6 ms·

I was in a similar group a decade ago. At the time, I found it impressive and efficient, but looking back now, I find much of those papers not to amount to much

I was in a similar group a decade ago. At the time, I found it impressive and efficient, but looking back now, I find much of those papers not to amount to much. I wonder what your experience is: were those 30 papers per year good science overall?

foobarian 4y ago
Not OP but a thing to consider: the training the junior members gain from the process is valuable too. Those 30 papers may not amount to much, but if even one of the primary authors ends up with Nobel-caliber work once in their career, was that worth it?
- ProjectArcturis 4y ago
  Are those junior members learning to do Nobel-caliber work or are they learning to pad their CVs by publishing tons of low-impact papers?
  - version_five 4y ago
    Are those the only two options?
  - foobarian 4y ago
    Therein lies the rub. It depends a lot on the person. There are tons of tenured professors who kick back and don't do much, and then there are those who can't help but keep working hard. I think the hope is that you will luck into getting some of the latter in your group, so even if training the others might end up a waste, some will end up successful. Kind of like the VC model.
- lostlogin 4y ago
  > if even one of the primary authors ends up with Nobel-caliber work once in their career, was that worth it? It would seem likely that the answer to that is yes, and that none got the prize and it wasn’t worth it.
version_five 4y ago
I think they followed a bell curve. They were all legitimate science - I don't pretend that this was a world leading lab, but it was a decent one and we mostly published in the field's main few journals. I don't believe the volume had any negative impact on the quality, if anything it made it better because metrics being what they are we had good grant money coming in and got good people and equipment. And as the sibling pointed out, all of us students had great opportunities to write and submit papers and conferences. I had peers in grad school with very conservative supervisors that didn't want to publish very much (I can think of one prof in particular who was undoubtedly a very good researcher and infrequenty published very good papers). This can be a disservice to students who don't get the same experience, and it's an argument for why publication count is a good metric (even though it's obviously flawed)
- sfpotter 4y ago
  What field?
sillysaurusx 4y ago
Most research amounts to nothing. It’s why they call it research. But we can’t get the 1% of breakthroughs without the 4% of hits, 93% meh’s, and 2% frauds. Not to mention that much published research is mistaken. Above all, it’s hard (at least in the sciences). So anyone willing to follow the scientific method and package their results into a whitepaper is doing good science. The scientific method is ultimately the only requirement.
- borroka 4y ago
  The fact that most research, dare I say by definition, has little value is true. The fact that most published papers have no value is also true. It is also true that some (published) research may go unnoticed and be discovered or rediscovered (much of science is the rediscovery of ideas that were once speculative and then became valuable because of a change in methods, technology, paradigm) later on. It is a rare occurrence, though, which does not justify the hours, money, energy spent on endeavors that everyone knows are, to the greater community of scientists, researchers, and citizens, meaningless and worthless. But part of the currency used in science is the number of papers, place of publication, citations received and overall impact on the field of the papers, and the deluge of worthless articles and research is a direct effect of the metrics chosen to evaluate scientists.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    > The fact that most published papers have no value is also true. Is that true though? If I'm about to embark on a bit of extensive research, the first bit of that research would be to see if someone else has already done it. If they have, then there's value to me in not having to spend time/money in repeating what someone else has already done. Or it could show me where other things can be tried instead of just repeating. If we know 999 ways on how not to build a light bulb, we can scratch one more method off by seeing what other people have published. How is that not considered value?
    - borroka 4y ago
      You are referring to the publication of "negative results", which are of course informative, although rarely published due to a bias shown by journal editors and scientists themselves towards "positive results", that is results supporting the hypothesis tested. Negative results are published, yes, but in the context of popular or highly contested hypotheses or models. That's valuable research. Some examples of papers that have zero value are papers testing hypotheses nobody is interested about, theoretical work that looks like more abstract art than science, p-hacking, work that starts with corrupted, unreliable, badly collected data, and so on. Work that has no value other than that provided to the authors by the fact that they have produced a piece of "scientific currency". I must say that at least 1/3 of my conspicuous scientific output was of very limited value. Unfortunately, I cannot go back in time and spend my valuable time and energy on more valuable research.
jonnycomputer 4y ago
The pressure to publish tends to lead to many smaller papers, instead of, say, a longer monograph that collates it. Indeed, multiple publications are often made using parts of the same data-set (given how much effort and cost it is to run a study, there is often an incentive to get more data than less, particularly in the clinical and psychological sciences). It is unfortunate in many ways (not all).
bee_rider 4y ago
I’m not sure what to compare against. Of course most research papers don’t amount to much, but are the ones produced by big groups with only a little hands-on work by the professors much worse on average, I wonder?

foobarian 4y ago

Not OP but a thing to consider: the training the junior members gain from the process is valuable too. Those 30 papers may not amount to much, but if even one of the primary authors ends up with Nobel-caliber work once in their career, was that worth it?

