i do love the older commentary and papers. I was reading some of sydney brenner’s columns the other day and indeed the issues you’re raising in these posts are evergreen. On the proliferation of careerist and incremental publications that no one wants to read:
and putting everything onto disc does not guarantee it will enter anybody’s consciousness. I once pointed out that if you want to keep something secret in molecular biology, publish it, particularly in a technical journal.
Hmmm... putting this into perspective helps. I would say though that confidence in academia as a whole does seem to show a downward trend in the last decades...
I do not think it's just academia- but like I would say my generation is defo more pro-socialist and more depressed abt the future than previous ones. You can see it in polls!!!!
and you have other metrics of academia being worse: for example it takes longer to get an R1 grant! you can see how many papers you need these days (and how good they are). I know what you mean but these are hard numbers
"According to NIH data, the average age at which PhD scientists receive their first R01 grant—a sign of a successful research career—has increased from 35.7 in 1980 to 43 in 2016. For MD investigators the average age is 45"
As long as science is a purely human affair, science will be constrained by human characteristics such as risk aversion, vanity, status mongering and fear of failure. Those are real constraints that hinder progress. The hope is that AI will become better at doing science because it can iterate faster and doesn’t have human shackles.
i do love the older commentary and papers. I was reading some of sydney brenner’s columns the other day and indeed the issues you’re raising in these posts are evergreen. On the proliferation of careerist and incremental publications that no one wants to read:
and putting everything onto disc does not guarantee it will enter anybody’s consciousness. I once pointed out that if you want to keep something secret in molecular biology, publish it, particularly in a technical journal.
different subject same vibe: "the death of classical music is perhaps its oldest continuing tradition.” -Charles Rosen
The third group of scientific communicators is now E/Science and we’re recruiting
Introduced it here: https://open.substack.com/pub/robotic/p/they-want-to-learn?r=68gy5&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Hmmm... putting this into perspective helps. I would say though that confidence in academia as a whole does seem to show a downward trend in the last decades...
The only constant in academia may be thinking that the present is the worst time for academia.
I do not think it's just academia- but like I would say my generation is defo more pro-socialist and more depressed abt the future than previous ones. You can see it in polls!!!!
ok but these are polls of the general public that show a downward trend. and yes I know you will say "I DO NOT BELIEVE IN POLLS"
and you have other metrics of academia being worse: for example it takes longer to get an R1 grant! you can see how many papers you need these days (and how good they are). I know what you mean but these are hard numbers
"According to NIH data, the average age at which PhD scientists receive their first R01 grant—a sign of a successful research career—has increased from 35.7 in 1980 to 43 in 2016. For MD investigators the average age is 45"
I would push back on that a bit and say that "academia as a whole" is a reified generality, sort of like "the system" or "the market."
As long as science is a purely human affair, science will be constrained by human characteristics such as risk aversion, vanity, status mongering and fear of failure. Those are real constraints that hinder progress. The hope is that AI will become better at doing science because it can iterate faster and doesn’t have human shackles.
"The hope is that AI will become better at doing science because it can iterate faster and doesn’t have human shackles."
People were saying this in the 1950s too!