6 ms·

This sentiment is interesting "Over the past few years, NIF has been getting a fat 'F.'" Perhaps now that 'grade' will change. Actually, I think framing it as

by dj-wonk 13y ago

This sentiment is interesting "Over the past few years, NIF has been getting a fat 'F.'" Perhaps now that 'grade' will change. Actually, I think framing it as a grade is beyond silly; it is irresponsible. Giving a letter grade to long-term scientific project makes little sense. It is not a one-shot thing with a predefined notion of correctness. What can we compare such a grade to? Instead, we should be asking what we've learned and how the project has advanced science.

JoeAltmaier 13y ago
That's not enough. Learning what doesn't work is sort of useful, but only if it ever leads to something that DOES work. There's an infinite supply of dead ends out there. You need a higher bar than 'learned something' if that something is a negative.
- vivin 13y ago
  I would assume that they are only working with a narrow subset of dead ends. They probably have promising leads and work on those. I think it's a constant process of refinement.
- dj-wonk 13y ago
  It depends what question you are asking. If the question is "should we fund projects even if we don't know if or when they will have demonstrable results?" then I would argue that, yes, some portion of research should go towards that. How long is "long enough" to deem that a line of experimentation "didn't work out?" There is no period long enough. Sometimes a negative result is quite useful down the road. Some research just comes together when the right things are learned and tried. So any notion of a "dead end" is really just a tentative assessment, frozen in time.
  - JackFr 13y ago
    Without harsh assessments, a massive project will eventually dedicate some of its resources into self-perpetuation, that is justifying its existence rather than producing results.
    - TeMPOraL 13y ago
      It's a risk we need to take (or mitigate) if we want to have a steady flow of new breakthroughs. Science, just as programming or any other creative discipline, is best done when you have more money than you need and nobody is looking at your hands.
    - chrstphrhrt 13y ago
      Well, we are talking about a perpetual motion machine. Would only make sense to dogfood it at all levels.
- josh-wrale 13y ago
  Standing on the shoulders of giants is many times a means of saying that something that "DOES work" was derived from something that didn't work, or perhaps that it was derived from the difficult yet iterative steps of others. Look at the Large Hadron Collider. Do you suppose they scrub from their data stores all tests that fail to produce a "working" result? Are you suggesting that trying and failing produces irrelevant knowledge?
- jarvic 13y ago
  >You need a higher bar than 'learned something' if that something is a negative. Why?
- PhasmaFelis 13y ago
  I'm not a scientist, but I am a programmer, and I find that learning new things is very often a process of eliminating dead ends through trial and error. That's how you narrow it down to the thing that actually does work. It sounds like you're saying "don't bother exploring dead ends, either do it right the first time or give up," which is a lot like saying "I just want a penthouse apartment, stop wasting time building a foundation."
  - dj-wonk 13y ago
    Yes, I think what you are saying can work well for programming. But with certain scientific questions, there are many theories that could work. It isn't just a matter of ruling things out (though that helps too). One key part of the scientific process is generating a theoretical insight (perhaps) that lets you look at something in a new way. Another key part is figuring out how to test that idea.
- TeMPOraL 13y ago
  > You need a higher bar than 'learned something' if that something is a negative. Not really. The point of big scientific research is that at the moment a project is being conceived, no one has any idea where it will go and whether it will bring anything useful. Yet in time, it always brings breakthroughs. I'll put it bluntly: we need more trust. The right way to do science is to keep throwing money at it, no questions asked[0]. IMO the reason we've seen so much progress during last two wars was not because war per se stimulates research, but because during a conflict the military has infinite budget and it starts throwing more money at research that can be used, so scientists can do whatever