As long as these goals are present and more important to scientists and the scientific community at large than doing actual science, this will always be a serious problem.
Having worked in academia for a while, I don't entirely disagree with your diagnosis, but I think you're mischaracterizing the motives of scientists. Most of us really want to do actual science and not have to worry about money, and no one actually gets excited about grant writing the way they do about a successful experiment. The problem is that our incentive system is so screwed up that dealing with it occupies an increasing amount of our time. Even very thoughtful, scrupulous, and dedicated scientists whom I greatly respect get sidetracked by these practical concerns. It's incredibly depressing to watch, and one reason why I desperately want out.
Someone (I forget where) once claimed that editors are disinclined to actually use these suggestions - instead, they'll remember the names for the next time they receive a manuscript on a similar topic from a different group. I doubt most scientists would complain if these recommendations disappeared entirely. What we're usually much more worried about, instead, is that the editor will send our paper to our arch-enemy who constantly bad-mouths us at meetings and is working on a similar project. (Or a notorious pedant who will dismiss any research that doesn't conform to his ideas about theory.)
To clarify: I don't necessarily think the proportion has changed. But the absolute quantity of bad papers has certainly increased. I'm also wondering whether the incidence of truly incompetent work has gone up due to lowered standards; the average PhD student isn't a towering intellectual giant. (Hell, even I graduated.)
It's intellectually dishonest to post that letter without giving the APS a chance to respond, so I'll briefly quote them:
Dr. Lewis’ specific charge that APS as an organization is benefitting financially from climate change funding is equally false. Neither the operating officers nor the elected leaders of the Society have a monetary stake in such funding. Moreover, relatively few APS members conduct climate change research, and therefore the vast majority of the Society’s members derive no personal benefit from such research support.
It's not just companies and politicians. University PR departments can be just as bad as their corporate counterparts, as witnessed by the proliferation of press releases claiming that "State U researchers discover possible cancer cure."
I think there are two other related issues at play here:
1. There has been a proliferation of relatively shoddy low-impact papers. Thanks to the Internet and the large scientific community, many of these are quickly flagged, but it's still a drag. Part of the reason for this is that the developed world (and more recently, aspiring nations) has been over-training scientists for a few decades, and a PhD is typically an essential requirement for most decent careers - which creates a big incentive to publish no matter how crappy the results.
2. Because of our f***ed-up incentive system, there is an additional huge incentive to publish in ultra-selective high-profile journals, which means the result has to be sufficiently exciting (and "citation bait"). Naturally, this leads people to either cheat or (more often) be sloppy and careless. These failures attract the most attention for obvious reasons.
Basically it's a natural side effect of the "democratization" of science. When basic research was just a gentleman's club centered at a relatively few elite institutions, there was much less incentive to game the system.
Manufacturing equipment that is designed to be as flexible as possible on a smaller scale is probably never going to be as efficient and cost-effective as a setup optimized for mass production. A skilled team of organic chemists should be able to figure out a much better way to synthesize molecules that they need massive quantities of. The reason this tool is potentially a huge breakthrough is that it's prohibitively expensive to do this for every molecule you're potentially interested in, versus those you plan to sell for boatloads of money.
They will have to shut this down HARD, to keep us from manufacturing pharmaceuticals and recreational drugs wihout the permission of IP "owners" or our frankly insane drug law enforcers.
It will take decades before automated chemical synthesis is advanced enough to allow individual manufacture of patented and/or illegal compounds. And for someone sufficiently determined, it's not all that difficult to get these molecules right now. You just need to contract it out to a lab in China, which has plenty of skilled technicians who will do it the old-fashioned way for much less than the cost of a 3D printer. Moreover, the people who would most benefit from cheaper drugs won't be able to afford the printer either.
Of course, the more likely result is that after a bunch of people die from automatically and illegally synthesized drugs that have undergone very poor quality control and contain major contaminants, everyone else realizes what a bad idea it was.
