3 ms·
As somebody who has crossed the line between ML and chemistry many times, I would love to see: more ML researchers who know chemistry, more chemistry researcher
by dekhn 4y ago
As somebody who has crossed the line between ML and chemistry many times, I would love to see: more ML researchers who know chemistry, more chemistry researchers who know ML, and best of all, fully cross-disciplinary researchers who are both masters of chemistry and ML, as those are the ones who move the field farthest, fastest.
- whymauri 4y agoYou could probably fit all the people who fit the last criteria in the same room (chemistry side is probably the bottleneck, especially drugs which is a effectively a specialization).
- pama 4y agoPresent. I think there exist many of us. Chemistry is a very wide field though, so not sure if organic synthesis vs theoretical chemistry vs physical chemistry vs biochemistry will end up more useful to help tackle drug discovery problems or other chemistry applications. Same with ML I suppose; even though the specialties are less concrete nowadays, the breadth of publications has far exceeded the breadth of modern chemistry.
- quickthrower2 4y agoSociety is not structured to encourage this. Getting a job sooner is more lucrative. Any breakthough you make having studied for a couple of decades is property of a corporation not you.
- randmeerkat 4y ago> Society is not structured to encourage this. I wish more people understood this and the value that it would add to society. For some reason most people understand how roads and transit improve commerce, but fail to understand how education and social support for the individual does as well.
- quickthrower2 4y agoSport incentives work out nicely for getting a supply of top talent. Big money through sponsorship/ads/tickets, fairly formulaic system to get better at a sport (top coaches/teams, get fitter, practice a lot), an easy way to identify progress (wins games, scores goals). But for sciences, someone could do great work for 20 years and produce obscure papers that might stay obscure, or may unlock the mystery of the universe or help us meet the world's energy demands without pollution! So the pay off if magnitudes higher than sport, but magnitudes less probable. Someone will run 100m fast, guaranteed, but will we solve science problems X Y Z and when?
- petesergeant 4y agoWould employees of non-sports industries accept the weird-ass ways that sports contracts work? Major League Pharma Research is certainly intriguing
- nylon_panda 4y agoTo my understanding it'd need to be set-up so the proposition of R&D is granted by unbiased parties. I believe its been linked on HN before, where it describes what system would be best to incentivize research? It stated the dangers of funding the research of only the popular (and contemporary) topics, which tilts R&D away from discovery and more towards 'lets try to yield xyz, and if it fails, lets not release it'. Someone who is motivated to grant something must be completely separate from the publication, most likely those who researched it and many other scientists, & unlike peer review try not to trim any of it out
- mirker 4y agoI agree with you but does anyone even recognize the last category outside blue-sky research? People have a tendency to bin other people into buckets. Being a master at 2 things means you can’t be easily placed in a typical team structure.