they want without justifying it for general public[1]. Free of money&management issues, creative minds could focus on doing fundamental research in whatever they felt like doing[2]. Come to think of it, science is best done in the same conditions the programming (or any creative endeavour) is - when you're free to think, don't feel the pressure of looming deadlines, don't have to deal with managerial bullshit, and when you have enough money to not have to think about it (both in life and in cost of work materials). So yes, I advocate some kind of almost blind trust. Just throw some part of taxpayer money at R&D, no questions asked. It's a long-time investment. [0] - Of course there's a need to build in a system to limit the amount of parasites who will feed on free money; but they ultimately cannot be avoided, we can only try to limit their numbers. [1] - I think it was Feynman who pointed out that the problem with science in the 90's was that scientists suddenly found themselves accountable to general public and struggled with explaining why their research was useful. [2] - If that last paragraph rings bad to you, please note that I'm skipping over a lot of points related to creativity needing to be free of trivial bullshit, intrinsic motivation beating monetary rewards/prestige in performance, etc.
  - dhshahsndeisjwn 13y ago
    No. Feynman actually criticised scientists who weren't prepared to explain and justify their work to the public. He says this in one of the bbc videos, can't remember which, as part of a critique of the social sciences.
JackFr 13y ago
Is this even basic science? It sounds more like an engineering problem, albeit a very hard one. I am not a physicist, but I would consider this more like the Manhattan project -- the science being done is not of the 'deeper under standing of nature' type, but rather 'how do you make a controllable explosion' type. Given that, the way to evaluate the project is not on grants received, articles published or citations in premier journals, but rather 'Did you make a controlled explosion? If not when will you be able to?' And I think, so far an 'F' is fair.
- josh-wrale 13y ago
  Science isn't limited to the abstract. There can be much science in application of theory (e.g. Tesla's career). Science requires experiments, no?
- fophillips 13y ago
  You go tell Feynman the Manhattan project wasn't about science.
  - DougMerritt 13y ago
    Good way of putting it so that people can understand. Feynman was a scientist, not an engineer, so that's a clue that the Manhattan project involved science, not just engineering. The same is true of fusion research. That's why it's "research", not merely "development". In particular, the physics of plasma instabilities has always been quite imperfectly understood, and that has been one of the key problems with controlled fusion since the 1950s.
    - willvarfar 13y ago
      I thought his role on the Manhattan project was keeping the IBM calculators going?
      - DougMerritt 13y ago
        That is far from the only thing he did. He was the wunderkind of the project, and he did all kinds of things. See for instance Gleick's Feynman biography, "Genius". http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/98685.Genius http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/98685.Genius Another good read about the project is this bio: "The Curve of Binding Energy: A Journey into the Awesome and Alarming World of Theodore B. Taylor" ...which is obviously mostly about Taylor (on the Manhattan Project), but has some Feynman anecdotes. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54968.The_Curve_of_Binding_Energy http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54968.The_Curve_of_Bindin...
diydsp 13y ago
Newspapers love to act as if it they call the shots. NPR in particular styles itself as the stalwart of the disenfranchised - has its shit together more than Occupy, but is unsullied by big corporate interests. They're not much worse than other papers, but unfortunately, it sometimes maintains its readers disenfranchised in order to maintain the illusion. I mean, why don't they admit that this is four-month-old news? Why is this getting sudden publication? Is their agenda as transparent as informing the public, or is there a strategic element to it?
- jws 13y ago
  The paper was published in Nature today. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13008.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu...

