5 ms·

Stagnant Scientific Productivity Holding Back Growth

PaulHoule 4y ago
It's been very hard for young scientists to get established since 1970 or so. The WSJ would be inclined to like the highly competitive situation in academia, but somebody who makes it to tenure is like to spend 15 years in a mean game of musical chairs which is about pleasing their elders. A young theoretical physicist has little chance of pulling a coup like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddington_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddington_experiment See also https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-boson-academic-system https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-... The survivors will vociferously deny it, but the creative won't survive the gauntlet and the ambitious who realize they have one life to live won't even enter it. Medicine is much, much worse, research in Alzheimer's has gone nowhere in the last 20 years because a few powerful people have pushed a single hypothesis that has accomplished nothing in terms of effective treatments. This story made my blood boil https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-11-links-viruses-alzheimer-dismissed-years.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-11-links-viruses-alzheim...
__lbracket__ 4y ago
Experienced the system myself (Physics PhD -> postdoc -> PI at a National Lab -> Data Science). Some factors probably contributing to the situation are: 1. ECONOMY: Bleak economic outlook for research and necessity to find job, often manifested as looks of pity toward "researchers and postdocs" during family gatherings (you know you've experienced them ;) ) 2. VISIBILITY: Optimizing for visibility favors performative science (i.e. announcing minuscule results on Linkedin/Twitter) over deep pursuit of scientific truths 3. ROI DIFFERENTIAL: Even marginal familiarity with coding, math, or stats (baseline for science PhDs) translates to decent earning potential in industry 4. PUSH FOR MONETIZATION: Young faculty and students in deep tech thinking more about "whats minimum I need to monetize my research" over issues of validation, reproducibility, etc (these can come post funding) These and other factors lead to folks basically kicking the can down the road, a.k.a. the "Future Directions" section in papers.

It's been very hard for young scientists to get established since 1970 or so. The WSJ would be inclined to like the highly competitive situation in academia, but somebody who makes it to tenure is like to spend 15 years in a mean game of musical chairs which is about pleasing their elders. A young theoretical physicist has little chance of pulling a coup like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddington_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddington_experiment See also https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-boson-academic-system https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-... The survivors will vociferously deny it, but the creative won't survive the gauntlet and the ambitious who realize they have one life to live won't even enter it. Medicine is much, much worse, research in Alzheimer's has gone nowhere in the last 20 years because a few powerful people have pushed a single hypothesis that has accomplished nothing in terms of effective treatments. This story made my blood boil https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-11-links-viruses-alzheimer-dismissed-years.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-11-links-viruses-alzheim...

__lbracket__ 4y ago

Experienced the system myself (Physics PhD -> postdoc -> PI at a National Lab -> Data Science). Some factors probably contributing to the situation are: 1. ECONOMY: Bleak economic outlook for research and necessity to find job, often manifested as looks of pity toward "researchers and postdocs" during family gatherings (you know you've experienced them ;) ) 2. VISIBILITY: Optimizing for visibility favors performative science (i.e. announcing minuscule results on Linkedin/Twitter) over deep pursuit of scientific truths 3. ROI DIFFERENTIAL: Even marginal familiarity with coding, math, or stats (baseline for science PhDs) translates to decent earning potential in industry 4. PUSH FOR MONETIZATION: Young faculty and students in deep tech thinking more about "whats minimum I need to monetize my research" over issues of validation, reproducibility, etc (these can come post funding) These and other factors lead to folks basically kicking the can down the road, a.k.a. the "Future Directions" section in papers.