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Here's a possible scenario that I think address at least a decent chunk of the idea production part: - Research is not embarrassingly parallel. Adding research

by tbrownaw 10mo ago

Here's a possible scenario that I think address at least a decent chunk of the idea production part: - Research is not embarrassingly parallel. Adding researchers doesn't lead to more different things being researched (see also, Amdahl's Law), but to multiple groups racing to research the same things.For the most part, useful research directions can be identified with far less effort that it would take to actually explore them. (It's not that ideas are harder to find, it's that researchers can't be allocated efficiently.) - The "publish or perish" constraint that's famous from academia applies to patents. Researchers prefer to split up their results into as many separate patents as possible. (patents count is not a consistent measure) - Research is not embarrassingly parallel. These split-up ideas are not independent, but form a chain where each builds on the last. Each small patent still gets referenced in all the following split-up small patents. (the "breakthrough patent" measure doesn't work) --- Unrelated to the above... haven't there been articles in recent years complaining that it's harder for young people to get jobs because old people are staying working longer? Assuming that's actually true, could the constant-ish growth rate and recent decline in that rate be similar to the "science advances one funeral at a time" effect?

yojo 10mo ago
Two more: - It has gotten easier to file patents, so more are filed. - Companies increasingly use patents like weapons/deterrents, so there’s more incentive to file an idea you weren’t planning to use to build your war chest. I suspect regulatory capture is a big part of the explanation though.
- nradov 10mo ago
  How has it gotten easier to file patents?
biophysboy 10mo ago
The Tech Labs initiative recently announced may help address some of these issues. Hopefully it goes well; everything else this admin has done to American science has been complete and utter garbage.
- __loam 10mo ago
  They figuratively tried to burn the NIH to the ground and have been routinely and illegally canceling grants and holding research funds hostage to bully universities into going along with their moronic cultural program.
matusp 10mo ago
In general, I find it not convincing to use patent-based metrics as the only argument. The parent writing culture might have changed in various ways that are not related to the quality of the ideas. This undermines the entire argument...
- mike_hearn 10mo ago
  Indeed, the researchers undermined their own argument, even: > ... it is notable that contrary to their main results, Fort et al. find that the stock market value of the average patent has actually fallen over time. Their methodologies are very indirect and yield contradictory results. Trying to decide if a patent is important by looking at the evolution of word use doesn't sound robust, nor does looking at the stock market. When Google invented the transformer algorithm, I don't think there was a sudden jump in their stock price. There are lots of papers and people can't evaluate their value immediately like that. Stock prices move in response to earnings, not patents or papers. I don't remember ever hearing about a sudden stock price jump because a patent was filed. There's lots of other questionable stuff in this argument. How are they defining researcher, for one? For US tax purposes it's common to define all software development as R&D. If they're using similar data then the huge growth of the software industry would make it appear like research productivity has fallen.
TomasBM 10mo ago
I think that's all true, plus, from my experience: - it's now more difficult to identify a truly unexplored area of work within a relatively short amount of time (e.g., the first 2 explorative years of a PhD lasting 4-6 years). - even if you find a niche where you could make a completely original contribution, you're disincentivized by how hard it is to convince your supervisor and peer reviewers - unless it's painfully obvious or you invest a lot of upfront effort to prove its worth. - media promotes a fetishized version of original contributions (e.g., theory of relativity that led to a paradigm shift), whereas scientists are taught to always justify their contribution with respect to the existing work; this inevitably prunes many paths and ideas. - although interdisciplinarity is promoted in opinion pieces, interdisciplinary contributions are often discouraged by the discipline-related communities. None of this is an excuse, but they're certainly filters and pressure chambers.
bigbadfeline 10mo ago
> it's harder for young people to get jobs because old people are staying working longer > similar to the "science advances one funeral at a time" effect. A rather morbid view of reality which has only one logical conclusion "Kill everyone to allow nature to rejuvenate itself". Life neither creates unemployment, nor impedes silence, so funerals can't fix any of those. It's a quite ridiculous to see the mass dissemination of blame imputed to minor systemic symptoms while proper systems analysis has been entirely expelled from public discourse, mainly due to the dysfunction of institutional humanities and social sciences.
- bigbadfeline 10mo ago
  Late edit: silence == science

yojo 10mo ago

Two more: - It has gotten easier to file patents, so more are filed. - Companies increasingly use patents like weapons/deterrents, so there’s more incentive to file an idea you weren’t planning to use to build your war chest. I suspect regulatory capture is a big part of the explanation though.

nradov 10mo ago
How has it gotten easier to file patents?

biophysboy 10mo ago

The Tech Labs initiative recently announced may help address some of these issues. Hopefully it goes well; everything else this admin has done to American science has been complete and utter garbage.

__loam 10mo ago
They figuratively tried to burn the NIH to the ground and have been routinely and illegally canceling grants and holding research funds hostage to bully universities into going along with their moronic cultural program.

matusp 10mo ago

In general, I find it not convincing to use patent-based metrics as the only argument. The parent writing culture might have changed in various ways that are not related to the quality of the ideas. This undermines the entire argument...

mike_hearn 10mo ago
Indeed, the researchers undermined their own argument, even: > ... it is notable that contrary to their main results, Fort et al. find that the stock market value of the average patent has actually fallen over time. Their methodologies are very indirect and yield contradictory results. Trying to decide if a patent is important by looking at the evolution of word use doesn't sound robust, nor does looking at the stock market. When Google invented the transformer algorithm, I don't think there was a sudden jump in their stock price. There are lots of papers and people can't evaluate their value immediately like that. Stock prices move in response to earnings, not patents or papers. I don't remember ever hearing about a sudden stock price jump because a patent was filed. There's lots of other questionable stuff in this argument. How are they defining researcher, for one? For US tax purposes it's common to define all software development as R&D. If they're using similar data then the huge growth of the software industry would make it appear like research productivity has fallen.

TomasBM 10mo ago

I think that's all true, plus, from my experience: - it's now more difficult to identify a truly unexplored area of work within a relatively short amount of time (e.g., the first 2 explorative years of a PhD lasting 4-6 years). - even if you find a niche where you could make a completely original contribution, you're disincentivized by how hard it is to convince your supervisor and peer reviewers - unless it's painfully obvious or you invest a lot of upfront effort to prove its worth. - media promotes a fetishized version of original contributions (e.g., theory of relativity that led to a paradigm shift), whereas scientists are taught to always justify their contribution with respect to the existing work; this inevitably prunes many paths and ideas. - although interdisciplinarity is promoted in opinion pieces, interdisciplinary contributions are often discouraged by the discipline-related communities. None of this is an excuse, but they're certainly filters and pressure chambers.

bigbadfeline 10mo ago

> it's harder for young people to get jobs because old people are staying working longer > similar to the "science advances one funeral at a time" effect. A rather morbid view of reality which has only one logical conclusion "Kill everyone to allow nature to rejuvenate itself". Life neither creates unemployment, nor impedes silence, so funerals can't fix any of those. It's a quite ridiculous to see the mass dissemination of blame imputed to minor systemic symptoms while proper systems analysis has been entirely expelled from public discourse, mainly due to the dysfunction of institutional humanities and social sciences.

bigbadfeline 10mo ago
Late edit: silence == science