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No as fields get deeper and deeper there is a point at which it is no longer humanly possible to cover the prior material exhaustively in a vaguely reasonable t

No as fields get deeper and deeper there is a point at which it is no longer humanly possible to cover the prior material exhaustively in a vaguely reasonable timeframe. We can keep digging narrower and narrower niches at the expense of basic scientific literacy, or we can realize that at some point the system cannot keep scaling in a one dimensional way. Or I guess we can make people go to school until they're 60. If you think what I'm proposing is three lectures on philosophy of science than either you have zero idea how a PhD program works or you're arguing in bad faith. The fact that someone can graduate from a top 5 biology PhD program without ever demonstrating the ability to come up with a decent research question nor to independently plan a decent study to address a given research question is appalling. The fact the programs actively discourage students from exploring anything intellectual outside of the narrow framework of their chosen lab, even projects that would clearly fit under the program's broader umbrella, is also appalling. The primary point isn't whether students can learn those things on their own later. The primary point is that this is a huge indictment of the culture of graduate training. It is creating a legion of fucking drones as our next set of profs. Many of them are truly not aware that they lack this expertise. Also, a PhD is explicitly designed as training to be in academia. There are a small set of industry jobs that require a PhD, and there are more industry jobs that appreciate a PhD, but really the only reason that PhDs have shifted so much towards industry is because the academic job market is completely fucked. It is only recently that biology professors will entertain the idea that someone should choose to leave academia after a PhD and that is not considered failure. Yet at the same time they do a bad job of preparing others for academic research.

staunton 4y ago
> If you think what I'm proposing is three lectures on philosophy of science than either you have zero idea how a PhD program works or you're arguing in bad faith. Talking about three lectures was meant as a question of what you actually propose (you might say that's bad faith). However, I believe you will find many people who you can convince that this is an important problem and they will suggest the "lecture approach" in full seriousness. That's also what I would expect from administrators who can actually implement some change in response to the problem. You still haven't said what measures you would actually endorse. I will try to guess a second time: Do you want to make each PhD student design their own experiment, perhaps with individual hands-off supervision to teach methodology? Either these experiments will be "toy experiments" to teach them methodology, or they would have to make a real contribution to science, in which case you would have to massively increase research budgets (or massively reduce numbers of PhD students) and add a LOT of non-PhD student researchers who do all the work for your newly made PhD-PI. In the latter case, these experiments might not actually deliver on their promise of generating much knowledge and, I believe, would prove an investment in the PhD's education at the cost of less scientific output. You will not convince administrators making economic decisions to implement either of these, even if they agree with you about the urgency of the problem. I think it's quite instructive to think about why this is so. Which brings me back to my main claim: the important problem in modern science is the incentive structure, not the lack of scientific methodology knowledge in PhD students.
- Loquebantur 4y ago
  You are right about the incentive structure being a main problem in science. But at the heart of the reasons why this structure is the way it is, you find people's utter lack of knowledge about how science does and should work in the first place. Remarably, nearly all the commenters here betray this very lack of knowledge by talking about it as "philosophy". As if it was some practically irrelevant jibberjabber. Science does not work by magic though, with people going through some motions of an occult ritual. It's an algorithm, implemented insanely badly currently.
  - staunton 4y ago
    > at the heart of the reasons why this structure is the way it is, you find people's utter lack of knowledge about how science does and should work I don't think people's lack of understanding scientific methods is the main factor shaping the incentive structure, though it's very interesting how big a role it plays and I would love to hear more detailed arguments. In order to change the system, there must be enough alignment on what the actual goals are and what incentives might benefit them, ways to effectively organize around it, and ways to actually enforce the new incentives. (Perhaps even more things...) I think there are big hurdles on each of the above. First, concerning alignment on the goal, many people don't agree that faster scientific progress is actually good. You might argue that trying to teach people epistemology might change that. I neither think it would nor that it should, but one could argue about it a lot. "Indoctrinating" people starting at a young age that "science and knowledge = good" as a moral value might work (it is being done and I mostly endorse that) but that's different from teaching the scientific method. The really important important factor here is, of course, that many individuals and organizations benefit from the current system and don't want to change it. Concerning organization, political intersts and competition hinder it somewhat, but co-operation between scientists is quite high and increasing. Hopefully that trend will continue and not sucumb to geopolitical pressures. Concerning enforcing better incentives, that's very hard. For example, we can't objectively and reliably evaluate someone's scientific contributions. Any metric you set up is going to be gamed, etc. I think the incentives have improved over the (very short) history of collaborative science and the trend looks positive. Take for example the trend towards open access publication and growing awareness of many issues (replication crisis, etc.). Generally, I would say that understanding how science (the system) works and how it should work (or would, given certain changes) is very hard. Similarly, I also think really deep understanding how science (the process) should work is also hard and applying that knowledge in practice is much harder still. At some point you get diminishing returns for the efforts of teaching it. You still haven't proposed how you would promote this knowledge. I can't think of anything that seems likely to do much good but would love to hear about it. > Remarably, nearly all the commenters here betray this very lack of knowledge by talking about it as "philosophy" I believe epistemology and philosophy of science are philosophy. I also believe that having and improving these things is very useful and one cannot overstate their role in getting science where it is now. This is in my mind perfectly consistent with there not being a great need (way?) to teach more of it to students. Perhaps an explanation of how you would teach it would make me realize we haven't been talking about quite the same thing?

