[HN Gopher] Some of the forces blocking new ideas in science ___________________________________________________________________ Some of the forces blocking new ideas in science Author : bhaprayan Score : 89 points Date : 2022-04-24 17:33 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (mattsclancy.substack.com) (TXT) w3m dump (mattsclancy.substack.com) | ncmncm wrote: | For fields especially resistant to new ideas, Egyptology takes | the prize. | | Thus far surface luminescence has been used only once, and | produced results only just barely acceptable. A chip from a | facing stone of one of the Giza pyramids, and from the Valley | Temple showed an age of 5000 years, +/- 500 years, where the | officially assumed age is 4500 years. That was enough of that! | Jun8 wrote: | I didn't know about surface luminescence dating. For others | who'd like to read the paper on using it to date monuments: | https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263201697_Surface_l... | eesmith wrote: | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S129620741... | ? | | "Surface luminescence dating of some Egyptian monuments", | Journal of Cultural Heritage, Volume 16, Issue 2, March-April | 2015, Pages 134-150 | | > Surface luminescence dating to Egyptian monuments of the age | range 3000 B C to Hellenistic times has been applied for first | time. Monuments include the Giza plateau (Sphinx Temple, Valley | Temple, Mykerinus), the Qasr-el-Saqha, the Khasekemui tomb and | the Seti I Temple with Osirion at Abydos. Equivalent doses were | measured by the single and multiple aliquot additive and | regeneration techniques, and dose rates by portable gamma ray | probes, and with laboratory counting and dosimetry systems. The | resulted ages have confirmed most conventional Dynastic dates, | while in some cases, predating was obtained by some hundred of | years. The dates are discussed in the light of current | archaeological opinions. | | From the conclusion: | | > Different calculated and archaeological ages, beyond one | standard error, were noticed for one sample at Valley Temple at | Chephren's complex (limestone), one at Sphinx Temple | (granitic), and one at Seti II Abydos (sandstone). | tempnow987 wrote: | This primarily I think applies to ACADEMIC science. | | The funding game in academic science is kind of miserable. | Researchers eager to maintain positions for their post docs and | grad students etc pay high levels of attention to which way the | funding story is going -> ie, telling funders what they want to | hear is the key skill. This is not always focused on new ideas. | That's because it is pretty horrible not to get funded, so | getting funding is a top priority? | | Adding to this there is a major push now on DEI and other types | of policy work which are not always directly scientific idea | focused. Then there are compliance costs (you need to train your | researches on project costing / job codes for payroll, | procurement processes with federal funds etc) and ideally get | them the NIH training (see below for a reading list). | me and white supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and | Become a Good Ancestor, Layla F. Saad The New Jim | Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle | Alexander United States and Racism Systemic: | Explicate the systemic nature of institutionalized racism, Steven | Turam How We Fight White Supremacy: A Field Guide to | Black Resistance, Akiba Solomon and Kenrya Rankin | | https://www.training.nih.gov/2020_inclusion_anti-racism_and_... | | So you have a lot on your plate - not that this is a bad thing, | but just to be aware of it. | russdill wrote: | The funding game is a miserable slog, but people are in | academia because they want to do _their_ research. If they | wanted to use their expertise to obtain a paycheck, there are | typically much better opportunities to do so. | Fomite wrote: | `The funding game in academic science is kind of miserable. | Researchers eager to maintain positions for their post docs and | grad students etc pay high levels of attention to which way the | funding story is going -> ie, telling funders what they want to | hear is the key skill. This is not always focused on new ideas. | That's because it is pretty horrible not to get funded, so | getting funding is a top priority?` | | I think this is oft, but not always, overstated (note, not the | bit about the funding game being miserable - it is). I've had a | relatively successful track record as new faculty, and my best | scored grants are also my most daring. Significance and | Innovation is one of the criteria the NIH reviews on, and | funding is tight enough that a "meh" score there can torpedo a | grant. Getting to know what your funder (and most importantly, | your particular program officer) wants is critical, but what | they want is not always "safe" science. | | The advice I give my trainees is "Learn how to tell your story" | and "Stop blowing off your Specific Aims page, it's the most | important." | | `Then there are compliance costs (you need to train your | researches on project costing / job codes for payroll, | procurement processes with federal funds etc)` | | Almost all of this is handled by departmental staff or a | sponsored programs office at every institution I've ever been | at, using