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lets be brutally honest with ourselves. 99% of all papers mean nothing. They add nothing to the collective knowledge of humanity. In my field of robotics there

lets be brutally honest with ourselves. 99% of all papers mean nothing. They add nothing to the collective knowledge of humanity. In my field of robotics there are SOOO many papers that are basically taking three or four established algorithms/machine learning models, and applying them to off-the-shelf hardware. The kind of thing any person educated in the field could almost guess the results exactly. Hundreds of such iterations for any reasonably popular problems space (prosthetics, drones for wildfires, museum guide robot) etc every month. Far more than could possibly be useful to anyone. There should probably be some sort of separate process for things that actually claim to make important discoveries. I don't know what or how that should work. In all honesty maybe there should just be less papers, however that could be achieved.

indymike 3y ago
> 99% of all papers mean nothing. They add nothing to the collective knowledge of humanity. A lot of papers are done as a part of the process of getting a degree or keeping or getting job. The value is mostly the candidate showing they have the acumen to produce a paper of such quality that meets the publisher and peer review requirements. In some cases, it is to show a future employer some level of accomplishment or renown. The knowledge for humanity is mostly the authors ability to get published.
- RugnirViking 3y ago
  well yes. But these should go somewhere else than the papers that may actually contain significant results. The problem we have here is that there is an enormous quantity of such useless papers mixed in with the ones actually trying to do science. I understand that part of the reason for that is that people need to appear as though they are part of the "actually trying" crowd to get the desired job effects. But it is nonetheless a problem, and a large one very worth at least trying to solve.
  - indymike 3y ago
    > I understand that part of the reason for that is that people need to appear as though they are part of the "actually trying" crowd to get the desired job effects There's another less obvious problem: we don't always know what is groundbreaking and what is not until something is published and is accepted at large as being a really big deal.
staunton 3y ago
99% of science is a waste of time, not just the papers. We just don't know which 1% will turn out not to be. The point is that this is making progress. As such, these 99% definitely are adding to the collective knowledge. Maybe they add very little and maybe it's not worth the effort but it's not nothing. I think one of the effects of AI progress will be allowing to extract much more of the little value such publications have (the 99% of papers might not be worth reading but are good enough for feeding the AI).
LBTables 3y ago
> In my field of robotics there are SOOO many papers that are basically taking three or four established algorithms/machine learning models, and applying them to off-the-shelf hardware. This is a direct result of the aggressive "publish or perish" system. I worked as an aide in an autonomous vehicles lab for a year and a half during my undergrad, and while the actual work we were doing was really cool cutting edge stuff, it was absolutely maddening the amount of time we wasted blatantly pulling bullshit nothing papers exactly like you describe out of our asses to satisfy the constant chewing out we got that "your lab has only published X papers this month".
PaulHoule 3y ago
99% is bombastic. What I would say is that the median scientific paper is wrong and back that up with a very long list of things that could make a paper "wrong" or "not even wrong". In the case of physics, everything about string theory may be one day considered "wrong". In the case of medicine all the studies where N < 1/10 the number it would take to draw a reliable conclusion are wrong.
awesomeMilou 3y ago
Thank you. Not even saying this to shit on academia, but modern scientific publishing follows the same governing rules as publishing a YouTube video (in principle). > There should probably be some sort of separate process for things that actually claim to make important discoveries. This used to be Springer Nature and the likes, but they've had so many retractions in the past years + they broke their integrity in the Schoen scandal, allowing lenience in the review process to secure a prestigious publication in their journal. In reality, I mean you're probably my academic senior: How does true advancement get publicized these days? You post a YouTube video somewhere. See LK99. No peer review, no fancy stuff, a YouTube video was enough to get Argonne National lab on the case.

indymike 3y ago

> 99% of all papers mean nothing. They add nothing to the collective knowledge of humanity. A lot of papers are done as a part of the process of getting a degree or keeping or getting job. The value is mostly the candidate showing they have the acumen to produce a paper of such quality that meets the publisher and peer review requirements. In some cases, it is to show a future employer some level of accomplishment or renown. The knowledge for humanity is mostly the authors ability to get published.

RugnirViking 3y ago
well yes. But these should go somewhere else than the papers that may actually contain significant results. The problem we have here is that there is an enormous quantity of such useless papers mixed in with the ones actually trying to do science. I understand that part of the reason for that is that people need to appear as though they are part of the "actually trying" crowd to get the desired job effects. But it is nonetheless a problem, and a large one very worth at least trying to solve.
- indymike 3y ago
  > I understand that part of the reason for that is that people need to appear as though they are part of the "actually trying" crowd to get the desired job effects There's another less obvious problem: we don't always know what is groundbreaking and what is not until something is published and is accepted at large as being a really big deal.

staunton 3y ago

99% of science is a waste of time, not just the papers. We just don't know which 1% will turn out not to be. The point is that this is making progress. As such, these 99% definitely are adding to the collective knowledge. Maybe they add very little and maybe it's not worth the effort but it's not nothing. I think one of the effects of AI progress will be allowing to extract much more of the little value such publications have (the 99% of papers might not be worth reading but are good enough for feeding the AI).

LBTables 3y ago

> In my field of robotics there are SOOO many papers that are basically taking three or four established algorithms/machine learning models, and applying them to off-the-shelf hardware. This is a direct result of the aggressive "publish or perish" system. I worked as an aide in an autonomous vehicles lab for a year and a half during my undergrad, and while the actual work we were doing was really cool cutting edge stuff, it was absolutely maddening the amount of time we wasted blatantly pulling bullshit nothing papers exactly like you describe out of our asses to satisfy the constant chewing out we got that "your lab has only published X papers this month".

PaulHoule 3y ago

99% is bombastic. What I would say is that the median scientific paper is wrong and back that up with a very long list of things that could make a paper "wrong" or "not even wrong". In the case of physics, everything about string theory may be one day considered "wrong". In the case of medicine all the studies where N < 1/10 the number it would take to draw a reliable conclusion are wrong.

awesomeMilou 3y ago

Thank you. Not even saying this to shit on academia, but modern scientific publishing follows the same governing rules as publishing a YouTube video (in principle). > There should probably be some sort of separate process for things that actually claim to make important discoveries. This used to be Springer Nature and the likes, but they've had so many retractions in the past years + they broke their integrity in the Schoen scandal, allowing lenience in the review process to secure a prestigious publication in their journal. In reality, I mean you're probably my academic senior: How does true advancement get publicized these days? You post a YouTube video somewhere. See LK99. No peer review, no fancy stuff, a YouTube video was enough to get Argonne National lab on the case.