There is a fairly large population of feral turkeys near where I live and work - the adult males are slightly terrifying. Every time I see one I think of the dinosaurs who eat Wayne Knight in "Jurassic Park". Only with [more] feathers.
This is what drives me up the wall too. I'm an atheist, with an academic background in the natural sciences, but I have zero interest trying to disabuse people of their sincerely held superstitions - especially I can't honestly claim to be a paragon of rationality most of the time. What offends me as a scientist (of sorts) is when people actively lie and distort the scientific evidence in support of their mythology. "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."
The accusation of fascism wasn't just Verhoeven, though - many others have made the same complaint (again, I think it's unfair, but it is a widespread view). Heinlein was clearly bothered enough by some of the reactions to his book that he wrote an entire essay defending himself and clarifying what he meant (I think it's in the collection Expanded Universe). One of the key points was that fascism tends to involve universal conscription - his "federal service" was absolutely voluntary.
I'm using the term "libertarian" only in the most general sense - not the Tea Party/Ayn Rand versions. It's an imperfect term to describe him, but I have a hard time thinking of another that works better, since none of the established political groupings occupies a similar niche.
I love Heinlein. But, one cannot take some of his ideas too seriously.
I agree; I think Starship Troopers is one of the greatest works of science fiction, and it has influenced the way I think about participation in government, but it's important to recognize the inherent flaws of the premise (and to place it in the proper context of his other, sometimes nuttier, writing). A lot of his work was intended to provoke, not present a blueprint for an ideal society.
There is one way of looking at the movie in relation to the book that actually sort of makes sense. For all of the criticism leveled at Heinlein for being too militaristic or even "fascistic", the society he describes is basically a multicultural libertarian utopia: people of all nationalities seem to be relatively happy and well-off, the government is relatively minimal, and the federal service is open to absolutely anyone (even cripples). And that's precisely the problem - utopian ideals rarely turn out well in practice. Actually, the even more specific problem is that Heinlein assumes the society would basically be run by people like him. Verhoeven's version, although it badly misrepresents what the book actually says, is probably a more realistic vision of how such a society would turn out.
That said, I'd still love to see an adaptation that plays it straight. Or at least gets the mobile infantry right, complete with orbital drops and mechanized armor.
DFTT, please. He's one of those lunatics who thinks all taxation is slavery; you can't win an argument with him, because you're not inhabiting the same reality.
. . . says yet another person who appears to be totally ignorant about history. Do you really believe that if you went back in time to, say, 1950, you couldn't find politicians saying equally idiotic things, perhaps in even greater numbers? And do you think "technology" is limited to, say, space travel?
I am carrying, in my pocket, a computer significantly more powerful than anything I used as a child (and much cheaper in absolute dollars), with access to a global information network containing most of human knowledge, and the ability to instantaneously communicate with anyone in the world. The overall computing infrastructure is rapidly overtaking the technology depicted in a 20th-century show about 24th-century space exploration. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of people across the planet, whose parents lived in virtually pre-industrial economies and regularly suffered from pandemics and famine, now have relatively comfortable middle-class lives thanks to improved technology and the expansion of the global economy. These improvements have mostly happened within my lifetime (i.e. since 1980 or so). So I'm not exactly losing sleep over the fact that the developed world still has a handful of proudly ignorant fools in government.
It's also worth remembering for context that shortly after the close of World War II, the British government drove one of its greatest scientists to commit suicide at the age of 41 because it was run by superstitious, self-righteous prudes who disapproved of his homosexuality. Today, the UK has some random back-bencher spouting nonsense about homeopathy. I think that's an improvement.
Sure there's a few Californias and Greeces out there
These two are nothing alike, unless you think the whole of the developed world can be judged solely by the condition of the central governments. Besides, California's debt-to-GDP ratio is only about 20% - Greece's is 175%.
But he has pretensions towards being a respected visionary scientist. It's not impossible to have it both ways, but it's really, really difficult. (Especially when you've taken the work you did as a student at a public university and commercialized it without giving a penny to the university.)
