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It's harder to game metrics when there is a wider diversity of them and the way in which they are weighted in different decision making committees is different.

It's harder to game metrics when there is a wider diversity of them and the way in which they are weighted in different decision making committees is different. Because it's hard to simultaneously game a bunch of different metrics, and the benefits from gaming a single one are probably worse than the benefits of just organically doing what you think is best. But yeah I totally agree that these are extremely hard problems with no silver bullet. Philosophically and from a "how do systems of humans work together" perspective. Teaching methodology of science like a cookbook I also agree is the wrong play and just digging in further to what got us where we are. I'm curious what makes you say scientists are collaborating more? Stats or has that been your experience? I've seen a lot of semi political collaborations where people are mostly just posturing to get on more papers. I have also seen a decent number of good faith interdisciplinary collaborations, though it seems to be a bit of a coin flip whether they flame out over disagreements. I've personally not seen much cooperation within the same field though that I'd consider genuine. Thanks for sparking the interesting discussion in any event, it's not often I end up debating people on both sides of a debate so this has been fun.

staunton 4y ago
In my field there's lots of honest and fruitful collaboration. It's not all perfect but definitely a good situation. Technology has been making collaboration easier and faster as well. Globalization has led to international scientific collaboration being ever more expected and normal. Look into the organization of CERN for example. It's a huge project, highly politicized in many ways, with many parties that have their own goals and motives. Yet they all realize that a huge and sufficiently effective collaboration is the only way to do this science at all. And they are doing it.

staunton 4y ago

In my field there's lots of honest and fruitful collaboration. It's not all perfect but definitely a good situation. Technology has been making collaboration easier and faster as well. Globalization has led to international scientific collaboration being ever more expected and normal. Look into the organization of CERN for example. It's a huge project, highly politicized in many ways, with many parties that have their own goals and motives. Yet they all realize that a huge and sufficiently effective collaboration is the only way to do this science at all. And they are doing it.