staunton 4y ago

> If you think what I'm proposing is three lectures on philosophy of science than either you have zero idea how a PhD program works or you're arguing in bad faith. Talking about three lectures was meant as a question of what you actually propose (you might say that's bad faith). However, I believe you will find many people who you can convince that this is an important problem and they will suggest the "lecture approach" in full seriousness. That's also what I would expect from administrators who can actually implement some change in response to the problem. You still haven't said what measures you would actually endorse. I will try to guess a second time: Do you want to make each PhD student design their own experiment, perhaps with individual hands-off supervision to teach methodology? Either these experiments will be "toy experiments" to teach them methodology, or they would have to make a real contribution to science, in which case you would have to massively increase research budgets (or massively reduce numbers of PhD students) and add a LOT of non-PhD student researchers who do all the work for your newly made PhD-PI. In the latter case, these experiments might not actually deliver on their promise of generating much knowledge and, I believe, would prove an investment in the PhD's education at the cost of less scientific output. You will not convince administrators making economic decisions to implement either of these, even if they agree with you about the urgency of the problem. I think it's quite instructive to think about why this is so. Which brings me back to my main claim: the important problem in modern science is the incentive structure, not the lack of scientific methodology knowledge in PhD students.

Loquebantur 4y ago
You are right about the incentive structure being a main problem in science. But at the heart of the reasons why this structure is the way it is, you find people's utter lack of knowledge about how science does and should work in the first place. Remarably, nearly all the commenters here betray this very lack of knowledge by talking about it as "philosophy". As if it was some practically irrelevant jibberjabber. Science does not work by magic though, with people going through some motions of an occult ritual. It's an algorithm, implemented insanely badly currently.
- staunton 4y ago
  > at the heart of the reasons why this structure is the way it is, you find people's utter lack of knowledge about how science does and should work I don't think people's lack of understanding scientific methods is the main factor shaping the incentive structure, though it's very interesting how big a role it plays and I would love to hear more detailed arguments. In order to change the system, there must be enough alignment on what the actual goals are and what incentives might benefit them, ways to effectively organize around it, and ways to actually enforce the new incentives. (Perhaps even more things...) I think there are big hurdles on each of the above. First, concerning alignment on the goal, many people don't agree that faster scientific progress is actually good. You might argue that trying to teach people epistemology might change that. I neither think it would nor that it should, but one could argue about it a lot. "Indoctrinating" people starting at a young age that "science and knowledge = good" as a moral value might work (it is being done and I mostly endorse that) but that's different from teaching the scientific method. The really important important factor here is, of course, that many individuals and organizations benefit from the current system and don't want to change it. Concerning organization, political intersts and competition hinder it somewhat, but co-operation between scientists is quite high and increasing. Hopefully that trend will continue and not sucumb to geopolitical pressures. Concerning enforcing better incentives, that's very hard. For example, we can't objectively and reliably evaluate someone's scientific contributions. Any metric you set up is going to be gamed, etc. I think the incentives have improved over the (very short) history of collaborative science and the trend looks positive. Take for example the trend towards open access publication and growing awareness of many issues (replication crisis, etc.). Generally, I would say that understanding how science (the system) works and how it should work (or would, given certain changes) is very hard. Similarly, I also think really deep understanding how science (the process) should work is also hard and applying that knowledge in practice is much harder still. At some point you get diminishing returns for the efforts of teaching it. You still haven't proposed how you would promote this knowledge. I can't think of anything that seems likely to do much good but would love to hear about it. > Remarably, nearly all the commenters here betray this very lack of knowledge by talking about it as "philosophy" I believe epistemology and philosophy of science are philosophy. I also believe that having and improving these things is very useful and one cannot overstate their role in getting science where it is now. This is in my mind perfectly consistent with there not being a great need (way?) to teach more of it to students. Perhaps an explanation of how you would teach it would make me realize we haven't been talking about quite the same thing?