
Science in the age of selfies - ColinWright
http://www.pnas.org/content/113/34/9384.long
======
suchow
The premise that scientific progress has been slower in the past 50 years than
in the 50 before that, and incremental in a way that it was not in the past,
seems untenable to me and consistent with the authors being nostalgic for an
earlier time that perhaps does not exist. I’m pretty sure someone in 1965
would be impressed to hear that (1) we can engineer viruses that allow in vivo
neurons to be controlled by light; (2) we can build robots that use
reinforcement learning and ML techniques to drive around a city; or (3) we
discovered that humans interbred with Neanderthal, by means of sequencing
40k-year-old bones. To me these projects seem as impressive as any of the
past. They all benefited from massive collaborations and would have been
impossible to do alone, even by a world-class genius with a plenitude of
coffee, time, and tenure.

I also object to a few more minor points. Today we have _many_ of yesteryear’s
Bell Labs and new ones spring up every year. I think we might be in the most
active time period ever for independent and industrial research labs —
consider for example OpenAI, the Allen Institute, RAND corporation, Charles
River laboratories, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Facebook, 2AI labs,
Draper Laboratory, YC Research, IBM Watson Group, Communications Design Group,
Xerox PARC, fivethirtyeight, New York Times R&D lab, Microsoft Research* ,
Google* , Bose Corporation, and SRI, not to mention the hundreds of biotech
startups and tech companies that do applied reseach (*s because they are
acknowledged in the article). Interestingly, I think Nokia Bell Labs might
itself qualify as a modern Bell Labs — it still exists, and in 2014 a
scientist was awarded the Nobel Prize for work done there in the 1980s, which
is after the authors’ cutoff.

Furthermore, I’d be interested in seeing evidence that discoveries of the past
can be at least in part attributed to a lack of communication between the
scientist and others, and that today’s levels of communication are greater and
that it has a negative impact. I have evidence that at least one world-class
scientist of the past, Francis Galton, spent a ton of time communicating with
others and used what he learned from that communication as a core part of his
most important works (see, in particular, his autobiography, which discusses
his communication in detail). Similarly, at least some classic big discoveries
of the past, such as Watson & Crick’s DNA work, was possible only because
there was more than one person involved — in fact, more than two.

~~~
gaius
It just depends on the field really. If aviation was your thing you would be
amazed at the progress from biplanes to space travel in 1915-1965. But if you
jumped forwards from 1965 to 2015 you might wonder what progress had been
made, or even if we had gone backwards. Where's the lunar colony? In 1965 they
were confident that fusion power was 30 years in the future. Right now, we
think the same thing!

~~~
digi_owl
All fields seems to follow something like an S curve.

It starts off slowly as the foundation is laid (aerodynamic understanding,
electric generator, etc etc) then then goes near vertical for a number of
decades as the possibilities that said foundation unlocked gets plucked.

And then it flattens out again as it starts running into physical limitations
etc.

Never mind that the last century or so saw two massive, highly technological,
wars. Wars, to be a bit cynical, is the one thing that seems to get a free
pass when it comes to the politics of money.

~~~
gaius
And nothing focuses the mind like an existential threat...

~~~
dredmorbius
Oh, we have those.

~~~
digi_owl
Just not ones you can set an army on...

~~~
dredmorbius
Actually, several of them, rather. Though in a Manhattan Project sense (or
Apollo Project if you prefer), rather than a WWII sense.

------
Futurebot
Great piece. It's a great example of the dark sides of results-orientation,
accountability, transparency, and the fear of punishment from spending "Other
People's Money." These things are good, but when they take over the entire
process, we've got problems; things need to swing back and settle into a new
equilibrium that's more tolerant.

These are exactly the kind of things that governments and universities with
large endowments were good at funding. Right now, we're dependent on large
corporations like Alphabet subsidizing moonshots to do this kind of basic
research (and as some recent articles indicate, investors are already getting
antsy about these.)

Short-termism discourages deep thinking and deep working. VCs already
understand that one winner subsidizes all the losers; so too is it with basic
/ speculative research. Until we're will to culturally accept, openly and
without reservation, that there will be waste and that fact is OK, we're not
going to get anywhere.

------
user402
"This is not to deny that our time traveler would find the Internet, new
medical imaging devices, advances in molecular biology and gene editing, the
verification of gravity waves, and other inventions and discoveries
remarkable, nor to deny that these developments often required leaps of
imagination, deep mathematical analyses, and hard-earned technical know-how.
Nevertheless..."