Saudi Arabia also requires exit visas to leave the country - which can only be obtained with permission from your employer. For many foreign nationals in the country, a large fraction of whom are domestic servants, it is essentially impossible to leave as a result. It's made even worse by the fact that work visas are also specific to the employer, so they can't switch jobs either. This is a country that didn't even officially outlaw slavery until after Castro's revolution, but even so they've kept slavery in all but name. (Not even going to start on their sponsorship of Salafi Islamist nutters across the globe.)
Besides, Cuba did finally allow foreign travel starting in 2013 (of course, most of its citizens are probably too poor to afford it, but the embargo certainly doesn't help). And we kept diplomatic relations and some commerce open with the Warsaw Pact at a time when they also restricted travel, which didn't stop their system from collapsing under its own weight.
I live in Berkeley, you insensitive clod! But no, ultra-liberals aren't even as powerful in Berkeley as you might think.
Perhaps, but this is still the city that had to call a special meeting of the city council to make a special exception to the "nuclear-free" law so that they could get the library book scanners fixed. And the city where in 2002, 30% of voters approved a proposition that would have imposed jail time for anyone selling non-shade-grown, non-organic, or non-fair-trade coffee.
The North Berkeley area is certainly not that bad, and I feel right at home.
Well, it's mostly not that bad... there is certainly a high quotient of what are commonly called "limousine liberals". I'm not sure how to classify the nutters trying to prevent more cellular relays being placed in the hills because they're afraid they'll get cancer. But if I lived somewhere else, they'd probably be praying for my soul instead, so I guess I'll settle for the devil I know.
I translate "data scientist" as "PhD in hard sciences who couldn't get a job in his or her field because we've been massively over-training PhDs for the last couple of decades, so he/she took a course in statistics and learned to write simple Python scripts and use scikit-learn and Hadoop." That seems to cover most of the ones I know, anyway. (Although to be fair, some of them knew Python already.)
you think it's _good_ to carry out mass-vaccination of a species
Smallpox killed more people in the 20th century than every war combined, and is now completely eradicated because of mass vaccination (sometimes coerced). Remember: vaccines are unnatural, but so is a life expectancy of 80 years.
Most libertarians I know are reasonable libertarians. They want some service and regulations, they just want such to be minimal and to be served by the lowest and most local level of government. Just enough for basic safety, a level playing field, equal opportunity and most importantly accountability to locals.
I'd argue that in California, the biggest contingent is what are sometimes called "liberaltarians" (I include myself in this group): secular, very libertarian on social issues, skeptical of interventionist foreign policy, broadly pro-capitalism, generally just want to mind their own business and make money and be left alone, but don't usually freak out over income taxes and mildly redistributionist policies and universal healthcare, and probably more environmentally conscious than average. Personally, I despise laws banning smoking in private business (e.g. bars), or requiring seat belt or bike helmet use, but on the other hand, I think California's law declaring the coastline public property was one of the wisest things the state ever did.
Most of us are willing to put up with the large number of crazies in the Bay Area because overall, they're not nearly as powerful as you might expect (outside of Berkeley, at least), and they also like weed, gay marriage, and Mexican food, so at least we have that much in common.
Yes, indeed, they are free to quit their jobs — without having to give up on their house, country, and friends — if their assessment of the risk of coming to work is so drastically at odds with that of their employer.
Are you really so dense and solopsistic that you are incapable of understanding that for most people, this is no choice at all? For many Americans, yes, they will have to give up their house if they end up unemployed. Not to mention their health insurance - and I assume you aren't in favor of the government helping out with that either. You're pretending that personal autonomy isn't constrained by economic considerations, which is completely at odds with reality. You're also pretending that managers actually give a shit whether their employees are safe driving to work, when the history of industrial economies is full of evidence that they are often utterly careless without government intervention.
And if you don't like being told to move to Somalia, try getting some self-awareness and honesty, and admit that there are real tradeoffs to your utopian fantasies, with genuinely negative impacts on other people's lives. There are many persuasive and intellectually honest arguments for smaller government, but you're not making them.
