4 ms·

It's way way bigger than that. The whole world changed since those early days of modern science. During those days, the science you were talking about was one

It's way way bigger than that. The whole world changed since those early days of modern science. During those days, the science you were talking about was one of countless hobby clubs for aristocratic circles, where bored rich folk could dedicate themselves to one upping each other in the discovery game their peers and recent predecessors had invented. There were certainly cheaters then, too, but the whole thing was very insular and the only people who even cared about it were the people who were in on the game themselves. So excelling within the rules and elaborate demonstrations of the game were all part of the club sport. 400 years later, billions of people across five or six generations have been told that this game is the secret to human prosperity on earth and that the more its played, the more aligned we'll be with the truth of the universe, the longer we'll all live, the more leisure and luxury we'll all enjoy, etc That's a whole different game! The demand for scientific output has gone from an exhibition sport shared among a small and snobby circle to a replacement for an eroded theology. Trillion dollar governments and globe-spanning trillion dollar industries now (ostensibly) make their billion dollar decisions based on each day's summary of the sport, and billions of people dreaming about prosperity or salvation await the next big game's result as though it were a demonstration of divine grace. There are now so many games being played, by so many people, with so many bets and spectators, that incentives are unfathomable and referees are sparse and cheating is rampant. Unfortunately, you're not going to clean all that up by telling some journals to reshuffle their revenue allocations.

wredue 3y ago
Sorry but who actually thinks that being a scientist is the “key to prosperity”? I think far and away most scientists become researchers despite the fact that it’s generally not at all a prosperous venture.
- swatcoder 3y ago
  Not "being a scientist": "science". Science is seen as the road to human (not just personal) propsperity by people educated in the last 100-ish years, which is mostly everybody now, which puts extreme pressure to perform/produce on what was once a pure little hobby sport whose spectators were almost all invested as players themselves.
- starcraft2wol 3y ago
  Like journalism, they trade money for social status and prestige.
  - bumby 3y ago
    Maybe, but it's probably a relatively small circle that elevates someone's status by being in academia. (Not to say that isn't the circle whose opinions matter to them, though).
  - jampekka 3y ago
    Or just to do something that they are interested in. And to have quite a bit of freedom.
    - starcraft2wol 3y ago
      After seeing that academics still have to take a “two job” approach with serious research and fun research I’m not convinced of this. Not to mention the very protracted timelines to get to that stage of freedom.
      - jampekka 3y ago
        That depends on whether you accept the risk of having to find another line of work. Depending on the place, you can do almost anything you want even at PhD level. I've been on a chain of grants, doing quite freely what I want, for over a decade. But I accept it may break at any point and then I'll just go do something else. After PhD there will be nobody telling, and often not even caring, what to do. But that may mean that you don't get your PhD or you don't get another grant to live on. If you get a tenure it almost literally means that you can't be fired even if you do nothing at all. What is surprising is that almost all with tenure keep running the rat race even though they don't really get anything at least material out of it. (Nitpick: I think serious research is the fun one. The one churned to get another grant is neither serious nor fun.)
        starcraft2wol 3y ago
- feoren 3y ago
  Science and the advancement of technology is literally the only thing that has ever led to lasting prosperity for humans. All other periods of prosperity over the last ten thousand years have been temporary and highly localized. You can lose your golden age of prosperity through a single assassination. Only science breaks the wheel. If you factor in all future humans in your utility calculations, then science is by far the #1 noblest pursuit humans can ever undertake. We're talking about scientific advancements potentially helping trillions of people before all is said and heat-deathed. Great works of art can also be enjoyed by all future humans, but science has a super-linear (if not actually exponential) growth curve where every advancement makes future advancements a little easier. The question is whether the noble pursuit of "science" and the day-to-day activities of "being a scientist" have diverged or not. There is mounting evidence that the institution of science has been subverted to the extent that many people who are professional scientists are not actually contributing to the pursuit of science. Or, far worse, detracting from it, as we see here. It's one of the great tragedies of our era.
