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The whole "publish or perish" paradigm has commodified scientific research. My theory is that the pre-WWI paradigm of academia being mainly for rich kids who co
by AlexandrB 1y ago
The whole "publish or perish" paradigm has commodified scientific research. My theory is that the pre-WWI paradigm of academia being mainly for rich kids who could afford to devote their life to science did not scale, but it also had fewer issues with "making stuff up" since scientists were in it for the love of the game rather than making a living. I don't think we should go back to that model, but the MBA-inspired approach of treating "scientist" as a fungible role in a system and trying to apply metrics like citations to measure "impact" is doomed to fail in my opinion.
- d0odk 1y agoI directionally agree with you. But there are plenty of examples of scientists being extremely petty, political or egotistical further back in history. Newton and Leibniz. Gauss withholding publication of non-Euclidean geometry presumably due to fear of Kant. I wonder if there is any empirical analysis of what has historically funded/supported scientific work (private funding vs. academic systems). I also wonder whether a lone genius in it for the "love of the game" could make much progress in cutting edge science nowadays, given the cost of experiments and the specialization of fields. Really interesting food for thought.
- fuzzfactor 1y agoYou don't have to be a genius to make way more progress on the latest equipment compared to PhD's in their environment, with their constraints and encumberment, plus their survivor bias based on "dramatically" different things other than progress. You could even do it as a complete gentleman without ruffling any feathers at lower cost than most well-paid corporate workers waste, and get more done if you set your mind to it. Sometimes even in your spare time. So I definitely wouldn't sell the lone genius short. Could very well be an even better bet.