3 ms·

the difference between doers versus academics has never been demonstrated more beautifully

• admissionsguy 3y ago
  The problem is they needed academics to show them what to do.
  • adverbly 3y ago
    That's not entirely accurate. For my understanding, it is a private institution which employed the individuals who made the discovery. Some of whom have alternative backgrounds in academia, and some of whom have it in industry.
  • sashank_1509 3y ago
    The story goes, some professor had a theory in 1999 that was rejected by the mainstream regarding creating superconductors. He passed away and as a dying wish asked his students to continue the research work and develop a theory for why it works. The students unable to get “academic” funding set up a company and got funding from industry to do their research in 2017 and the rest is history. It’s very hard to redeem academia in this example.
    • kome 3y ago
      it's kinda false: https://hackmd.io/@lifthrasiir/lk-99-prehistory https://hackmd.io/@lifthrasiir/lk-99-prehistory people were working on it since soviet times, in academia. And those people influenced other people. Also in academia. It's a slow moving process, but it works.
• dwb 3y ago
  Oh yeah, the commercial "doers" are happy to have a go once academics have slogged away at the hard, risky, expensive, and often thankless trial-and-error before the discovery. Not to do down the people in this particular example, and I'm happy to assume they aren't claiming any credit they shouldn't, but the dichotomy really isn't as you make it out to be.
• kome 3y ago
  ...without academics we wouldn't be here. at all. here an historical genealogy that leads to the LK99 discovery: https://hackmd.io/@lifthrasiir/lk-99-prehistory https://hackmd.io/@lifthrasiir/lk-99-prehistory