Slashdot Mirror
As long as these goals are present and more important to scientists and the scientific community at large than doing actual science, this will always be a serious problem.
Having worked in academia for a while, I don't entirely disagree with your diagnosis, but I think you're mischaracterizing the motives of scientists. Most of us really want to do actual science and not have to worry about money, and no one actually gets excited about grant writing the way they do about a successful experiment. The problem is that our incentive system is so screwed up that dealing with it occupies an increasing amount of our time. Even very thoughtful, scrupulous, and dedicated scientists whom I greatly respect get sidetracked by these practical concerns. It's incredibly depressing to watch, and one reason why I desperately want out.
Someone (I forget where) once claimed that editors are disinclined to actually use these suggestions - instead, they'll remember the names for the next time they receive a manuscript on a similar topic from a different group. I doubt most scientists would complain if these recommendations disappeared entirely. What we're usually much more worried about, instead, is that the editor will send our paper to our arch-enemy who constantly bad-mouths us at meetings and is working on a similar project. (Or a notorious pedant who will dismiss any research that doesn't conform to his ideas about theory.)
To clarify: I don't necessarily think the proportion has changed. But the absolute quantity of bad papers has certainly increased. I'm also wondering whether the incidence of truly incompetent work has gone up due to lowered standards; the average PhD student isn't a towering intellectual giant. (Hell, even I graduated.)
It's intellectually dishonest to post that letter without giving the APS a chance to respond, so I'll briefly quote them:
It's not just companies and politicians. University PR departments can be just as bad as their corporate counterparts, as witnessed by the proliferation of press releases claiming that "State U researchers discover possible cancer cure."
I think there are two other related issues at play here:
1. There has been a proliferation of relatively shoddy low-impact papers. Thanks to the Internet and the large scientific community, many of these are quickly flagged, but it's still a drag. Part of the reason for this is that the developed world (and more recently, aspiring nations) has been over-training scientists for a few decades, and a PhD is typically an essential requirement for most decent careers - which creates a big incentive to publish no matter how crappy the results.
2. Because of our f***ed-up incentive system, there is an additional huge incentive to publish in ultra-selective high-profile journals, which means the result has to be sufficiently exciting (and "citation bait"). Naturally, this leads people to either cheat or (more often) be sloppy and careless. These failures attract the most attention for obvious reasons.
Basically it's a natural side effect of the "democratization" of science. When basic research was just a gentleman's club centered at a relatively few elite institutions, there was much less incentive to game the system.
Manufacturing equipment that is designed to be as flexible as possible on a smaller scale is probably never going to be as efficient and cost-effective as a setup optimized for mass production. A skilled team of organic chemists should be able to figure out a much better way to synthesize molecules that they need massive quantities of. The reason this tool is potentially a huge breakthrough is that it's prohibitively expensive to do this for every molecule you're potentially interested in, versus those you plan to sell for boatloads of money.
They will have to shut this down HARD, to keep us from manufacturing pharmaceuticals and recreational drugs wihout the permission of IP "owners" or our frankly insane drug law enforcers.
It will take decades before automated chemical synthesis is advanced enough to allow individual manufacture of patented and/or illegal compounds. And for someone sufficiently determined, it's not all that difficult to get these molecules right now. You just need to contract it out to a lab in China, which has plenty of skilled technicians who will do it the old-fashioned way for much less than the cost of a 3D printer. Moreover, the people who would most benefit from cheaper drugs won't be able to afford the printer either.
Of course, the more likely result is that after a bunch of people die from automatically and illegally synthesized drugs that have undergone very poor quality control and contain major contaminants, everyone else realizes what a bad idea it was.
There is a fairly large population of feral turkeys near where I live and work - the adult males are slightly terrifying. Every time I see one I think of the dinosaurs who eat Wayne Knight in "Jurassic Park". Only with [more] feathers.