the indirect costs that Hacker News is always so fond | of talking about. | derbOac wrote: | Idk. There's a sweet spot when it comes to novelty and | funding, and I'm not sure it's always where it should be. I | also think there's a certain relativism about novelty, in | that what is novel in a subfield might look pretty | conservative to an outsider. | | All these studies of grants etc are overshadowed by this | problem, which is that they typically use citations etc as | some kind of metric of quality. The problem with that, in | turn, is that over a reasonable study span, variation in | those citations is going to be driven by self-seeking | behavior. That is, what's popular is what's funded, but also | what's cited. There's a certain bias in it, in that you don't | learn about the novel studies that never were studied due to | being too novel, and the truly paradigm shifting papers, | which are cited at high rates, are kinda washed out by the | hundreds or thousands of papers that just kinda creep along. | | It's difficult for me to put into words what's on my mind. | But when I think of colleagues who are well funded, even | those I consider friends and people I respect, I don't think | of their work as being innovative. It's very much in the | status quo. Very technically well done, but basically data | generating machines within a status quo paradigm. | | The things that shake things up tend to come from elsewhere, | from industry or accidents or secondary reanalysis of old | data, or things that get funded off of miscellaneous sources | scrounged together. It's as if true innovation happens | regardless of grants, or in spite of it, and after everyone | agrees it's the accepted thing, _then_ it gets funded, after | the fact. | tempnow987 wrote: | All good points. My own sense is that if your carry isn't too | big (you are not feeling a ton of pressure to maintain a | pretty big funding line) life is better all around? | | My own indirect experience is not NIH, but gov lab related | work. This is I think more bureaucratic because the labs have | funding streams, and the key goal can be not to f it up. That | might move things to a somewhat heavier compliance model. | | I'm not against indirect costs rates, they are a HUGE | efficiency winner to avoid needing to push paper at the | individual level. That said, the system it funds is not | itself that efficient. | | UC Berkeley I think is going to be 60%+ indirect rate for | 22-23 as a local point of reference - I don't work there | though. | | So if you get $400K in the door you get to "keep" $160K of | it. | Fomite wrote: | `All good points. My own sense is that if your carry isn't | too big (you are not feeling a ton of pressure to maintain | a pretty big funding line) life is better all around?` | | Absolutely. The standard in my field is somewhere between a | 50% and 100% soft money position. Mine is only 25%, and | while I could probably fish around for a position at a more | prestigious university, it's a big boost to my ability to | go "Yeah, that seems neat, lets do it" and thus a major | quality of life boost. | | `UC Berkeley I think is going to be 60%+ indirect rate for | 22-23 as a local point of reference - I don't work there | though.` | | This is not how you calculate indirect rates. | | Indirect rates are a percentage of your direct rates. If X | is the money you get for your lab (i.e. direct costs) and | the indirect rate is 60%, then the actual calculation is | 1.6X = 400,000, so X = $250,000. | | If you want to point a finger at the thing that's probably | the most harmful to the funding of science, it's not | indirect rates. IMO, it's that the NIH budget cap for a | modular R01 was set at $250,000 in direct costs in *1999* | and has never moved from that. | tempnow987 wrote: | 25% sounds awesome - that's in cool and interesting | projects range! Do you have responsibility for other | positions. Not sure how it works where you are, I know | someone who was very stressed because their proposals | "carried" a fairly large group of folks. | | Good point on indirect rates - I was being too quick | there. Salary costs can be lower because you have to | layer on fringe as well (which can be a separate pool or | just a direct calc). So salary * 1.X (fringe) * 1.Y | (indirect) = total award? | Fomite wrote: | Answering this bit first: | | `Good point on indirect rates - I was being too quick | there. Salary costs can be lower because you have to | layer on fringe as well (which can be a separate pool or | just a direct calc). So salary * 1.X (fringe) * 1.Y | (indirect) = total award?` | | Yeah, this is how that math works, at least at my | institution, with some rare exceptions. | | `25% sounds awesome - that's in cool and interesting | projects range! Do you have responsibility for other | positions. Not sure how it works where you are, I know | someone who was very stressed because their proposals | "carried" a fairly large group of folks.