Posts Tagged ‘academia’
“The pursuit of science is a grand adventure, driven by curiosity, fueled by passion, and guided by reason”*…
Adam Mastroianni on how science advances (and how it’s held back), with a provocative set of suggestions for how it might be accelerated…
There are two kinds of problems in the world: strong-link problems and weak-link problems.
Weak-link problems are problems where the overall quality depends on how good the worst stuff is. You fix weak-link problems by making the weakest links stronger, or by eliminating them entirely.
Food safety, for example, is a weak-link problem. You don’t want to eat anything that will kill you. That’s why it makes sense for the Food and Drug Administration to inspect processing plants, to set standards, and to ban dangerous foods…
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Weak-link problems are everywhere. A car engine is a weak-link problem: it doesn’t matter how great your spark plugs are if your transmission is busted. Nuclear proliferation is a weak-link problem: it would be great if, say, France locked up their nukes even tighter, but the real danger is some rogue nation blowing up the world. Putting on too-tight pants is a weak-link problem: they’re gonna split at the seams.
It’s easy to assume that all problems are like this, but they’re not. Some problems are strong-link problems: overall quality depends on how good the best stuff is, and the bad stuff barely matters. Like music, for instance. You listen to the stuff you like the most and ignore the rest. When your favorite band releases a new album, you go “yippee!” When a band you’ve never heard of and wouldn’t like anyway releases a new album, you go…nothing at all, you don’t even know it’s happened. At worst, bad music makes it a little harder for you to find good music, or it annoys you by being played on the radio in the grocery store while you’re trying to buy your beetle-free asparagus…
Strong-link problems are everywhere; they’re just harder to spot. Winning the Olympics is a strong-link problem: all that matters is how good your country’s best athletes are. Friendships are a strong-link problem: you wouldn’t trade your ride-or-dies for better acquaintances. Venture capital is a strong-link problem: it’s fine to invest in a bunch of startups that go bust as long as one of them goes to a billion…
In the long run, the best stuff is basically all that matters, and the bad stuff doesn’t matter at all. The history of science is littered with the skulls of dead theories. No more phlogiston nor phlegm, no more luminiferous ether, no more geocentrism, no more measuring someone’s character by the bumps on their head, no more barnacles magically turning into geese, no more invisible rays shooting out of people’s eyes, no more plum pudding…
Our current scientific beliefs are not a random mix of the dumbest and smartest ideas from all of human history, and that’s because the smarter ideas stuck around while the dumber ones kind of went nowhere, on average—the hallmark of a strong-link problem. That doesn’t mean better ideas win immediately. Worse ideas can soak up resources and waste our time, and frauds can mislead us temporarily. It can take longer than a human lifetime to figure out which ideas are better, and sometimes progress only happens when old scientists die. But when a theory does a better job of explaining the world, it tends to stick around.
(Science being a strong-link problem doesn’t mean that science is currently strong. I think we’re still living in the Dark Ages, just less dark than before.)
Here’s the crazy thing: most people treat science like it’s a weak-link problem.
Peer reviewing publications and grant proposals, for example, is a massive weak-link intervention. We spend ~15,000 collective years of effort every year trying to prevent bad research from being published. We force scientists to spend huge chunks of time filling out grant applications—most of which will be unsuccessful—because we want to make sure we aren’t wasting our money…
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I think there are two reasons why scientists act like science is a weak-link problem.
The first reason is fear. Competition for academic jobs, grants, and space in prestigious journals is more cutthroat than ever. When a single member of a grant panel, hiring committee, or editorial board can tank your career, you better stick to low-risk ideas. That’s fine when we’re trying to keep beetles out of asparagus, but it’s not fine when we’re trying to discover fundamental truths about the world…
The second reason is status. I’ve talked to a lot of folks since I published The rise and fall of peer review and got a lot of comments, and I’ve realized that when scientists tell me, “We need to prevent bad research from being published!” they often mean, “We need to prevent people from gaining academic status that they don’t deserve!” That is, to them, the problem with bad research isn’t really that it distorts the scientific record. The problem with bad research is that it’s cheating.
I get that. It’s maddening to watch someone get ahead using shady tactics, and it might seem like the solution is to tighten the rules so we catch more of the cheaters. But that’s weak-link thinking. The real solution is to care less about the hierarchy…
Here’s our reward for a generation of weak-link thinking.
The US government spends ~10x more on science today than it did in 1956, adjusted for inflation. We’ve got loads more scientists, and they publish way more papers. And yet science is less disruptive than ever, scientific productivity has been falling for decades, and scientists rate the discoveries of decades ago as worthier than the discoveries of today. (Reminder, if you want to blame this on ideas getting harder to find, I will fight you.)…
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Whether we realize it or not, we’re always making calls like this. Whenever we demand certificates, credentials, inspections, professionalism, standards, and regulations, we are saying: “this is a weak-link problem; we must prevent the bad!”
Whenever we demand laissez-faire, the cutting of red tape, the letting of a thousand flowers bloom, we are saying: “this is a strong-link problem; we must promote the good!”
