4 ms·

We used to have a social norm like that. It eroded, because populist politicians started ridiculing research proposals they found frivolous. Now most proposals

We used to have a social norm like that. It eroded, because populist politicians started ridiculing research proposals they found frivolous. Now most proposals are riddled with fake justifications, because people wanted more accountability in how tax money is spent.

heyjamesknight 3y ago
Some of that blame should be pointed at those that proliferated frivolous and ridiculous research proposals.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > Some of that blame should be pointed at those that proliferated frivolous and ridiculous research proposals There are fewer of these than you'd think. Modeling wobbling plates is easier mocked than done, for example.
  - heyjamesknight 3y ago
    There aren't. There are entire fields of this stuff. Taxpayers shouldn't be funding studies into the weaving techniques used by pre-Columbian natives in the upper Mississippi basin.
- jacobolus 3y ago
  No, the research was fine. For example, a friend of my family spent a large part of his career writing an extensive bilingual dictionary for an indigenous language in Southern Mexico. He won a "golden fleece" award from asshole Senator Proxmire of Wisconsin, who thought dictionaries for languages with only a few hundred thousand speakers was a waste of government research grant money.
  - heyjamesknight 3y ago
    Is this satire? Creating a bilingual dictionary for an indigenous language spoken by a few thousand people who aren't even in the country funding that research is the definition of "a waste of government research grant money."
    - jacobolus 3y ago
      Is this satire? Leaving aside your sloppy reading, this is one of the the most exaggerated examples of a stereotypical "technical person utterly bereft of human perspective" takes I have ever seen on this website. Which is really saying something, because there are a lot of blinkered people here. I feel profound sadness and pity for anyone with such an impoverished worldview. I hope someday you can experience some literature, art, nature, or human connection that can pierce though it and help you reconnect with your innate capacities for empathy and wonder.
      - heyjamesknight 3y ago
        What a ridiculous ad hominem response. Not wanting to use taxpayer money to fund your friend’s whimsical intellectual odyssey is not the same as lacking empathy and wonder. Keep your pity—you sound like you could use a fair dose of empathy yourself.
        dang 3y ago
        Please don't break the site guidelines like this, no matter how wrong another commenter is or you feel they are. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - dang 3y ago
        Please don't break the site guidelines like this, no matter how wrong another commenter is or you feel they are. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
nvm0n2 3y ago
Who were these "populist politicians" exactly? I don't remember any of them ever talking about university research. It'd actually be great to have some politicians who ridicule frivolous academic research. It's not like there's a shortage of it especially in the humanities and social sciences (where there's no such thing as basic research anyway). Alas, their attentions are all elsewhere.
- omginternets 3y ago
  >where there's no such thing as basic research anyway Did you mean "applied research"? >It's not like there's a shortage of it especially in the humanities and social sciences (where there's no such thing as basic research anyway). Careful where you cast stones, my friend. There is a lot of bullshit in software engineering, too. Gestures towards pile of discarded JS frameworks...
  - rplst8 3y ago
    Was the development of those JS frameworks funded with federal tax dollars?
    - omginternets 3y ago
      That's a separate point (and we'd be largely in agreement, I suspect). In fact, I'm sure you've noticed the heaps of government-funded software trash.
  - nvm0n2 3y ago
    No I meant basic research. Academia justifies itself by claiming it's necessary to do "basic", "foundational", "fundamental" or "blue sky" research in a non-commercial setting, because supposedly corporations can't afford to do long term research that doesn't have immediate application. So in this model academic scientists develop a foundation of firm and rigorous theory about how nature works, publish a literature on it for the good of all mankind, and then shorter term applied research is done by companies to derive practical insights from that literature. That model doesn't seem right, because there are lots of corporate research programmes into fundamental theory that were/are lavishly funded despite a decade+ of no ROI, most obviously at the moment AI. But let's put that aside and pretend it's true. Problem is that humanities and social studies don't produce a body of theory on which anything can be built. Humanities produces only critical theory, which despite the name is more like a belief system than a scientific theory. The social studies produce a lot of that too, but even outside critical theory their output is just a giant pile of random thought bubbles and mini-studies to try and prove them. There's nothing much linking these studies, no frameworks that make reliable new predictions. Instead we get an endless stream of Just So claims that fall apart when people try to replicate them, but even failure to replicate doesn't have any impact because there's nothing underneath them to be invalidated. At most it's shown that this one specific paper isn't reliable. Contrast to something like physics where the work of academic theorists is all about coming up with unified theories of everything, which could then be used to develop practical applications. Einstein is super famous because he invalidated large swathes of theory and opened up space for new theory to be developed. Social studies don't have any equivalent to Einstein and can't by design.
omginternets 3y ago
At the risk of being controversial, the latter half of your statement tracks very well with my experience of organizational DEI initiatives, in particular. We have reached a point where tenure-track faculty are expected to provide justification, in writing, for the value of their research to various marginalized communities. That alone wouldn't be a huge deal if conference talks, research funding and, increasingly, tenure committees weren't being similarly pressed to provide these kinds of justification. From where I'm standing (I hold a Ph.D in a scientific field, and my spouse is a tenure-track academic), an unsustainable portion of academic work consists in justifying one's research program, on grounds that have little to do with the subject of study. It should hopefully be obvious that I'm not trying to stir a DEI flame war. Rather, I can't shake the feeling that DEI activism isn't accomplishing much beyond creating bureaucraty, and that this benefits neither research in general, nor marginalized groups trying to establish themselves in academia. Anyway, this seems like a specific instance of a larger trend you're pointing to. Possibly not even the largest or most absurd one.
- whatshisface 3y ago
  It's difficult to tell where the initiatives are coming from because the willingness to write and accept empty claims of relevance appears to exist at all levels and stages in the process. (For both DEI and "questionably applied number theory.") If they are getting that little buy-in from even the administrators I can't imagine how they get there in the first place. It's like the same people put application and social consciousness first in their RFPs and then turn around to accept invisible fig leaves during evaluation... Who's getting fooled, the government? Politicians? The public?
  - omginternets 3y ago
    >It's difficult to tell where the initiatives are coming from because the willingness to write and accept empty claims of relevance appears to exist at all levels and stages in the process. Is it, though? In the case of DEI, it appears to me (on the surface, anyway) that these initiatives are being implemented at the request of very vocal special-interest groups, and at the orders of the politicians who represent them. It seems like a fairly straightforward case of lobbying by institutions whose existence depends on the existence of a social problem. It's a rough analog to Eisenhower's Military-Industrial Complex idea. The same is true with what you call "questionably applied number theory". The only difference is that special-interest group isn't defined along ethno-racial lines, but instead comprises various bean-counters and ad-men who sell various forms of investment. In my view, there used to be a consensus that such lobbyists were not welcome in universities, or at least not in droves, because of their tendency to subvert intellectual pursuits in favor of short-term profits.