This is what drives me up the wall too. I'm an atheist, with an academic background in the natural sciences, but I have zero interest trying to disabuse people of their sincerely held superstitions - especially I can't honestly claim to be a paragon of rationality most of the time. What offends me as a scientist (of sorts) is when people actively lie and distort the scientific evidence in support of their mythology. "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."
If you think Starship Troopers is one of the greatest works of science fiction, you have an extremely limited exposure to sci-fi literature.
Maybe I just have different taste in books than you. Your sig alone demonstrates that we really don't think alike.
The accusation of fascism wasn't just Verhoeven, though - many others have made the same complaint (again, I think it's unfair, but it is a widespread view). Heinlein was clearly bothered enough by some of the reactions to his book that he wrote an entire essay defending himself and clarifying what he meant (I think it's in the collection Expanded Universe). One of the key points was that fascism tends to involve universal conscription - his "federal service" was absolutely voluntary.
I'm using the term "libertarian" only in the most general sense - not the Tea Party/Ayn Rand versions. It's an imperfect term to describe him, but I have a hard time thinking of another that works better, since none of the established political groupings occupies a similar niche.
I love Heinlein. But, one cannot take some of his ideas too seriously.
I agree; I think Starship Troopers is one of the greatest works of science fiction, and it has influenced the way I think about participation in government, but it's important to recognize the inherent flaws of the premise (and to place it in the proper context of his other, sometimes nuttier, writing). A lot of his work was intended to provoke, not present a blueprint for an ideal society.
There is one way of looking at the movie in relation to the book that actually sort of makes sense. For all of the criticism leveled at Heinlein for being too militaristic or even "fascistic", the society he describes is basically a multicultural libertarian utopia: people of all nationalities seem to be relatively happy and well-off, the government is relatively minimal, and the federal service is open to absolutely anyone (even cripples). And that's precisely the problem - utopian ideals rarely turn out well in practice. Actually, the even more specific problem is that Heinlein assumes the society would basically be run by people like him. Verhoeven's version, although it badly misrepresents what the book actually says, is probably a more realistic vision of how such a society would turn out.
That said, I'd still love to see an adaptation that plays it straight. Or at least gets the mobile infantry right, complete with orbital drops and mechanized armor.
DFTT, please. He's one of those lunatics who thinks all taxation is slavery; you can't win an argument with him, because you're not inhabiting the same reality.
. . . says yet another person who appears to be totally ignorant about history. Do you really believe that if you went back in time to, say, 1950, you couldn't find politicians saying equally idiotic things, perhaps in even greater numbers? And do you think "technology" is limited to, say, space travel?
I am carrying, in my pocket, a computer significantly more powerful than anything I used as a child (and much cheaper in absolute dollars), with access to a global information network containing most of human knowledge, and the ability to instantaneously communicate with anyone in the world. The overall computing infrastructure is rapidly overtaking the technology depicted in a 20th-century show about 24th-century space exploration. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of people across the planet, whose parents lived in virtually pre-industrial economies and regularly suffered from pandemics and famine, now have relatively comfortable middle-class lives thanks to improved technology and the expansion of the global economy. These improvements have mostly happened within my lifetime (i.e. since 1980 or so). So I'm not exactly losing sleep over the fact that the developed world still has a handful of proudly ignorant fools in government.
It's also worth remembering for context that shortly after the close of World War II, the British government drove one of its greatest scientists to commit suicide at the age of 41 because it was run by superstitious, self-righteous prudes who disapproved of his homosexuality. Today, the UK has some random back-bencher spouting nonsense about homeopathy. I think that's an improvement.
Sure there's a few Californias and Greeces out there
These two are nothing alike, unless you think the whole of the developed world can be judged solely by the condition of the central governments. Besides, California's debt-to-GDP ratio is only about 20% - Greece's is 175%.
Because he runs a business not a hippy commune.
But he has pretensions towards being a respected visionary scientist. It's not impossible to have it both ways, but it's really, really difficult. (Especially when you've taken the work you did as a student at a public university and commercialized it without giving a penny to the university.)