  - fock 3y ago
    > Science and the advancement of technology is literally the only thing that has ever led to lasting prosperity for humans. All other periods of prosperity over the last ten thousand years have been temporary and highly localized. You can lose your golden age of prosperity through a single assassination. Only science breaks the wheel. How exactly do you know this civilization will not crash too? (and take with it that highly localized habitat)
    - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
      That was exactly my question when I read that quote too. Everything is temporary on a large enough scale and everyone w/i that golden era also thought it would last and that belief is part of why it didn't. Humans will never build anything that truly lasts for a very simple reason. The lessons learned get forgotten after 2 generations (3 at most). Stop and consider how the US fought for its freedom and how nowadays many people from the US would vote to have more limitations on speech.
jampekka 3y ago
The rot has set in relatively lately, but is getting exponentially worse. Probably still in the 1990's or even early 2000's (depending on the field) an academic could have had a fine career publishing (a good paper) every few years. Or write a (good) book or two in their whole career. I did my PhD under a professor who was very respected and influential in his field. He published quite rarely, although he had piles of manuscripts that would have passed review but he didn't find them worthy. And refused to have his name on his lab's papers if he didn't feel like he contributed enough (nowadays many/most professors who won't even read the paper require them to be added as an author). In the current system he would have no chance in academia. He said so himself. As has Peter Higgs: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-boson-academic-system https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-...
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  The professor sounds like a man of class. As I was reading the article I got to the part where the whistleblowers accused zlokovic of pressuring them to change data. If you changed data then you're also responsible. Every one of those whistleblowers should have refused.
  - jampekka 3y ago
    In my experience a lot of older professors are like this, likely because it wasn't yet about counting papers for them to get their tenures (other games were involved for sure). I agree they should have refused. I hope I would in their situation.
concinds 3y ago
I think you underestimate the possibility of cultural change happening from the top. It's in fact a very common way to achieve cultural change.
Balgair 3y ago
> where bored rich folk could dedicate themselves to one upping each other in the discovery game their peers and recent predecessors had invented. There were certainly cheaters then, too, but the whole thing was very insular and the only people who even cared about it were the people who were in on the game themselves. So excelling within the rules and elaborate demonstrations of the game were all part of the club sport. I see this meme about the early scientists a lot. Unfortunately, these first early scientists are not so easily categorized. I would encourage others to delve into the biographies of these progenitors. It is true, some were very much in the vein of this meme. But many were much more complicated individuals. For example, Darwin is about as blue blooded as it comes. Yet Origin of Species has a very long section at the beginning where Darwin painstakingly goes over all the scientists before him that that in any small way had already discovered evolution. Another good one is that while digging potatoes with his hands at the family farm in his native New Zealand, Rutherford got the news that he had been awarded a scholarship to study physics at Cambridge under William Thomson (Lord Kelvin). Many other scientists came from very 'low' births. But science is a 'strong-chain' domain where only the 'correct' ideas survive. Anyone can, and did, contribute despite those obstacles.