heyjamesknight 3y ago

Some of that blame should be pointed at those that proliferated frivolous and ridiculous research proposals.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> Some of that blame should be pointed at those that proliferated frivolous and ridiculous research proposals There are fewer of these than you'd think. Modeling wobbling plates is easier mocked than done, for example.
- heyjamesknight 3y ago
  There aren't. There are entire fields of this stuff. Taxpayers shouldn't be funding studies into the weaving techniques used by pre-Columbian natives in the upper Mississippi basin.
jacobolus 3y ago
No, the research was fine. For example, a friend of my family spent a large part of his career writing an extensive bilingual dictionary for an indigenous language in Southern Mexico. He won a "golden fleece" award from asshole Senator Proxmire of Wisconsin, who thought dictionaries for languages with only a few hundred thousand speakers was a waste of government research grant money.
- heyjamesknight 3y ago
  Is this satire? Creating a bilingual dictionary for an indigenous language spoken by a few thousand people who aren't even in the country funding that research is the definition of "a waste of government research grant money."
  - jacobolus 3y ago
    Is this satire? Leaving aside your sloppy reading, this is one of the the most exaggerated examples of a stereotypical "technical person utterly bereft of human perspective" takes I have ever seen on this website. Which is really saying something, because there are a lot of blinkered people here. I feel profound sadness and pity for anyone with such an impoverished worldview. I hope someday you can experience some literature, art, nature, or human connection that can pierce though it and help you reconnect with your innate capacities for empathy and wonder.
    - heyjamesknight 3y ago
      What a ridiculous ad hominem response. Not wanting to use taxpayer money to fund your friend’s whimsical intellectual odyssey is not the same as lacking empathy and wonder. Keep your pity—you sound like you could use a fair dose of empathy yourself.
      - dang 3y ago
        Please don't break the site guidelines like this, no matter how wrong another commenter is or you feel they are. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - dang 3y ago
      Please don't break the site guidelines like this, no matter how wrong another commenter is or you feel they are. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

nvm0n2 3y ago

Who were these "populist politicians" exactly? I don't remember any of them ever talking about university research. It'd actually be great to have some politicians who ridicule frivolous academic research. It's not like there's a shortage of it especially in the humanities and social sciences (where there's no such thing as basic research anyway). Alas, their attentions are all elsewhere.