When we get this right, we fill the world with good things and rid the world of bad things. When we don’t, we end up stunting science for a generation. Or we end up eating a lot of asparagus beetles…
“Science is a strong-link problem,” from @a_m_mastroianni in @science_seeds.
* James Clerk Maxwell
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As we ponder the process of progress, we might spare a thought for Sir Christopher Wren; he died on this date in 1723. A mathematician and astronomer (who co-founded and later served as president of the Royal Society), he is better remembered as one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history; he was given responsibility for rebuilding 52 churches in the City of London after the Great Fire in 1666, including what is regarded as his masterpiece, St. Paul’s Cathedral, on Ludgate Hill.
Wren, whose scientific work ranged broadly– e.g., he invented a “weather clock” similar to a modern barometer, new engraving methods, and helped develop a blood transfusion technique– was admired by Isaac Newton, as Newton noted in the Principia.
“The spirit of inquiry and the courage to challenge the status quo are at the heart of scientific progress”*…
Adam Mastroianni on the challenges– and opportunities– facing science…
Randomized-controlled trials only caught on about 80 years ago, and whenever I think about that, I have to sit down and catch my breath for a while. The thing everybody agrees is the “gold standard” of evidence, the thing the FDA requires before it will legally allow you to sell a drug—that thing is younger than my grandparents.
There are a few records of things that kind of look like randomized-controlled trials throughout history, but people didn’t really appreciate the importance of RCTs until 1948, when the British Medical Research Council published a trial on streptomycin for tuberculosis. Humans have possessed the methods of randomization for thousands of years—dice, coins, the casting of lots—and we’ve been trying to cure diseases for as long as we’ve been human. Why did it take us so long to put them together?
I think the answer is: first, we had to stop trusting Zeus.
To us, coin flips are random (“Heads: I go first. Tails: you go first.”). But to an ancient human, coin flips aren’t random at all—they reveal the will of the gods (“Heads: Zeus wants me to go first. Tails: Zeus wants you to go first”). In the Bible, for instance, people are always casting lots to figure out what God wants them to do: which goat to kill, who should get each tract of land, when to start a genocide, etc.
This is, of course, a big problem for running RCTs. If you think that the outcome of a coin flip is meaningful rather than meaningless, you can’t use it to produce two equivalent groups, and you can’t study the impact of doing something to one group and not the other. You can only run a ZCT—a Zeus controlled trial.
It’s easy to see how technology can lead to scientific discoveries. Make microscope -> discover mitochondria.
Clearly, though, sometimes those technologies get invented entirely inside our heads. Stop trusting Zeus -> develop RCTs.
Which raises the question: what mental technologies haven’t we invented yet? What brain switches are just waiting to be flipped?…
On reinvigorating science: “Declining trust in Zeus is a technology,” from @a_m_mastroianni.
Apposite to an issue he raises: “Citation cartels help some mathematicians—and their universities—climb the rankings,” from @ScienceMagazine.
[Image above: source]
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As we deliberate on discovery, we might send micro-biological birthday greetings to a woman who modeled the attitude and behavior that Mastroianni suggests: Ruth Sager; she was born on this date in 1918. A pioneering geneticist, she had, in effect, two careers.
In the 1950s and 1960s, she pioneered the field of cytoplasmic genetics by discovering transmission of genetic traits through chloroplast DNA, the first known example of genetics not involving the cell nucleus. She identified a second set of genes were found outside of the cell’s nucleus, which, even though they were nonchrosomomal, also influenced inherited characteristics. The academic community did not acknowledge the significance of her contribution until after the second wave of feminism in the 1970s.
Then, in the early 1970s, she moved into cancer genetics (with a specific focus on breast cancer); she proposed and investigated the roles of tumor suppressor genes. She identified over 100 potential tumor suppressor genes, developed cell culture methods to study normal and cancerous human and other mammalian cells in the laboratory, and pioneered the research into “expression genetics,” the study of altered gene expression.
“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”*…
… and, Rachael Scarborough King and Seth Rudy argue, to serve a clear purpose…
Right now, many forms of knowledge production seem to be facing their end. The crisis of the humanities has reached a tipping point of financial and popular disinvestment, while technological advances such as new artificial intelligence programmes may outstrip human ingenuity. As news outlets disappear, extreme political movements question the concept of objectivity and the scientific process. Many of our systems for producing and certifying knowledge have ended or are ending.
We want to offer a new perspective by arguing that it is salutary – or even desirable – for knowledge projects to confront their ends. With humanities scholars, social scientists and natural scientists all forced to defend their work, from accusations of the ‘hoax’ of climate change to assumptions of the ‘uselessness’ of a humanities degree, knowledge producers within and without academia are challenged to articulate why they do what they do and, we suggest, when they might be done. The prospect of an artificially or externally imposed end can help clarify both the purpose and endpoint of our scholarship.
We believe the time has come for scholars across fields to reorient their work around the question of ‘ends’. This need not mean acquiescence to the logics of either economic utilitarianism or partisan fealty that have already proved so damaging to 21st-century institutions. But avoiding the question will not solve the problem. If we want the university to remain a viable space for knowledge production, then scholars across disciplines must be able to identify the goal of their work – in part to advance the Enlightenment project of ‘useful knowledge’ and in part to defend themselves from public and political mischaracterisation.