You have to be enormously jaded to list off a bunch of huge advances and then
basically say...meh. How doesn't this line invalidate everything that follows
it?

~~~
gumby
I disagree with the author but this position is consistent with his thesis:
that _basic science_ hasn't advanced as dramatically in the past half century
as it did in the preceding half century, even if its exploitation has.

The reason I disagree with the author is that there's an ebb and flow, and the
advances of the period 1915-1965 built on a lot of other interesting work done
before 1915 (the period from Maxwell to the end of WWI were amazing too;
Einstein's three astonishing papers dated from 1905 and of course themselves
built upon prior work).

I think we're just in a tough period where we've reached the limits of our
current tools (both theoretical/mathematical and experimental) -- essentially
the rowboats of physics and biology are wallowing while people understand the
implications and try to catch up.

~~~
user402
Re: "basic science", what about "advances in molecular biology and gene
editing"? I don't know exactly what the authors have in mind, but CRISPR-Cas,
recombinant DNA, RNA interference, identity of the hox genes, DNA
sequencing...all of these were huge advances in basic science in the last 50
years (some of them are also now being used practically).

I guess it's tough to really put myself in the shoes of someone living 75
years ago, but from where I'm sitting (I'm a biologist) the basic science is
moving so unbelievably fast it's exhilarating.

------
return0
The main reason imho is that academia is overcrowded. When a field becomes
crowded, popularity starts weighing more than inventiveness, perseverence,
creativity and risk-taking. It may sound counterintuitive, but maybe they
should _reduce_ public spending for research.

~~~
nicklaf
I think this is a very good point. Population density seems to play a crucial
role in the dynamics of group behavior, not just in phenomenon of the article,
but in many other aspects of society as well.

------
aj7
1\. Hand someone from 1965 an Iphone. 2\. Let her be discharged from the
hospital the next day, after robotic surgery for stage 1 ovarian cancer. (A
lot of tissue was left in the hospital.) 3\. His slower (535mph vs 600 mph)
cross country round trip only cost him $60 in 1965 dollars. 4\. Oh, we've
detected 2 gravitational wave events. 5\. Oh, we've detected an elementary
particle with the mass of a Barium atom. 6\. We've detected superconductivity
at temperatures higher than dry ice. 7\. Lasers are ubiquitous and some are
more than 50% efficient, energy in to laser energy out. The developed world
runs on 1.5 um laser light. 8\. Two groups figured out how to control-x
control-v DNA.

But yes, the share of innovation due to professors has gone down, as complex
work is now done by millions, and driven by consumers, not philosophical
questions.

------
tribune
The article mentions how many discoveries come from individuals. I think it's
worth considering that human knowledge and technology may be so advanced that
a single individual, however great their creativity and intelligence, simply
can't make a large contribution like they used to be able to.

------
auggierose
In principle I like the article, because it points out the problems with doing
research today. But I don't like that the proposed solution is given so
quickly, without more discussion about the ups and downs of it. Basically the
article falls into the same trap that it describes.

------
ColinWright
Lots pf people have moaned about this problem, but this is a clean description
of the situation, the forces that might be creating it, and a clear, simple
possible solution.

No doubt the proposed solution has problems of its own, but it is certainly an
interesting idea.

~~~
return0
Wrt basic science, that would imply that two people can reason and understand
deeper than one person, which afaik is not true.

------
merraksh
_In academia, the two most important sources of feedback scientists receive
about their performance are the written evaluations following the submission
of papers for publication and proposals for research funding. Unfortunately,
in both cases, the peer review process rarely supports pursuing paths that
sharply diverge from the mainstream direction, or even from researchers’ own
previously published work._

Hmmm. All referee reports I receive or write usually revolve around novelty of
the idea. Incremental work gets published too, but not if it's only a small
delta w.r.t. previous work.

------
teddyh
The article fails to mention patents, which have come to cover more and more.

~~~
Fede_V
That doesn't really affect university research that much. It's a much bigger
deal in private companies, obviously.

------
cs2818
As someone who has been in grad school way too long this article provides a
succinct description of the reason I hesitate to consider an academic career.

However, I'm not sure the suggested solution at the end of the article is
viable. Many successful researchers have learned that funding and reputation
are based on creating and managing a brand, with scientific substance being a
secondary consideration. I feel like it will be difficult to prevent that from
factoring into hiring decisions regardless of the metrics used.