` | | It really is awesome, and I'm tremendously privileged to | be in that position. It's especially nice in my field | (infectious disease epidemiology) because in basically | all outbreaks, the work we do is uncompensated for ~ 6 | months or so and then you sort of hope for grants to back | fill it (I had, for example, done my best work on the | pandemic prior to getting any funding for it). | | You have however nailed the primary source of my stress - | keeping "my" people funded. Graduate students (the | downside of my position is its in a place where TA lines | are functionally non-existent), postdocs, etc. are my | responsibility, and keeping them funded is most of the | reason I write grants. | | We're experimenting for some staff positions (because | 100% funding a staff scientist on grant money is daunting | and terrifying for a single PI) with using a pool of | funding, to address that while four of us may be able to | pay 25% of a data analyst, none of us can pay 100%, with | gaps in that backfilled by some institutional resources. | mxkopy wrote: | While I would agree that DEI isn't directly about science, it | certainly helps the end goal of understanding some phenomenon | as holistically possible. | | I think these sorts of policies are aimed more towards | administrators rather than researchers, which for some reason | are often the same people. | | I think academia could benefit from adopting the music | industry's approach to managing talent - i.e. the managing and | talent are usually kept separate. | fabian2k wrote: | I don't find the measure of novelty in the article convincing. | This seems more like a proxy for how inter-disciplinary the work | is. | | It also isn't necessarily a bad thing if most research aims to be | somewhat safe, though of course this should not be taken too far. | "Safe" research means there is a good chance of obtaining useful | results. Usually we know this because we're using e.g. a known | and established method on a somewhat unknown, but focused | problem. | | More risky research is also needed, but even then it might be | possible to split it into parts that still have value on their | own. There is certainly a problem here for younger scientists as | they need results to advance their career. That usually means | that somewhat safer, but not too safe research is in the best | interest of those researchers. | tigerlily wrote: | My former academic supervisor's former academic supervisor died | in 2009. He was big name in his field. | | When I offered my condolences, my professor said "It's ok. When a | mighty tree falls, it can be sad, but it means the light can | reach all the little saplings down below". | joe_the_user wrote: | The thing about this article is it seems to make the implicit | assumption that hostility to novelty is a bad thing. I don't | think that's justified. Obviously, allow no new ideas into a | field and it will die but allow too many new ideas into a field | and you have a recipe for the field becoming a pseudo-science. | | Before you propose changes to allow more ideas in, it would be | appropriate to have some measure of whether a field is too tight | or too in the amount of ideas it allow now. | nostrebored wrote: | That would require a level of meta awareness about science that | adherents of specific fields just don't have. | | People could've said the same about phlogiston. | | We live in an age where we assume we are right about most | things, that's completely historically unjustified. | 8bitsrule wrote: | So long as significant new evidence is allowed into the light, | evidence that must eventually be accounted for, all's well. But | to the extent that there are those who'd prefer to hide it, or | disallow, hand-wave away, or use ad hominem attacks against those | who present that evidence, there's a problem. | tmoertel wrote: | Physicist and Bayesian pioneer E. T. Janes had a pithy take on | this theme: | | _In any field, the Establishment is seldom in pursuit of the | truth, because it is composed of those who sincerely believe that | they are already in possession of it._ | | From Probability Theory: The Logic of Science, E.T. Jaynes, 2003. | agumonkey wrote: | I'd add a minuscule idea to this important quote, those who | settle themselves as authority often have deep insights and can | see the limits of accepted ideas. Those who are taught the | latest truth rarely have it, they admitted the paradigm as is. | They contribute to the inertia. | KarlKemp wrote: | It's funny that the article rather explicitly rejects such | theories of malfeasance/corruption/etc. and, instead, points to | cognitive effects interacting with the decision-making process | as a plausible cause that is compatible with assumptions of | good faith and competence. | | So, arguably, the only person confident of being in possession | of the truth is the one with the ready-made cynical quote. | sva_ wrote: | "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its | opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its | opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is | familiar with it." -- Max Planck | narrator wrote: | Perhaps the FSF could work on some sort of open patent license | that says if you use this patent in an invention you are not | allowed to use it with any other unexpired patent unless it is | also under the same license. That way, a culture of open source | could be created in the non-software world that would move | innovation into the private sector and out of academia by letting | private companies more easily share their engineering with each | other. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-04-24 23:00 UTC)