omginternets 3y ago
>where there's no such thing as basic research anyway Did you mean "applied research"? >It's not like there's a shortage of it especially in the humanities and social sciences (where there's no such thing as basic research anyway). Careful where you cast stones, my friend. There is a lot of bullshit in software engineering, too. Gestures towards pile of discarded JS frameworks...
- rplst8 3y ago
  Was the development of those JS frameworks funded with federal tax dollars?
  - omginternets 3y ago
    That's a separate point (and we'd be largely in agreement, I suspect). In fact, I'm sure you've noticed the heaps of government-funded software trash.
- nvm0n2 3y ago
  No I meant basic research. Academia justifies itself by claiming it's necessary to do "basic", "foundational", "fundamental" or "blue sky" research in a non-commercial setting, because supposedly corporations can't afford to do long term research that doesn't have immediate application. So in this model academic scientists develop a foundation of firm and rigorous theory about how nature works, publish a literature on it for the good of all mankind, and then shorter term applied research is done by companies to derive practical insights from that literature. That model doesn't seem right, because there are lots of corporate research programmes into fundamental theory that were/are lavishly funded despite a decade+ of no ROI, most obviously at the moment AI. But let's put that aside and pretend it's true. Problem is that humanities and social studies don't produce a body of theory on which anything can be built. Humanities produces only critical theory, which despite the name is more like a belief system than a scientific theory. The social studies produce a lot of that too, but even outside critical theory their output is just a giant pile of random thought bubbles and mini-studies to try and prove them. There's nothing much linking these studies, no frameworks that make reliable new predictions. Instead we get an endless stream of Just So claims that fall apart when people try to replicate them, but even failure to replicate doesn't have any impact because there's nothing underneath them to be invalidated. At most it's shown that this one specific paper isn't reliable. Contrast to something like physics where the work of academic theorists is all about coming up with unified theories of everything, which could then be used to develop practical applications. Einstein is super famous because he invalidated large swathes of theory and opened up space for new theory to be developed. Social studies don't have any equivalent to Einstein and can't by design.

omginternets 3y ago

At the risk of being controversial, the latter half of your statement tracks very well with my experience of organizational DEI initiatives, in particular. We have reached a point where tenure-track faculty are expected to provide justification, in writing, for the value of their research to various marginalized communities. That alone wouldn't be a huge deal if conference talks, research funding and, increasingly, tenure committees weren't being similarly pressed to provide these kinds of justification. From where I'm standing (I hold a Ph.D in a scientific field, and my spouse is a tenure-track academic), an unsustainable portion of academic work consists in justifying one's research program, on grounds that have little to do with the subject of study. It should hopefully be obvious that I'm not trying to stir a DEI flame war. Rather, I can't shake the feeling that DEI activism isn't accomplishing much beyond creating bureaucraty, and that this benefits neither research in general, nor marginalized groups trying to establish themselves in academia. Anyway, this seems like a specific instance of a larger trend you're pointing to. Possibly not even the largest or most absurd one.

whatshisface 3y ago
It's difficult to tell where the initiatives are coming from because the willingness to write and accept empty claims of relevance appears to exist at all levels and stages in the process. (For both DEI and "questionably applied number theory.") If they are getting that little buy-in from even the administrators I can't imagine how they get there in the first place. It's like the same people put application and social consciousness first in their RFPs and then turn around to accept invisible fig leaves during evaluation... Who's getting fooled, the government? Politicians? The public?
- omginternets 3y ago
  >It's difficult to tell where the initiatives are coming from because the willingness to write and accept empty claims of relevance appears to exist at all levels and stages in the process. Is it, though? In the case of DEI, it appears to me (on the surface, anyway) that these initiatives are being implemented at the request of very vocal special-interest groups, and at the orders of the politicians who represent them. It seems like a fairly straightforward case of lobbying by institutions whose existence depends on the existence of a social problem. It's a rough analog to Eisenhower's Military-Industrial Complex idea. The same is true with what you call "questionably applied number theory". The only difference is that special-interest group isn't defined along ethno-racial lines, but instead comprises various bean-counters and ad-men who sell various forms of investment. In my view, there used to be a consensus that such lobbyists were not welcome in universities, or at least not in droves, because of their tendency to subvert intellectual pursuits in favor of short-term profits.