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Jones and Weinberg noticed that even though scientists are beginning their careers at a later age, they’re ending their careers at about the same age as their p
by chriskanan 12y ago
Jones and Weinberg noticed that even though scientists are beginning their careers at a later age, they’re ending their careers at about the same age as their predecessors. Today's great minds are productive for a shorter period of time than they were a century ago.
I wonder what hypotheses there are for why scientists a century ago were able to be productive earlier. The paper has a few hypotheses that they think are plausible:
(1) Distance to the knowledge frontier is rising. Older scientists only needed to know fields A, B, and C to attack D, but to attack E, newer scientists needed to know A, B, C, and D. This is the hypothesis they think is most likely, and they give evidence showing that the age of patent holders and the team size involved in patents has also been increasing.
(2) May be harder to get resources to do research now. One has to establish a reputation to win grants to do innovative research, and that takes time. Did research cost less a century ago?
My own question: How often does the student that does the Nobel prize winning work win the prize versus it only going to the PI? The involvement of the PI varies wildly. For example, Jocelyn Bell and Antony Hewish wrote the paper that revealed pulsars, but only Hewish (Bell's advisor) won the Nobel prize, although Bell made the initial discovery (Hewish had her looking for quasars with the radio telescope).
- sukilot 12y agoWatson and Crick with DNA is the most famous example for "too much credit goes to the PI"
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- streptomycin 12y agoWatson and Crick were a young postdoc and a PhD student. If credit went to the PI in that case, it would have gone to Bragg who was the head of the lab they worked in.
- peterfirefly 12y agoMaybe it's a reference to the guy they shared the prize with?
- ninguem2 12y ago"Head of lab" is not appropriate. The Cavendish Laboratory (which Bragg indeed headed) is/was the equivalent of a whole department or institute (of experimental physics, chemistry and biology). The head of the actual lab that they worked for, who was Watson postdoctoral mentor and Crick's PhD advisor, was Max Perutz.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- pizza 12y agoRosalind Franklin?
- peterfirefly 12y agoShe was dead by that time so she couldn't have received it.
- caseysoftware 12y agoMaybe I missed it, but I'm surprised the article didn't go into the fact that the process for getting into the field is getting longer. I don't just mean the time to acquire facts & context (that is mentioned). I mean specifically the fact that earning a PHD takes longer now and postdoc programs eat up quite a few more years. And both are trending up. This was mentioned in an article a couple months ago pointing out that many of the best & brightest miss the common childrearing years in favor of their professional development.
- coldtea 12y agoI think it's mostly the latter, and not so much that the knowledge frontier is rising. The whole "publish-or-perish" game, the difficulty to get a foot in the door at all levels, etc.