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The End of Individual Genius?
An anonymous reader writes "A recent study suggests the downfall of individual researchers, who are being rapidly replaced by enormous research groups. Quoting: '... in recent decades — especially since the Soviet success in launching the Sputnik satellite in 1957 — the trend has been to create massive institutions that foster more collaboration and garner big chunks of funding. And it is harder now to achieve scientific greatness. A study of Nobel Prize winners in 2005 found that the accumulation of knowledge over time has forced great minds to toil longer before they can make breakthroughs. The age at which thinkers produce significant innovations increased about six years during the 20th century.'"
I work in frontier research. Guess what? Status reports are EXTREMELY important. Obviously you're a software developer which isn't really comparable to research.
When a person or group of people fund you, part of their money buys your research ability, part of it buys the research, and the final part buys the assurance of frequent updates on the project. Every project I've ever been on has this almost assumed. We do collaborations with universities quite a lot, and when we give them money we tell how many reports we expect a WEEK.
The reason for this is that research is really easy to fuck up. Even well backed universities make gigantic errors. When you publish, you need to have methodology down to the meticulous detail so your research can be reproduced. Reports help your funder and YOU because its easy to forget how you did something, and a status report puts it in the records. So, if you're a good researcher, you'd be writing them for yourself anyway.
Another reason, is it is easy to stray from the path that you're granters would like to see. Generally they can't access you're lab easily, many times we've been given money by people on the other side of the world.
In the end, status reports are not a huge drain on advancement. What is a drain, however, is rediscovering something 50 years after it has been discovered, because the initial scientist wrote all his research and measurement results in the margin of some book that he told nobody about, and nobody ever saw. If you read a history of science book, it happens so often its really quite depressing.
Fuck off, you frog monkey surrender cunt.
Even when you love something, if that something requires great mental effort and exertion, it can at times be hard to make yourself sit down and do it. Everyone has conflicting desires, and part of you always wants to conserve your energy. I think often there is a large dose of discipline and plain hard work in genius.