3 ms·
but that's not science, that's funding and bureaucracy
by nathias 4y ago
but that's not science, that's funding and bureaucracy
- sigmoid10 4y agoWelcome to modern academia.
- random_walker 4y agoDon't paint the whole field with single brush
- throwoutway 4y agoI’m afraid that it’s hard to see the true colors under the last two decades Of paint layers
- marginalia_nu 4y agoAcademia doesn't own the scientific process, though. Anyone can do science. Doesn't require special equipment or a government license.
- feet 4y agoAre you sure about that special equipment part? There are a ton of areas of research that require highly specialized and usually expensive equipment. There are sometimes people creating plans for open hardware but it is not the norm
- marginalia_nu 4y agoYou can't perform every scientific experiment yourself, but that also goes for academia. The vast majority of academic scientists don't have access to particle accelerators, can't send probes into space, and so on. Regardless of who you are, there are always going to be experiments that are inaccessible to you.
- PeterisP 4y agoYou do require time, though. If some study project requires a few person-years then it's simply not going to happen as someone's hobby, you need funding for that team. And in biology (which is the context of the original post) you often need uninterrupted time, as you can't pause a live experiment if you get busy in your day job, no matter if it's bacteria or mice. If we don't consider funding, we're effectively saying that science should be the domain of independently rich aristocrats living off of inherited wealth, as it often was a few centuries ago.
- marginalia_nu 4y ago> If we don't consider funding, we're effectively saying that science should be the domain of independently rich aristocrats living off of inherited wealth, as it often was a few centuries ago. Given the existing model has brought us to a point where there are several fields in which almost no published studies can be successfully replicated, at this point I'm not even sure that it would be a bad development to go back to having the likes of Gauss and Leibniz running the show. Dependency on external funding and the pressure of publish-or-perish seems incredibly destructive to meaningful scientific progress.
- sigmoid10 4y agoThat's just not true for any sort of science that requires significant collaboration or infrastructure. Things like modern medicine or high energy physics are completely unaccessible to individuals when it comes to doing worthwile things. And on top of that some of these fields very much require government licensing, since you can't just let normal people play with radioactive materials or go around injecting drugs into patients.
- BurningFrog 4y agoWhich also is distinct from science.
- rob_c 4y agoExcept for when an area of science does this well and sructures itself well, in which case all problems are academic. Academics are responsible for sorting out academic funding and likely always will be, pretending the 2 are separate creates problems such as is seen in biology (and yes, other sciences to an extent) where big funding from the private sector is forcing open publically funded research for the greater good toward lining the pockets of nouveau-industrialists.