wredue 3y ago

Sorry but who actually thinks that being a scientist is the “key to prosperity”? I think far and away most scientists become researchers despite the fact that it’s generally not at all a prosperous venture.

swatcoder 3y ago
Not "being a scientist": "science". Science is seen as the road to human (not just personal) propsperity by people educated in the last 100-ish years, which is mostly everybody now, which puts extreme pressure to perform/produce on what was once a pure little hobby sport whose spectators were almost all invested as players themselves.
starcraft2wol 3y ago
Like journalism, they trade money for social status and prestige.
- bumby 3y ago
  Maybe, but it's probably a relatively small circle that elevates someone's status by being in academia. (Not to say that isn't the circle whose opinions matter to them, though).
- jampekka 3y ago
  Or just to do something that they are interested in. And to have quite a bit of freedom.
  - starcraft2wol 3y ago
    After seeing that academics still have to take a “two job” approach with serious research and fun research I’m not convinced of this. Not to mention the very protracted timelines to get to that stage of freedom.
    - jampekka 3y ago
      That depends on whether you accept the risk of having to find another line of work. Depending on the place, you can do almost anything you want even at PhD level. I've been on a chain of grants, doing quite freely what I want, for over a decade. But I accept it may break at any point and then I'll just go do something else. After PhD there will be nobody telling, and often not even caring, what to do. But that may mean that you don't get your PhD or you don't get another grant to live on. If you get a tenure it almost literally means that you can't be fired even if you do nothing at all. What is surprising is that almost all with tenure keep running the rat race even though they don't really get anything at least material out of it. (Nitpick: I think serious research is the fun one. The one churned to get another grant is neither serious nor fun.)
      - starcraft2wol 3y ago
feoren 3y ago
Science and the advancement of technology is literally the only thing that has ever led to lasting prosperity for humans. All other periods of prosperity over the last ten thousand years have been temporary and highly localized. You can lose your golden age of prosperity through a single assassination. Only science breaks the wheel. If you factor in all future humans in your utility calculations, then science is by far the #1 noblest pursuit humans can ever undertake. We're talking about scientific advancements potentially helping trillions of people before all is said and heat-deathed. Great works of art can also be enjoyed by all future humans, but science has a super-linear (if not actually exponential) growth curve where every advancement makes future advancements a little easier. The question is whether the noble pursuit of "science" and the day-to-day activities of "being a scientist" have diverged or not. There is mounting evidence that the institution of science has been subverted to the extent that many people who are professional scientists are not actually contributing to the pursuit of science. Or, far worse, detracting from it, as we see here. It's one of the great tragedies of our era.
- fock 3y ago
  > Science and the advancement of technology is literally the only thing that has ever led to lasting prosperity for humans. All other periods of prosperity over the last ten thousand years have been temporary and highly localized. You can lose your golden age of prosperity through a single assassination. Only science breaks the wheel. How exactly do you know this civilization will not crash too? (and take with it that highly localized habitat)
  - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
    That was exactly my question when I read that quote too. Everything is temporary on a large enough scale and everyone w/i that golden era also thought it would last and that belief is part of why it didn't. Humans will never build anything that truly lasts for a very simple reason. The lessons learned get forgotten after 2 generations (3 at most). Stop and consider how the US fought for its freedom and how nowadays many people from the US would vote to have more limitations on speech.

jampekka 3y ago

The rot has set in relatively lately, but is getting exponentially worse. Probably still in the 1990's or even early 2000's (depending on the field) an academic could have had a fine career publishing (a good paper) every few years. Or write a (good) book or two in their whole career. I did my PhD under a professor who was very respected and influential in his field. He published quite rarely, although he had piles of manuscripts that would have passed review but he didn't find them worthy. And refused to have his name on his lab's papers if he didn't feel like he contributed enough (nowadays many/most professors who won't even read the paper require them to be added as an author). In the current system he would have no chance in academia. He said so himself. As has Peter Higgs: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-boson-academic-system https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-...

PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
The professor sounds like a man of class. As I was reading the article I got to the part where the whistleblowers accused zlokovic of pressuring them to change data. If you changed data then you're also responsible. Every one of those whistleblowers should have refused.
- jampekka 3y ago
  In my experience a lot of older professors are like this, likely because it wasn't yet about counting papers for them to get their tenures (other games were involved for sure). I agree they should have refused. I hope I would in their situation.

concinds 3y ago

I think you underestimate the possibility of cultural change happening from the top. It's in fact a very common way to achieve cultural change.

Balgair 3y ago

> where bored rich folk could dedicate themselves to one upping each other in the discovery game their peers and recent predecessors had invented. There were certainly cheaters then, too, but the whole thing was very insular and the only people who even cared about it were the people who were in on the game themselves. So excelling within the rules and elaborate demonstrations of the game were all part of the club sport. I see this meme about the early scientists a lot. Unfortunately, these first early scientists are not so easily categorized. I would encourage others to delve into the biographies of these progenitors. It is true, some were very much in the vein of this meme. But many were much more complicated individuals. For example, Darwin is about as blue blooded as it comes. Yet Origin of Species has a very long section at the beginning where Darwin painstakingly goes over all the scientists before him that that in any small way had already discovered evolution. Another good one is that while digging potatoes with his hands at the family farm in his native New Zealand, Rutherford got the news that he had been awarded a scholarship to study physics at Cambridge under William Thomson (Lord Kelvin). Many other scientists came from very 'low' births. But science is a 'strong-chain' domain where only the 'correct' ideas survive. Anyone can, and did, contribute despite those obstacles.