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could it be possible that there are many scentific papers written by phd and masters which are simply garbage? All this time I thought, "but these guys are sma

could it be possible that there are many scentific papers written by phd and masters which are simply garbage? All this time I thought, "but these guys are smart, they went and got phd and masters and their thesis sounds really intriguing", but reading through the paper, absolutely nothing is presented but just words for the sake of filling up space? Also papers that seems to skew their quantitative results, multiple papers claiming higher success rates than the previous while in small letters acknowledging crucial items that distort the results. Am I crazy for thinking I am making this up in my head? p.s. is there a way to get access to scientific papers without paying $24 each time or a subscription fee? google scholar is good but some of the papers really insist on you paying. I thought knowledge was supposed to be free!

tlarkworthy 13y ago
That's PhD level thinking! "Undergrads think they know everything. Grad students know they know nothing. PhD's know everybody else knows nothing." p.s. no, hope the open access movement takes off (I think it is), or find a a friend in a university you can tunnel into. Given knowledge is power, it's not surprising someone is making tons of money off it.
jjoonathan 13y ago
There are probably many that are garbage. That doesn't mean that the majority of masters/PhD papers aren't scientific and intellectual achievements the likes of which aren't often found outside academia or the upper echelons of industry (nobody else can justify the risk profile of academic research). It also doesn't mean that the aggregate value of the results is small. Many/most papers present useless (to society) results that only appear meaningful when viewed in a very narrow light. Again, that's not really a problem: just like the startup world, science has a very low yield of very high value results. Scope-narrowing is actually a method which allows us to avoid unjustly punishing legitimate null results. A feature, not a bug. Also, what appears to be narrow scope to an outsider might be of incredible importance to someone who has a better sense of perspective. Many of today's most important innovations would be impossible without thousands of yesterday's "useless" results. You aren't crazy, but you are missing the big picture. To work around paywalls, try emailing authors, visiting /r/scholar, making friends at academic institutions, or getting a side-job that will permit you journal access.
- tensor 13y ago
  In my experience the ratio is no where near that of successful startups to unsuccessful ones. The majority of papers from good universities are valuable. But to put all of this in perspective, the number of startups or companies that try to advance our collective knowledge is close to nonexistent. Hacker news appears to love to criticize science and cheer industry. Yet almost no one here even attempts to perform the most basic of experiments, let alone write something close to an actual science experiment. On that note, I'd like to address the vocal subgroup of HN that feels science is best left to industry. There has been absolutely nothing stopping companies from doing science since the scientific revolution hundreds of years ago. Yet the majority advances still come from publicly funded efforts. There is nothing to do to create industry science. Our current state already reflects what happens when you leave science to those who are primarily profit focused. There is almost no science from them. In the past there were a few great industry research labs, we all know their names, but all of that is long gone. A few of the largest firms still do some basic science, but it's a shadow of the public effort and little to none of it is free, or even for sale at $30 a paper. A single patent will cost you much much more that that and is not even equivalent to a proper paper in utility. This is because science is not near term profitable, or even profitable in a century necessarily. It's hugely valuable on longer time scales though, possibly more so than any other human endeavour. This is much too long of a time scale for companies to care about, and it's also impractical to allow law to bury research for centuries to allow individuals to massively profit from it. Industry has already proven it is unwilling to perform good basic science on a large scale.
ddebernardy 13y ago
> could it be possible that there are many scentific papers written by phd and masters which are simply garbage? Sme of them are OK. Like... Count them on a hand or two. That's not the point, though. The point is to teach a masters how to write a paper, and the second how to bend over to, think like and behave like their more senior peers -- dog training before allowing you into the herd, if you will. > Am I crazy for thinking I am making this up in my head? No. It's mostly hogwash. A large, deep cesspool of ultimately useless noise. > p.s. is there a way to get access to scientific papers without paying $24 each time or a subscription fee? google scholar is good but some of the papers really insist on you paying. I thought knowledge was supposed to be free! It mostly is. Visit the researchers' web page, and you'll frequently find the draft paper.
drpgq 13y ago
Go to the reddit scholar subreddit. You can submit papers behind paywalls and people will upload them.

tlarkworthy 13y ago

That's PhD level thinking! "Undergrads think they know everything. Grad students know they know nothing. PhD's know everybody else knows nothing." p.s. no, hope the open access movement takes off (I think it is), or find a a friend in a university you can tunnel into. Given knowledge is power, it's not surprising someone is making tons of money off it.

jjoonathan 13y ago

There are probably many that are garbage. That doesn't mean that the majority of masters/PhD papers aren't scientific and intellectual achievements the likes of which aren't often found outside academia or the upper echelons of industry (nobody else can justify the risk profile of academic research). It also doesn't mean that the aggregate value of the results is small. Many/most papers present useless (to society) results that only appear meaningful when viewed in a very narrow light. Again, that's not really a problem: just like the startup world, science has a very low yield of very high value results. Scope-narrowing is actually a method which allows us to avoid unjustly punishing legitimate null results. A feature, not a bug. Also, what appears to be narrow scope to an outsider might be of incredible importance to someone who has a better sense of perspective. Many of today's most important innovations would be impossible without thousands of yesterday's "useless" results. You aren't crazy, but you are missing the big picture. To work around paywalls, try emailing authors, visiting /r/scholar, making friends at academic institutions, or getting a side-job that will permit you journal access.

tensor 13y ago
In my experience the ratio is no where near that of successful startups to unsuccessful ones. The majority of papers from good universities are valuable. But to put all of this in perspective, the number of startups or companies that try to advance our collective knowledge is close to nonexistent. Hacker news appears to love to criticize science and cheer industry. Yet almost no one here even attempts to perform the most basic of experiments, let alone write something close to an actual science experiment. On that note, I'd like to address the vocal subgroup of HN that feels science is best left to industry. There has been absolutely nothing stopping companies from doing science since the scientific revolution hundreds of years ago. Yet the majority advances still come from publicly funded efforts. There is nothing to do to create industry science. Our current state already reflects what happens when you leave science to those who are primarily profit focused. There is almost no science from them. In the past there were a few great industry research labs, we all know their names, but all of that is long gone. A few of the largest firms still do some basic science, but it's a shadow of the public effort and little to none of it is free, or even for sale at $30 a paper. A single patent will cost you much much more that that and is not even equivalent to a proper paper in utility. This is because science is not near term profitable, or even profitable in a century necessarily. It's hugely valuable on longer time scales though, possibly more so than any other human endeavour. This is much too long of a time scale for companies to care about, and it's also impractical to allow law to bury research for centuries to allow individuals to massively profit from it. Industry has already proven it is unwilling to perform good basic science on a large scale.

ddebernardy 13y ago

> could it be possible that there are many scentific papers written by phd and masters which are simply garbage? Sme of them are OK. Like... Count them on a hand or two. That's not the point, though. The point is to teach a masters how to write a paper, and the second how to bend over to, think like and behave like their more senior peers -- dog training before allowing you into the herd, if you will. > Am I crazy for thinking I am making this up in my head? No. It's mostly hogwash. A large, deep cesspool of ultimately useless noise. > p.s. is there a way to get access to scientific papers without paying $24 each time or a subscription fee? google scholar is good but some of the papers really insist on you paying. I thought knowledge was supposed to be free! It mostly is. Visit the researchers' web page, and you'll frequently find the draft paper.

drpgq 13y ago

Go to the reddit scholar subreddit. You can submit papers behind paywalls and people will upload them.