11 thoughts on “Natural Selection”

    1. There’s still huge incentive to deceive in the private world. How many miracle energy generation schemes have we seen over the decades that involve equipment no one is allowed to examine and somehow manage to never amount to anything?

  1. To large degree this is due to funding being granted on a basis
    of “productivity” as measured in published papers, patents granted, etc. Instead of providing meaningful results or something usable.

    Even back when they made research centers around a certain focused subject area and just threw money at them the results were better IMO. A lot of the times there will be failures. That is to be expected in any leading edge research. But failures don’t get published. Debunking avenues of research is not accepted. So this has created an activity of spinning failure as success as a result.

    Even if you are successful in your research, if your approach competes with the current fads, prepare to be squashed. You are basically threatening someone’s iron rice bowl. So “dissent” is not tolerated.

    The best results typically are delivered when the research is funded with a specific deliverable product in mind with an actual user for it e.g. DARPA. But this is seldom applicable for theoretical research.

    Grigori Perelman is a good case in point. After basically working for years alone proving the Poincare conjecture in his spare time he got showered with prizes and requests to join so called leading research establishments. To which he all refused because he didn’t want to spend time chasing research funding. He just wanted to be left alone to work.

    1. I get the sense that at least NSF is trying to downplay “productivity.” They limit the number of “products” in support of a grant proposal — papers, patents — to 10 to try to move in that diection.

      What NSF indeed plays up is “Democracy, whiskey, sexy” (Does anyone remember that? This is what some Iraqi man was anticipating as the benefit to the 2003 Iraq War deposing Saddam).

      It doesn’t hurt to have published a lot in terms of establishing a reputation making you fundable, but it doesn’t hurt either to be working on a line of inquiry that is “Democracy, whiskey, sexy”, that is, “in fashion”, what the higher-ups in the gummint have set as a priority, and all of that.

      I guess the formula is to be able to come up with creative, original ideas in a fashionable area of research along with having some “street cred” that you are able to carry out the work.

    2. I would add that there is more of a “Shark Tank” aspect to this than you may realize. You need an idea, you need to establish your credibility that you have the ability to execute on it, and the idea has to be something within the Known World that the Sharks can comprehend.

  2. That was an interesting article but maybe it overinflated the sciences reputation prior to the scenario described.

  3. a new simulation shows that deteroriation actually happening

    Hmm. “Actually”: not sure that word means what they think it means.

  4. Yes, I caught that too. Simulation or is it just GIGO? I doubt the need for simulations when historical fact checking of past published paper results vs funding would suffice. This is the lazy man’s approach.

    I also take exception when I see prestigious journals such as Nature carve out special areas of study for special handling. In other words the creation of “Nature – Climate Change”. To me this is a red flag. I do not accept the precept that there is so much activity in the field that it *must* have it’s own periodical and set of peer reviewers. The way I interpret this is a lowering of the bar. Thus borrowing a prestige forum, in name, for all sorts of borderline science. When climate change papers are required to meet the rigors necessary to compete for the limited publication space across all of the fields of Science covered in Nature, it would force its merit prima facie. I trust little seen in “Nature – Climate Change”.

  5. I still like prize structures.

    Yes, I’m aware of how screwed a clockmaker might be when the examination for the prize is controlled by the astronomers. But this story of shame in fairness in awarding prizes still spurred an astounding amount of specifically targeted research.

    A prize structure also nearly spontaneously spurs independent research into -dis-proofs. I don’t see many grants for ‘disproofs’ of anything, unless it is a -political- question.

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