Our volume The Ends of Knowledge: Outcomes and Endpoints Across the Arts and Sciences (2023) asks how we should understand the ends of knowledge today. What is the relationship between an individual knowledge project – say, an experiment on a fruit fly, a reading of a poem, or the creation of a Large Language Model – and the aim of a discipline or field? In areas ranging from physics to literary studies to activism to climate science, we asked practitioners to consider the ends of their work – its purpose – as well as its end: the point at which it might be complete. The responses showed surprising points of commonality in identifying the ends of knowledge, as well as the value of having the end in sight…
Read on for a provocative case that academics need to think harder about the purpose of their disciplines and a consideration of whether some of those should come to an end: “The Ends of Knowledge,” in @aeonmag.
* Albert Einstein
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As we contemplate conclusions, we might recall that it was on this date in 1869 that the first issue of the journal Nature was published. Taking it’s title from a line of Wordsworth’s (“To the solid ground of nature trusts the Mind that builds for aye”), its aim was to “provide cultivated readers with an accessible forum for reading about advances in scientific knowledge.” It remains a weekly, international, interdisciplinary journal of science, one of the few remaining that publish across a wide array of fields. It is consistently ranked the world’s most cited scientific journal and is ascribed an impact factor of approximately 64.8, making it one of the world’s top academic journals.
“I don’t think academic writing ever was wonderful”*…
Academic writing is famously abstruse. But, Stefan Washietl, founder of Paperpile, reminds us, it isn’t always so. As Rob Beschizza observes…
Stefan Washietl collected the shortest scientific papers. Some are unvarnished mathematical proofs, some are humor to amusing or incisive ends, others are clever-dickery that shoves the conclusion into the abstract. All are wonderful!…
Accessible academia: treat yourself to “The Shortest Papers Ever Published,” from @washietl and @paperpile via @Beschizza in @BoingBoing.
* Stephen Jay Gould
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As we go for the gist, we might send voluminous birthday greetings to Constantine Samuel Rafinesque; he was born on this date in 1783. An autodidact naturalist, traveler, and writer who, in spite of work of variable reliability, substantially expanded knowledge via his extensive travels, collecting, cataloging, and naming huge numbers of plants and some animals. Among these are many new species he is credited with being the first to describe.
Years ahead of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, Rafinesque conceived his own ideas. He thought that species had, even within the timeframe of a century, a continuing tendency for varieties to appear that would diverge in their characteristics to the point of forming new species. Accordingly, he was over-enthusiastic at distinguishing what he called new species.
Rafinesque wrote prolifically, and often self-published. His work varied from brilliant insightfulness to carelessness, and raised the eyebrows– and sometimes the ire– of his scientific contemporaries. Indeed, he so incensed John James Audubon with his belief that Audubon has included unnamed species in his sketches of birds, that Audubon pranked him, feeding him sketches of imaginary fish… which Rafinesque believed and included in his writings, where (for 50 years or so) they remained as part of the scientific record.
“Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade since it consists principally of dealings with men”*…
Alter the status of women and you have affected all the most intimate and significant nodes of life: the relation of wife to husband, mother to child, sister to sibling, daughter to parents, worker to coworkers, and employee to employer (or vice versa). This change in women’s standing that happened what seems like yesterday, and is still happening today at an accelerated rate, is the most profound revolution that can take place in a society. It takes and gives energy to all the other reforms of our time. After all, the civil rights movement involves black women, the LGBTQ movement concerns lesbians, the disability rights movement affects disabled women, health care reforms implicate women care-givers and the objects of their care. Raise any part of our society to a more just condition and justice for women is centrally at issue. It is the reform of all reforms and the basic measure of our progress…
The inestimable Gary Wills recounts “My Education in the Patriarchy.”
For a powerful way to address this opportunity globally, consider Landesa.
* J Chance
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As we think inclusively, we might recall that it was on this date in 1890 that journalist Nellie Bly began her 72-day trip around the world.
In 1888, Bly suggested to her editor at the New York World that she take a trip around the world, attempting to turn the fictional Around the World in Eighty Days into fact for the first time. A year later, at 9:40 a.m. on November 14, 1889, with two days’ notice, she boarded the steamer Augusta Victoria, and began her 24,899-mile journey.
She brought with her the dress she was wearing, a sturdy overcoat, several changes of underwear, and a small travel bag carrying her toiletry essentials. She carried most of her money (£200 in English bank notes and gold in total as well as some American currency) in a bag tied around her neck.
Bly traveled through England, France (where she met Jules Verne in Amiens), Brindisi, the Suez Canal, Colombo (Ceylon), the Straits Settlements of Penang and Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan. Just over seventy-two days after her departure from Hoboken, having used steamships and existing railway lines, Bly was back in New York; she beat Phileas Fogg‘s time by almost 8 days.
Nellie Bly, in a publicity photo for her around-the-world voyage. Caption on the original photo reads: “Nellie Bly, The New York WORLD’S correspondent who placed a girdle round the earth in 72 days, 6 hours, and 11 minutes.”
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