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The academic establishment is obsessed with _invention_ not making ideas _accessible_. We have an 'intellectual property' obsessed society. But if existing ide

The academic establishment is obsessed with _invention_ not making ideas _accessible_. We have an 'intellectual property' obsessed society. But if existing ideas were more accessible, less cloaked in esoteric jargon, the next steps would seem not "original" but more self-evident to many. We would have a lot of obvious, parallel invention. Read scientific writing. It's very dense. Papers are very inscrutable. This creates some extremely niche subdomains where the same 5-10 peer reviewers decide what's considered valid research. We treat science like arcane magic. The incentives of academia (tenure, hierarchy, status) only amplify the arcana. And those stuck in their nichiest of domains don't get exposed to new ideas.

generalizations 3y ago
> But if existing ideas were more accessible, less cloaked in esoteric jargon, the next steps would seem not "original" but more self-evident to many. This matches my experience - once you buckle down and learn the jargon, then when you read the papers you realize that the concepts are rarely complex. But if you write a paper that's not complicated, people might see that you haven't come up with anything impressive! And the emperor has no clothes. So you, and everyone around you, succumbs to their inferiority complex and hides their ideas behind inscrutable jargon.
el_oni 3y ago
I've commented on a similar topic before about knowing who the reviewers were based on their comments and papers they recomend we cited. But as for the papers being inscruitable, i think part of that is just that the domain has it's own language, and assumed knowledge. I don't have to explain why i'm using the gibbs equation to calcualte free energy, or why i'm using hess's law. I just do it. The only things that need explaination are the novel applications of techniques. When it comes to explaining those foundational concepts we need to pickup a text book or a popular science book. Speaking of, one of the things that makes me a little sad is how few popular science books there are around chemistry. There is loads about biology and physics, and even some around maths. Not a lot with chem.

generalizations 3y ago

> But if existing ideas were more accessible, less cloaked in esoteric jargon, the next steps would seem not "original" but more self-evident to many. This matches my experience - once you buckle down and learn the jargon, then when you read the papers you realize that the concepts are rarely complex. But if you write a paper that's not complicated, people might see that you haven't come up with anything impressive! And the emperor has no clothes. So you, and everyone around you, succumbs to their inferiority complex and hides their ideas behind inscrutable jargon.

el_oni 3y ago

I've commented on a similar topic before about knowing who the reviewers were based on their comments and papers they recomend we cited. But as for the papers being inscruitable, i think part of that is just that the domain has it's own language, and assumed knowledge. I don't have to explain why i'm using the gibbs equation to calcualte free energy, or why i'm using hess's law. I just do it. The only things that need explaination are the novel applications of techniques. When it comes to explaining those foundational concepts we need to pickup a text book or a popular science book. Speaking of, one of the things that makes me a little sad is how few popular science books there are around chemistry. There is loads about biology and physics, and even some around maths. Not a lot with chem.