by dj-wonk 13y ago

JoeAltmaier 13y ago

That's not enough. Learning what doesn't work is sort of useful, but only if it ever leads to something that DOES work. There's an infinite supply of dead ends out there. You need a higher bar than 'learned something' if that something is a negative.

vivin 13y ago
I would assume that they are only working with a narrow subset of dead ends. They probably have promising leads and work on those. I think it's a constant process of refinement.
dj-wonk 13y ago
It depends what question you are asking. If the question is "should we fund projects even if we don't know if or when they will have demonstrable results?" then I would argue that, yes, some portion of research should go towards that. How long is "long enough" to deem that a line of experimentation "didn't work out?" There is no period long enough. Sometimes a negative result is quite useful down the road. Some research just comes together when the right things are learned and tried. So any notion of a "dead end" is really just a tentative assessment, frozen in time.
- JackFr 13y ago
  Without harsh assessments, a massive project will eventually dedicate some of its resources into self-perpetuation, that is justifying its existence rather than producing results.
  - TeMPOraL 13y ago
    It's a risk we need to take (or mitigate) if we want to have a steady flow of new breakthroughs. Science, just as programming or any other creative discipline, is best done when you have more money than you need and nobody is looking at your hands.
  - chrstphrhrt 13y ago
    Well, we are talking about a perpetual motion machine. Would only make sense to dogfood it at all levels.
josh-wrale 13y ago
Standing on the shoulders of giants is many times a means of saying that something that "DOES work" was derived from something that didn't work, or perhaps that it was derived from the difficult yet iterative steps of others. Look at the Large Hadron Collider. Do you suppose they scrub from their data stores all tests that fail to produce a "working" result? Are you suggesting that trying and failing produces irrelevant knowledge?
jarvic 13y ago
>You need a higher bar than 'learned something' if that something is a negative. Why?
PhasmaFelis 13y ago
I'm not a scientist, but I am a programmer, and I find that learning new things is very often a process of eliminating dead ends through trial and error. That's how you narrow it down to the thing that actually does work. It sounds like you're saying "don't bother exploring dead ends, either do it right the first time or give up," which is a lot like saying "I just want a penthouse apartment, stop wasting time building a foundation."
- dj-wonk 13y ago
  Yes, I think what you are saying can work well for programming. But with certain scientific questions, there are many theories that could work. It isn't just a matter of ruling things out (though that helps too). One key part of the scientific process is generating a theoretical insight (perhaps) that lets you look at something in a new way. Another key part is figuring out how to test that idea.
TeMPOraL 13y ago
> You need a higher bar than 'learned something' if that something is a negative. Not really. The point of big scientific research is that at the moment a project is being conceived, no one has any idea where it will go and whether it will bring anything useful. Yet in time, it always brings breakthroughs. I'll put it bluntly: we need more trust. The right way to do science is to keep throwing money at it, no questions asked[0]. IMO the reason we've seen so much progress during last two wars was not because war per se stimulates research, but because during a conflict the military has infinite budget and it starts throwing more money at research that can be used, so scientists can do whatever they want without justifying it for general public[1]. Free of money&management issues, creative minds could focus on doing fundamental research in whatever they felt like doing[2]. Come to think of it, science is best done in the same conditions the programming (or any creative endeavour) is - when you're free to think, don't feel the pressure of looming deadlines, don't have to deal with managerial bullshit, and when you have enough money to not have to think about it (both in life and in cost of work materials). So yes, I advocate some kind of almost blind trust. Just throw some part of taxpayer money at R&D, no questions asked. It's a long-time investment. [0] - Of course there's a need to build in a system to limit the amount of parasites who will feed on free money; but they ultimately cannot be avoided, we can only try to limit their numbers. [1] - I think it was Feynman who pointed out that the problem with science in the 90's was that scientists suddenly found themselves accountable to general public and struggled with explaining why their research was useful. [2] - If that last paragraph rings bad to you, please note that I'm skipping over a lot of points related to creativity needing to be free of trivial bullshit, intrinsic motivation beating monetary rewards/prestige in performance, etc.
- dhshahsndeisjwn 13y ago
  No. Feynman actually criticised scientists who weren't prepared to explain and justify their work to the public. He says this in one of the bbc videos, can't remember which, as part of a critique of the social sciences.

JackFr 13y ago

Is this even basic science? It sounds more like an engineering problem, albeit a very hard one. I am not a physicist, but I would consider this more like the Manhattan project -- the science being done is not of the 'deeper under standing of nature' type, but rather 'how do you make a controllable explosion' type. Given that, the way to evaluate the project is not on grants received, articles published or citations in premier journals, but rather 'Did you make a controlled explosion? If not when will you be able to?' And I think, so far an 'F' is fair.

josh-wrale 13y ago
Science isn't limited to the abstract. There can be much science in application of theory (e.g. Tesla's career). Science requires experiments, no?
fophillips 13y ago
You go tell Feynman the Manhattan project wasn't about science.
- DougMerritt 13y ago
  Good way of putting it so that people can understand. Feynman was a scientist, not an engineer, so that's a clue that the Manhattan project involved science, not just engineering. The same is true of fusion research. That's why it's "research", not merely "development". In particular, the physics of plasma instabilities has always been quite imperfectly understood, and that has been one of the key problems with controlled fusion since the 1950s.
  - willvarfar 13y ago
    I thought his role on the Manhattan project was keeping the IBM calculators going?
    - DougMerritt 13y ago
      That is far from the only thing he did. He was the wunderkind of the project, and he did all kinds of things. See for instance Gleick's Feynman biography, "Genius". http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/98685.Genius http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/98685.Genius Another good read about the project is this bio: "The Curve of Binding Energy: A Journey into the Awesome and Alarming World of Theodore B. Taylor" ...which is obviously mostly about Taylor (on the Manhattan Project), but has some Feynman anecdotes. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54968.The_Curve_of_Binding_Energy http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54968.The_Curve_of_Bindin...

diydsp 13y ago

Newspapers love to act as if it they call the shots. NPR in particular styles itself as the stalwart of the disenfranchised - has its shit together more than Occupy, but is unsullied by big corporate interests. They're not much worse than other papers, but unfortunately, it sometimes maintains its readers disenfranchised in order to maintain the illusion. I mean, why don't they admit that this is four-month-old news? Why is this getting sudden publication? Is their agenda as transparent as informing the public, or is there a strategic element to it?

jws 13y ago
The paper was published in Nature today. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13008.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu...