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The Scientific Paper Is Obsolete (theatlantic.com)
James Somers, writing for The Atlantic: The scientific paper -- the actual form of it -- was one of the enabling inventions of modernity. Before it was developed in the 1600s, results were communicated privately in letters, ephemerally in lectures, or all at once in books. There was no public forum for incremental advances. By making room for reports of single experiments or minor technical advances, journals made the chaos of science accretive. Scientists from that point forward became like the social insects: They made their progress steadily, as a buzzing mass.
The earliest papers were in some ways more readable than papers are today. They were less specialized, more direct, shorter, and far less formal. Calculus had only just been invented. Entire data sets could fit in a table on a single page. What little "computation" contributed to the results was done by hand and could be verified in the same way.
The more sophisticated science becomes, the harder it is to communicate results. Papers today are longer than ever and full of jargon and symbols. They depend on chains of computer programs that generate data, and clean up data, and plot data, and run statistical models on data. These programs tend to be both so sloppily written and so central to the results that it's contributed to a replication crisis, or put another way, a failure of the paper to perform its most basic task: to report what you've actually discovered, clearly enough that someone else can discover it for themselves.
The earliest papers were in some ways more readable than papers are today. They were less specialized, more direct, shorter, and far less formal. Calculus had only just been invented. Entire data sets could fit in a table on a single page. What little "computation" contributed to the results was done by hand and could be verified in the same way.
The more sophisticated science becomes, the harder it is to communicate results. Papers today are longer than ever and full of jargon and symbols. They depend on chains of computer programs that generate data, and clean up data, and plot data, and run statistical models on data. These programs tend to be both so sloppily written and so central to the results that it's contributed to a replication crisis, or put another way, a failure of the paper to perform its most basic task: to report what you've actually discovered, clearly enough that someone else can discover it for themselves.
This is more bullshit. blah blah scientists suck blah blah blah. Tripe.
And it isn't our fault your parents raised you to be insufferable little know-nothing shits. If you are offended, talk to them.
That you can flood a scientific paper with reams of computer generated data is NOT science. That's technobabble. The point of the scientific paper is to lay down, ON PAPER, the technique you used and what you observed and then, in a separate section, editorializing what you've proven (or refuted).
That so-called scientific papers will merely dump the computer generated data or flood the paper with technical jargon without exposing the underlying algorithm or technique IS the problem.
At one time science was intended for the masses - that the Atlantic attributes this to "a simpler time" is also moronic as it was the intent of the authors, in fact all authors of the time, to write clearly and succinctly so that anyone could understand their work. You see that not only in the scientific papers of the time but also in the laws (the US Constitution). You also see the same problem in laws today where laws are now tends of thousands of pages long. How is any one person (let alone a dedicated group) supposed to understand the law as written?
To wit - it's a societal problem, not a scientific one or a problem with "overcomplex science"
Arguably, the handful of decades somewhere between WWII and the 1990s.
Quality not quantity. If it can't be explained in a paper it's probably wrong.
At one time science was intended for the masses - that the Atlantic attributes this to "a simpler time" is also moronic as it was the intent of the authors, in fact all authors of the time, to write clearly and succinctly so that anyone could understand their work.
Science has never been "for the masses". Most concepts of any meaningful complexity are not going to be written at an 8th grade reading level. Issac Newton's Principia is certainly not written "for the masses" nor should it be expected to be dumbed down. As Einstein once put it, things should be made as simple as possible but no simpler.
You see that not only in the scientific papers of the time but also in the laws (the US Constitution).
The Constitution isn't really a law. It is a framework for the laws. It sets the boundaries that are fleshed out by the laws. The actual federal laws are the United States Code, the United States Reports and the Code of Federal Regulations. There also
You also see the same problem in laws today where laws are now tends of thousands of pages long. How is any one person (let alone a dedicated group) supposed to understand the law as written?
You are presupposing that it is a good thing that laws be so simple that a single person can understand and know all them. The reality of our society is that it is so complex that the laws governing it inevitably will be similarly complex. Make a simple law and there are going to be gaps in that law unless you add complexity to deal with the corner cases. To circle back, science has no obligation to be simple enough for "the masses" to comprehend any or all of it.
MIT Random Paper Generator for computer science papers
https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/arc...
Mathgen for Math Papers
http://thatsmathematics.com/ma...
Seriously, does anyone even read the paper anymore? I read the abstract and possibly the method.
At the end of the day, it is just an academic echo chamber where every paper references each other and none of it is very earth shattering. You should read the dissertations that don't make it into journals, those are really sad. For example, "Analysis of Socioeconomic Status and Student Achievement", or in other words, "Poor kids don't get good grades.", most papers could classified as Ric Romero papers where the outcome is obvious or in some cases statistically insignificant such that more papers need to be written with new experimental methods.
But for those of your writing papers, I leave you with my favorite research design song.
https://youtu.be/Hxbz656Euyw
We are now in an era where only very few people actually need to know how reality works. The rest of us can become brand managers and youtube content creators.
There's an acceptance of this. It's unusual for someone to read a journal article before, say, junior year of undergrad. A lot of people probably graduate without reading one at all. Many of them will never pick one up in later life.
It means they can be duped more easily. When was the last time someone you know who disagreed with the existence of global warming picked up a journal article by a climate scientist? When was the last time someone who hates charter schools read through a journal article on charter schools by an economist? Most of us almost unknowingly adopt the positions we hear praised that sound reasonable without looking at data, and people who have *never* looked at data barely even have that option open to them.
If you don't read an article every once in a while, or if you don't know how, you're just trusting that whoever sounds best is right.
Maybe they are. They sound reasonable, after all. But it turns out that what sounds reasonable often isn't. The truth isn't about who sounds best to us.
Real lawyers write in C++
I think the problem is misidentified in your comment, but in the details. The data publication is part of the peer review and publication process. It allows another specialist in the field to go over your study and its results, and attempt to replicate them. It also allows for discussion of conclusions. The "Abstract" is supposed to be the basic, plain language breakdown, including the conclusions. However, while you're right about the societal issue, there's a deeper one: All of the relatively easy science has been done. The questions are getting more complex. We're looking to more subtle phenomena to find more secrets of the way reality works.
The observations of physical phenomena that allow computers to work far exceeds the time of Newton (believed by many to be the last time one human could know the sum total of accumulated knowledge about nature). Fields are specialized, and "jargon/technobabble" are the layman's epithets for a field's shorthand that he/she doesn't get. Yes, we could likely simplify the law. Knowledge is not so readily boiled down. No one bats an eye at the odd uses of common words you find in the skilled trades, but everyone loses their shit when a scientist falls back on terms with precise meanings within their own fields.
NOTE: It was once common practice to include an attempt at a layperson's digest with a lot of papers, or at least publish it alongside the paper. This has gone away, which is a shame. However, when every such digest turns into Dunning-Kruger effect demonstration with the public, I would think it gets old. But a lot of the science being done now is beyond the limits of common understanding. Quantum computing, block chains, AMPS firewalls... It's hard to try to break that stuff down for the masses when the Flat Earthers are gaining ground!
But when the tax code for ordinary citizens (I'm not even talking corporations) is so complicated that IRS employees who are answering questions from the public can't understand it, perhaps it's gotten more complicated than it needs to be.
Oh there is no question that you can overdo the complexity. But most of the unnecessary complexity of our tax code comes from politicians using it to fund their pet social policies inappropriately. For example whether you are married or single should have ZERO impact on your taxes. If the government wants to address that, the tax code is not the proper place to do it. If the government wants to subsidize something, just do so directly. Using taxes to do it is inefficient and adds needless complexity to the tax code. So we get heaping mounds of complexity where none needs to exist.
That said, some of that complexity is necessary. If we are going to have an income tax (whether we should is a separate question) you have to define income and that is surprisingly difficult to do in a way that doesn't have loopholes you can drive a semi through. I'm an accountant so I should know. There also is the question of fairness which is more of a social question than a technical one but it's also hard to have a tax code that is fair, functional, and simple. (no - plans like a flat tax fail that test though I understand the appeal) As HL Menken said "there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong."
How many scientists engaged in climate science research understand even the basics of the Carbon Cycle?
[...]
Given that the first topic in my first university course on climate change was The Carbon Cycle, my bet is that nearly all climate scientists have a fairly well-developed understanding of the Carbon Cycle.
So much of science and scientific publishing relies on what I cynically call "argument by authority" -- someone got some claim past peer review so I will cite it without having to defend it to the reviewers of my paper.[...]
"Argument by Authority" is a well known logical fallacy, in which most scientists are well-versed. Argument by Authority is particularly egregious when the argument is by someone who isn't an authority at all, yet claims to be. This is common in more main stream media, including the kinds of crappy general interest books you can find at your local big box stores, like the ones on fad diets, but is incredibly rare in reputable scientific journals.
The fact is that if a scientist can over-throw an argument made by an authority in a field, they get a tremendous amount of respect, probably becoming authorities in the field as a result. The same goes for over-throwing the scientific consensus. That's the thing about scientists, we really like pushing understanding forward. That's the focus of our work.
Now your comment is instructive on logical fallacies, because your own arguments are absolutely packed with them. Your main problem is motivated reasoning (ie. proving your foregone conclusion), and that you are anomaly hunting, but you are also way behind on the literature, if you have any first-hand exposure to it at all. This means that you make several assertions that simply aren't true: It is well understood that and how the ocean's are absorbing the bulk of carbon emissions. The atmospheric and oceanic isotope ratios are well understood and continue to support our climate models, including absorption of the oceons. The seasonal variations due to the actions of biological systems are also well-understood. In short, the disagreement you see simply does not exist, the dominant models are supported by observation to an amazing degree.
All of this would be covered in detail in any university-level introductory climate change course. If you want to do some reading, I'd recommend Global Climate Change: Convergence of Disciplines, by Arnold Bloom. Honestly, if you can't at least give a common textbook on a well-developed field a read, you'd best just put your faith in the scientific consensus.
We know about how much fossil fuel we burn, and therefore how much CO2 we put into the atmosphere. We also measure the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. As far as changing the temperature goes, it doesn't matter whether we put the CO2 in the atmosphere directly or release some because of warming. Either method is anthropogenic, directly or indirectly. And here you are making crap up about what scientists do and don't know and trying to make elaborate arguments to deny reality.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes