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The one person I feel most strongly about this is Elizabeth Iorns. Elizabeth was named one of the 10 most important people by Nature last year, for her work in
by irollboozers 14y ago
The one person I feel most strongly about this is Elizabeth Iorns.
Elizabeth was named one of the 10 most important people by Nature last year, for her work in the Reproducibility Initiative and with Science Exchange (http://www.nature.com/news/366-days-nature-s-10-1.11997 http://www.nature.com/news/366-days-nature-s-10-1.11997). She is one of the most genuinely passionate researchers I know, and she cares deeply about doing good science.
If she is not teaching the next generation of scientists by the time I die, all of my work will have been for naught.
I could go on and on about the number of brilliant scientists who are struggling in today's system. There is a huge bottleneck of innovation and it's entirely self-imposed. Someone or something is going to blow that bottleneck to shreds, and the world will start to see incredible things.
- ams6110 14y agoThe entire college/university ecosystem is poised for collapse over the next couple of decades. After centuries of monopoly in the collection and dissemination of knowledge, they are being challenged by higher value free market alternatives on the internet, and they have absolutely no cultural or instinctive capability to react to it. I'm not sure where Research will end up, but I don't think academic institutions as we know them today will be around a whole lot longer.
- pekk 14y agoThere is no higher value free market alternative to academic research. This does not exist. Publication is a different issue altogether. What do you have in mind - huge companies like Microsoft trying things and occasionally letting out crumbs? People blogging their speculations about the cause of autism? The problem with depending 100% on non-academic research is that either real information is not being produced in a rigorous way, or that details like methods are not published so it's reproducible, or that the key stuff is withheld for business purposes.
- burntsushi 14y agoPerhaps you have not heard of Microsoft Research. [1] [1] -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Research http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Research
- Q6T46nT668w6i3m 14y agoI took a random sample of 25 papers from: http://research.microsoft.com/apps/catalog/default.aspx?p=1&sb=no&ps=25&t=publications&sf=&s=&r=&vr=&ra= http://research.microsoft.com/apps/catalog/default.aspx?p=1&... 68% of the authors hold academic positions.
- irollboozers 14y agoMany of those academic positions are just for show, so that another university can't lay claim on them. University of Washington has many 'sponsored' positions, but basically what it amounts to is Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft giving money in exchange for that researcher's time. Latest example would be Babak Parviz, EE prof who spends all time at Google (http://news.cs.washington.edu/2013/01/26/babak-parviz-on-google-glass-200-on-february-1-cse-403/ http://news.cs.washington.edu/2013/01/26/babak-parviz-on-goo...)
- Q6T46nT668w6i3m 14y agoI just checked. Most had verifiable course loads (i.e. personal websites with course information).
- stephenhuey 14y agoAnd perhaps he has, but this seems to be an outlier, and Microsoft is collaborating with researchers in numerous academic institutions. If those no longer existed, and thus Microsoft Research was no longer collaborating with academic institutions, would Microsoft Research continue to share reproducible results of their work with the public? We can only speculate at this point, but I'd find it hard to believe that the free market would share as much.
- _delirium 14y ago
- rayiner 14y agoTraditional academic institutions serve two purposes: 1) Credentialing 2) Capital-intensive research There is nothing on the internet that is a threat to these two core functions.
- _delirium 14y agoHer website says she's an Assistant Professor at the University of Miami. Doesn't that count as teaching the next generation of scientists?