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> getting your paper approved means that you convinced at least three PhD students with a published paper This is a recursive definition of scientist "A scient
by im3w1l 4y ago
> getting your paper approved means that you convinced at least three PhD students with a published paper
This is a recursive definition of scientist "A scientist(t=n) is someone approved by scientists(t=n-1)". If you have a good initial condition maybe it can work for a while, but it seems that time may be coming to an end.
> Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration. Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc. The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
- AshamedCaptain 4y ago> This is a recursive definition of scientist "A scientist(t=n) is someone approved by scientists(t=n-1)". If you have a good initial condition maybe it can work for a while, but it seems that time may be coming to an end. There is no formal definition for a "scientist" and likely will never be. Definitely a scientist is not "one who has a paper accepted". Here the commenter is just claiming that in order to publish a paper in a specific journal you do need be accepted by a handful of people who have previously been accepted in the same journal. Barring the obvious chicken and egg problem which is easily solved, it does not seem to be like something which "is coming to an end".
- amelius 4y ago> This is a recursive definition of scientist "A scientist(t=n) is someone approved by scientists(t=n-1)". You're simply reformulating what peer means in peer-review. What other way would you suggest? Layman-review?
- im3w1l 4y agoI had a couple approaches in mind, but I think I got carried away in the moment when I wrote that comment. A radical overhaul may do more harm then good.
- still_grokking 4y agoBut you were right in the first comment! At the moment people do things "for living", in those usual bureaucratic institutions that all institutions become sooner or later, there are initiatives at power that work against the initial idea behind that institution. That's why progress in science occurs at best "one funeral at a time", but usually not before a whole generation bites the dust. This plus bureaucracy seem to almost killed larger parts of science by now. We have collusion rings milking the system. We have broad pure esoteric nonsense "science" circles. We have more and more utter garbage and scam. And we have holy churches that will send the inquisition on you if you dare to disagree. I don't know how to fix that. But I guess the initiatives, and especially the cash flows would need some re-engineering. But how concretely, I have no clue. Throwing away everything you have is of course almost never a good idea. But some things need to change. Change in a radical way, I guess.