Saudi Arabia also requires exit visas to leave the country - which can only be obtained with permission from your employer. For many foreign nationals in the country, a large fraction of whom are domestic servants, it is essentially impossible to leave as a result. It's made even worse by the fact that work visas are also specific to the employer, so they can't switch jobs either. This is a country that didn't even officially outlaw slavery until after Castro's revolution, but even so they've kept slavery in all but name. (Not even going to start on their sponsorship of Salafi Islamist nutters across the globe.)
Besides, Cuba did finally allow foreign travel starting in 2013 (of course, most of its citizens are probably too poor to afford it, but the embargo certainly doesn't help). And we kept diplomatic relations and some commerce open with the Warsaw Pact at a time when they also restricted travel, which didn't stop their system from collapsing under its own weight.
I live in Berkeley, you insensitive clod! But no, ultra-liberals aren't even as powerful in Berkeley as you might think.
Perhaps, but this is still the city that had to call a special meeting of the city council to make a special exception to the "nuclear-free" law so that they could get the library book scanners fixed. And the city where in 2002, 30% of voters approved a proposition that would have imposed jail time for anyone selling non-shade-grown, non-organic, or non-fair-trade coffee.
The North Berkeley area is certainly not that bad, and I feel right at home.
Well, it's mostly not that bad... there is certainly a high quotient of what are commonly called "limousine liberals". I'm not sure how to classify the nutters trying to prevent more cellular relays being placed in the hills because they're afraid they'll get cancer. But if I lived somewhere else, they'd probably be praying for my soul instead, so I guess I'll settle for the devil I know.
I translate "data scientist" as "PhD in hard sciences who couldn't get a job in his or her field because we've been massively over-training PhDs for the last couple of decades, so he/she took a course in statistics and learned to write simple Python scripts and use scikit-learn and Hadoop." That seems to cover most of the ones I know, anyway. (Although to be fair, some of them knew Python already.)
you think it's _good_ to carry out mass-vaccination of a species
Smallpox killed more people in the 20th century than every war combined, and is now completely eradicated because of mass vaccination (sometimes coerced). Remember: vaccines are unnatural, but so is a life expectancy of 80 years.
Most libertarians I know are reasonable libertarians. They want some service and regulations, they just want such to be minimal and to be served by the lowest and most local level of government. Just enough for basic safety, a level playing field, equal opportunity and most importantly accountability to locals.
I'd argue that in California, the biggest contingent is what are sometimes called "liberaltarians" (I include myself in this group): secular, very libertarian on social issues, skeptical of interventionist foreign policy, broadly pro-capitalism, generally just want to mind their own business and make money and be left alone, but don't usually freak out over income taxes and mildly redistributionist policies and universal healthcare, and probably more environmentally conscious than average. Personally, I despise laws banning smoking in private business (e.g. bars), or requiring seat belt or bike helmet use, but on the other hand, I think California's law declaring the coastline public property was one of the wisest things the state ever did.
Most of us are willing to put up with the large number of crazies in the Bay Area because overall, they're not nearly as powerful as you might expect (outside of Berkeley, at least), and they also like weed, gay marriage, and Mexican food, so at least we have that much in common.
Yes, indeed, they are free to quit their jobs — without having to give up on their house, country, and friends — if their assessment of the risk of coming to work is so drastically at odds with that of their employer.
Are you really so dense and solopsistic that you are incapable of understanding that for most people, this is no choice at all? For many Americans, yes, they will have to give up their house if they end up unemployed. Not to mention their health insurance - and I assume you aren't in favor of the government helping out with that either. You're pretending that personal autonomy isn't constrained by economic considerations, which is completely at odds with reality. You're also pretending that managers actually give a shit whether their employees are safe driving to work, when the history of industrial economies is full of evidence that they are often utterly careless without government intervention.
And if you don't like being told to move to Somalia, try getting some self-awareness and honesty, and admit that there are real tradeoffs to your utopian fantasies, with genuinely negative impacts on other people's lives. There are many persuasive and intellectually honest arguments for smaller government, but you're not making them.