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Just yesterday I watched a video by a disgruntled former academic physicist about the state of modern physics research. [0] Not sure of its credence, I don't re
by bakuninsbart 2y ago
Just yesterday I watched a video by a disgruntled former academic physicist about the state of modern physics research. [0] Not sure of its credence, I don't really understand physics. In the fields I do have a bit of understanding, there does seem to be an amazing amount of fluff and bloat, but also still a significant amount of good and useful knowledge creation.
The bloat isn't really surprising: Largely inoculated from market forces, the way modern research is conducted has enormous amounts of inefficiencies, which in turn creates plenty of ways to game the system. Without university accreditation it is very hard to publish research, get grants or invites to conferences, so there is little reason for universities to take less of your grant. Why should journals not be super profitable? It is one of the very few "objective" metrics of success in academia, Nature could probably introduce expensive publishing fees tomorrow, and people would still fall in line. And universities don't really have to adapt, because going to one is basically required to get a good paying job.
I don't know how to fix that, it seems like a very hard problem. Just shutting everything down and leaving it to the private market as the Trump administration is aiming to do seems overkill, but sometimes it might also be necessary to break a stagnating system before rebuilding it better.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shFUDPqVmTg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shFUDPqVmTg