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Companies live or die by the value that they create for their customers. Films win or lose by the entertainment they provide. Musicians get rich or stay poor by

Companies live or die by the value that they create for their customers. Films win or lose by the entertainment they provide. Musicians get rich or stay poor by the number of fans who enjoy their music etc. The post is saying that people in academia (Except those at the top institutions) are not judged by the value that they create for science and that this gets in the way of good science in many institutions. Science is not the kind of market where the most beneficial outcomes are automatically selected and the author is upset with how incentives and low odds of success are aligned to make his life in science anxious and unfulfilling. One can scold the author for complaining or one can take him seriously on his points about how society should better benefit from the money it spends on science.

brc 11y ago
I think you miss the pint slightly. Tons of musicians make great music, but the supply of good music is much higher than the market for listening can absorb. I have friend sin bands that play great music. They will never make it big because they're in such a crowded field only dumb luck or sheer brilliance will make them be picked up by the market. So the point is that - even if people in academia are producing brilliant, applicable, great research, the truth is that academia produces more supply,than the market can bear. In such a case, it's like great musicians - most will have to be overlooked and only a tiny few will make a difference, either through brilliance, dumb luck or evil plotting.
mikeash 11y ago
Your examples are about popularity, whereas with science you switch to value. These are far from equivalent. Films win or lose by the entertainment they provide, but do the best ones win? No, rather the ones that can convince the most people to watch them win. It's quite possible that an unpopular movie would have provided a lot more entertainment if more people had gone to see it, but since they didn't, it loses. Likewise with music: just because some musician attracted a lot of fans doesn't mean those fans wouldn't enjoy some obscure musician more, they just never really made the choice. I think it's useful to ask whether science is actually different in this respect, or whether this is merely an aspect of a universal problem.
tsotha 11y ago
>The post is saying that people in academia (Except those at the top institutions) are not judged by the value that they create for science and that this gets in the way of good science in many institutions. That's because the "value they create for science" is far too diffuse for anyone to care. They need to bring in grant money, something people do care about, or find something else to do.

brc 11y ago

I think you miss the pint slightly. Tons of musicians make great music, but the supply of good music is much higher than the market for listening can absorb. I have friend sin bands that play great music. They will never make it big because they're in such a crowded field only dumb luck or sheer brilliance will make them be picked up by the market. So the point is that - even if people in academia are producing brilliant, applicable, great research, the truth is that academia produces more supply,than the market can bear. In such a case, it's like great musicians - most will have to be overlooked and only a tiny few will make a difference, either through brilliance, dumb luck or evil plotting.

mikeash 11y ago

Your examples are about popularity, whereas with science you switch to value. These are far from equivalent. Films win or lose by the entertainment they provide, but do the best ones win? No, rather the ones that can convince the most people to watch them win. It's quite possible that an unpopular movie would have provided a lot more entertainment if more people had gone to see it, but since they didn't, it loses. Likewise with music: just because some musician attracted a lot of fans doesn't mean those fans wouldn't enjoy some obscure musician more, they just never really made the choice. I think it's useful to ask whether science is actually different in this respect, or whether this is merely an aspect of a universal problem.

tsotha 11y ago

>The post is saying that people in academia (Except those at the top institutions) are not judged by the value that they create for science and that this gets in the way of good science in many institutions. That's because the "value they create for science" is far too diffuse for anyone to care. They need to bring in grant money, something people do care about, or find something else to do.