ProjectArcturis 4y ago
Are those junior members learning to do Nobel-caliber work or are they learning to pad their CVs by publishing tons of low-impact papers?
- version_five 4y ago
  Are those the only two options?
- foobarian 4y ago
  Therein lies the rub. It depends a lot on the person. There are tons of tenured professors who kick back and don't do much, and then there are those who can't help but keep working hard. I think the hope is that you will luck into getting some of the latter in your group, so even if training the others might end up a waste, some will end up successful. Kind of like the VC model.
lostlogin 4y ago
> if even one of the primary authors ends up with Nobel-caliber work once in their career, was that worth it? It would seem likely that the answer to that is yes, and that none got the prize and it wasn’t worth it.

version_five 4y ago

I think they followed a bell curve. They were all legitimate science - I don't pretend that this was a world leading lab, but it was a decent one and we mostly published in the field's main few journals. I don't believe the volume had any negative impact on the quality, if anything it made it better because metrics being what they are we had good grant money coming in and got good people and equipment. And as the sibling pointed out, all of us students had great opportunities to write and submit papers and conferences. I had peers in grad school with very conservative supervisors that didn't want to publish very much (I can think of one prof in particular who was undoubtedly a very good researcher and infrequenty published very good papers). This can be a disservice to students who don't get the same experience, and it's an argument for why publication count is a good metric (even though it's obviously flawed)

sfpotter 4y ago
What field?

sillysaurusx 4y ago

Most research amounts to nothing. It’s why they call it research. But we can’t get the 1% of breakthroughs without the 4% of hits, 93% meh’s, and 2% frauds. Not to mention that much published research is mistaken. Above all, it’s hard (at least in the sciences). So anyone willing to follow the scientific method and package their results into a whitepaper is doing good science. The scientific method is ultimately the only requirement.

borroka 4y ago
The fact that most research, dare I say by definition, has little value is true. The fact that most published papers have no value is also true. It is also true that some (published) research may go unnoticed and be discovered or rediscovered (much of science is the rediscovery of ideas that were once speculative and then became valuable because of a change in methods, technology, paradigm) later on. It is a rare occurrence, though, which does not justify the hours, money, energy spent on endeavors that everyone knows are, to the greater community of scientists, researchers, and citizens, meaningless and worthless. But part of the currency used in science is the number of papers, place of publication, citations received and overall impact on the field of the papers, and the deluge of worthless articles and research is a direct effect of the metrics chosen to evaluate scientists.
- dylan604 4y ago
  > The fact that most published papers have no value is also true. Is that true though? If I'm about to embark on a bit of extensive research, the first bit of that research would be to see if someone else has already done it. If they have, then there's value to me in not having to spend time/money in repeating what someone else has already done. Or it could show me where other things can be tried instead of just repeating. If we know 999 ways on how not to build a light bulb, we can scratch one more method off by seeing what other people have published. How is that not considered value?
  - borroka 4y ago
    You are referring to the publication of "negative results", which are of course informative, although rarely published due to a bias shown by journal editors and scientists themselves towards "positive results", that is results supporting the hypothesis tested. Negative results are published, yes, but in the context of popular or highly contested hypotheses or models. That's valuable research. Some examples of papers that have zero value are papers testing hypotheses nobody is interested about, theoretical work that looks like more abstract art than science, p-hacking, work that starts with corrupted, unreliable, badly collected data, and so on. Work that has no value other than that provided to the authors by the fact that they have produced a piece of "scientific currency". I must say that at least 1/3 of my conspicuous scientific output was of very limited value. Unfortunately, I cannot go back in time and spend my valuable time and energy on more valuable research.

jonnycomputer 4y ago

The pressure to publish tends to lead to many smaller papers, instead of, say, a longer monograph that collates it. Indeed, multiple publications are often made using parts of the same data-set (given how much effort and cost it is to run a study, there is often an incentive to get more data than less, particularly in the clinical and psychological sciences). It is unfortunate in many ways (not all).

bee_rider 4y ago

I’m not sure what to compare against. Of course most research papers don’t amount to much, but are the ones produced by big groups with only a little hands-on work by the professors much worse on average, I wonder?