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Scientists Publish Letter Saying, "We Need More Scientific Mavericks"
coondoggie (973519) writes "Gotta love this letter published in the guardian.com this week. It comes from a number of scientists throughout the world who are obviously frustrated with the barriers being thrown up around them — financial, antiquated procedures and techniques to name a few — and would like to see changes. When you speak of scientific mavericks, you might look directly at Improbable Research's annual Ig Nobel awards which recognize the arguably leading edge of maverick scientific work."
If "scientists" want more maverick's in science...then they need to **hire** and **promote** more mavericks...then write and *publish* papers about their theories
Right now, anyone who doesn't toe the institutional line will get put with the Graduate Advisor who is either A) insane or B) can't speak English and only was hired to get more full-tuition-paying foreign students
If you want the pedigree you have to 'drink the kool-aide' of whatever academic is above you
Don't get me wrong, TFA is a good start, but they need to do alot more than this to make academia right again
Thank you Dave Raggett
by being a maverick in science?
Face it, the scientific establishment has ruined science.
This is a lot of hand-wringing over a situation these guys created.
We have a system created by and for established academics. These guys have displaced both the great individual scientists of the past (think Feynman), but also the great scientific managers (think Oppenheimer). In combining these two roles, they have created hierarchies capable of continuous and low risk scientific advancement. Think about how steady and predictable scientific advancement is these days. This is an amazing and great achievement, but it also sucks the spirit and excitement out of being a scientist. And along the way certain fields just have to wait.
So, ok, let's talk about what happens if we want to fix this.
The main thing that needs to be reversed is to restore the separation of management and science. Scientists who want to manage large groups get to be management. They have to be able to content themselves with just being the grant writer, and not being in charge of the science, marketing, data presentation and every aspect of their colleague's career development. Scientists who don't want to be management have to be ok with allowing other people to be in charge. Running your own group can't be all of our goals. Professors need to get back to doing the actual work that got them their position.
So ... let's say you're on a funding panel, with 120 grant proposals in front of you, and you have to recommend twenty of them as top priorities for funding. The rest of them are going to go without, because that's all the money you have to allocate. Thirty of those proposals are from established, productive researchers with track records of transformative discoveries. Another thirty are from promising young researchers with first-rate pedigrees looking for their first grants to launch careers that may span decades. Thirty are from mediocre old guys nearing retirement who have been in the funding pipeline forever, and have been getting grants mostly by inertia. Thirty are semi-coherent ravings from people who display very little comprehension of the existing literature or of the basic parameters of the field.
Now find the "mavericks". You have to have a ranked list by tomorrow afternoon.
A madman's ravings are absurd in relation to the situation in which he finds himself, but not in relation to his madness.
Seriously. Hardware these days is awesome and cheap. Any language you could want is freely available. Tools are mighty. The entry barriers to CompSci research have never been lower. If you are truly gifted, then by all means hack away.
Look at AI (a broad topic, but please keep reading). I was at a conference where they said over half the published research is an AI topic and it has been this way for decades. What is the result of all this brainpower? Clearly the research institutions are not bringing the game. I believe someone working in their bedroom has as much chance of discovering a breakthrough as a funded researcher.
Perhaps grant committees should give way to something like kick starter...
Well that's not going to happen. So long as there are greedy politicians, they're going to funnel the money to their own pockets and their campaign contributors thus setting the nation up to fail through massive debt.
The least we can ask is for a pittance for science sake before they sink the boat completely. The whole problem as I see it is we let corporations legally buy off politicians via campaign contributions. They feel no loyalty to the American people, but lots of loyalty to the people giving them all the money. So when they're in office they want to serve whatever entity sponsored them. It should be illegal to do campaign contributions just like it is illegal to buy someone's vote. And buying a vote is many orders of magnitude less bad as what we have going on now legally.
God spoke to me
"A fool makes things bigger + more complex: It takes a touch of genius & a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction." - Einstein
I think it was E.F Schumacher that wrote that.
BTW, almost none of the famous Einstein "quotes" were actually said by Einstein.
When was US science great?
1920's? 1930's? 1950's? 1960's?
Over every decade stories can be found to show amazing advancements by skilled US scientists working alone or as part of their employment.
You also see great slowness, monopolies, cartels, red tape, lack of basic funding stopping the advancement on evolutionary or revolutionary ideas or just not keeping up.
Retooling was no fun and the contracts where politically safe.
From early radar, jet engines, guidance systems, computing, cryptography, heavy engineering the US was often playing catch up to under funded experts in other countries or new ideas within the USA.
The massive jump seems to have been 1940's 50's funding of science and education with an influx of German 'experts' and other experts post WW2. That allowed the US to jump ahead and keep the skills going thanks to very well educated later generations. Constant educational testing guided wealthy and poor college scholarships students to the military industrial complex public and private mil,gov sector opportunities.
A huge supply of US raw material, smart US staff, support of new ideas and never ending US contracts or gov funding. Science was very safe and US education was well looked after.
The propaganda value of the US been open for diverse arts, all science and religion was also well presented into the early 1990's.
The magic of jobs for life and never ending science boondoggles stops when the private sectors finds it can use a 100% US front company with a long just in time supply line to other cheap parts of the world. Same end price and maintenance contract, lower production costs. The product is still the same, the US design is secure but fewer costly US jobs and less need for funding for science at the mid and low end.
Over generations the lack of gov funding finally becomes apparent to the wider US science community.
The science is now in the magic of gov paper work to ensure a 100% US front company gets the next contract, not in the actual made in the USA part.
As long as the skill set exists to design and work on any given mil product over its life is ensured, everything else science related can be slowly defunded.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Scientists Publish Letter Saying, "We Need More Scientific Mavericks"
I hope that one lone scientist publishes a response saying "we don't".....
Make the scientific literature available to all. The mavericks will emerge without any grant support.
"almost none of the famous Einstein "quotes" were actually said by Einstein."
--Mark Twain
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Feynman was a bit of a maverick; in somes ways a cultivated one. And at times -- Manhatten and the Challenger Inquiry -- a very useful one.
But as a scientists Feynman was anything but a Maverick. His work was entirely mainstream, even his most original and innovative work, as theoretical physics was at the time in a radical phase. Personally Feynman may have been somewhat goofy. Professional he was very creative. But he was not a Maverick who ever seriously went against mainstream opinon; even his objections to String Theory were muted.
The closest scientists who would qualify as Mavericks were the Quantum pioneers of the 1920s, Einstein with relativity, and possibly Micheal Faraday. You could also go back to Newton and Gelileo, but remember, for every one of these there are fifty Velikovsky's.
May the Maths Be with you!