knowledge of science is not enough, you are competing against people who read hundreds of papers I've read hundreds of papers on security and privacy. People make flippant comments like "You can't work on my team unless you have a PhD" followed shortly out of band by comments like "I'm the head of the Montreal office". I currently find it difficult to study those topics anymore, since there seems to be some fundemental disconnect between my actions and results. (And then, in parallel, thanks to deleting Facebook, I know a lot more about celebrity gossip and geopolitcs than I used to, so sometimes the old self soothing method of watching a movie isn't as fun, depending on who was involved.) If you have suggestions taking into account the above, feel free to reply here or 1:1 to the email listed on my profile.
- cgriswald 4y ago
  The domain knowledge needed for this particular paper is literally just math, first semester undergrad physics, a chapter or two of an introductory astrophysics text, and some image processing—which, if you understand the underlying math, is easy to pick up. The novelty here is the algorithm, which I imagine, given the prerequisite knowledge, most people here could conceivably develop. Astronomy is currently a highly accessible field. Amateurs are still making meaningful research contributions. There is also a lot of grunt work available using other people's methods. Edit to add: You don't even need to gather your own data. There are many, many datasets lying around waiting to be processed by new techniques.
greenhorn123 4y ago
Reading some papers and having superficial knowledge about a field is not the same as knowing the science.
jcims 4y ago
The replies you’re receiving seem to be reinforcing your original point.
barkingcat 4y ago
You treat it like any other job. The people who are writing these kinds of papers are actual career scientists. You start with a literature review and textbook search. read 5-10 different undergraduate astronomy and physics text books, then undertake a current literature review. Do searches in science journals that you might get free from your local library, or the library associated with your alma mater if you have connections there still. That gets you the basic knowledge needed. Next is the hard part, using current state of knowledge, finding current data sets, finding your own algorithms for "scratching your own itch" Writing the script/programming is the last step - the least skilled step. Imagine you are John Carmack writing Doom for the first time. He had to know the math, look for "at the time state of the art" university dissertations regarding 3d rendering and occlusion, etc and combine that with his own knowledge about coding, assembly language, and put all that together to make Doom run on the hardware he had access to at the time. It's exactly the same for any field. Be humble, learn the basics, get caught up on current research, read deeply, read other people's disserations and ideas, then using what you have, and combine it with other people's ideas, and then you start the programming part (or you can hire people to code it for you, nothing wrong with that). and that's how it works. We all stand on the shoulders of giants who come before us.
- dontbenebby 4y ago
  > You treat it like any other job. The people who are writing these kinds of papers are actual career scientists. I would have done that, but my future advisor repeatedly broke their promises about basic things like whether a thesis by publication (several papers vs one on a common theme) was an acceptable path, then when I tried to pivot to industry folks made emotional decisions any time I interviewed for a role that was not a precarious smart money position. >Be humble, learn the basics I've made career decisions for over a decade because anytime I encounter complex math, the person instructing me has an attitude like yours, paired with a complete inability to teach. (For example, I took a course that was on statistics specifically for use in psychology... we did many, many exercises with specific software and techniques, then did an exam using... none of them. That kind of rapid shift, paired with an attitude of "if you can't learn from my schitzoid teaching style, you don't belong here" drove me into a deep depression, since everyone I knew who had about the same level of statistics and programming knowledge as me had years of teaching in K-12, not a smarthering of summer camps and self learning in between a school year where if you used the wrong tone, they'd draw blood on you. >We all stand on the shoulders of giants who come before us. Despite the harsh tone of the two comments prior to this, I agree, but be very mindful if you say things like "learn the basics" you can connect someone who is willing with a teacher who will do so, or be prepared for a string of angry internet comments on nights when someone doesn't feel like quietly watching pirated movies another night in a row to self soothe their economic precarity.
mhh__ 4y ago
If you know calculus try the Feynman lectures, if you don't know calculus you need to learn calculus first. Aim to understand things for your own pleasure rather than being useful.
- dontbenebby 4y ago
  I've never been able to teach myself calculus, it's one of the reasons I went down the infosec path -- I'm in a weird space where I can read most papers from anonbib and grok them, but anything involving curves etc, and I'm lost. I know a lot of things for pleasure, but it always felt like folks would zero in on whatever I didn't, to the point it destroyed my interest in a few things that didn't require calc.