I agree, but I think the article had the reason, "Stable Funding".
The few profs I have run into over the years largest worry is getting grants. Thus the preoccupation with publications.
Where I work, it seems this trend is hitting commercial labs too, researchers are slowly being forced to "produce". Unless something changes, research for its own sake seems to be a rare thing, at least in the US.
> Where I work, it seems this trend is hitting commercial labs too, researchers are slowly being forced to "produce".
Even better, this is often the same productivity metric: papers. Though papers can be good, I'd much prefer to _build_ stuff, and measuring productivity by paper count & journal "impact" undercuts the research itself and its productisation.
>Riordan attributed the success of Bell Labs to the “combination of stable funding and long-term thinking”1.
This is not fantasy, it is with 20/20 hindsight.
Actually the same hindsight I had as a teenager, although I'm old enough so most of that would have to be considered as foresight by the time Riordan's article came out.
In the 1960's there was even an experimental school or two intended to be kind of a pipeline to Bell labs, to select & prepare preteens for later scientific PhD programs and eventual leadership if not at Bell, then places like NASA, IBM, National Labs, etc. Working for Messrs Hewlett and Packard was right up there too.
>most importantly the freedom and time to pursue any research interest is a luxury very few scientists in academia or other research organizations can afford.
There will always be very few positions where you can utilize millions of dollars of resources to experiment however you would like.
>Kelly believed that to achieve outstanding results an organization needs a critical mass of talented people with different skills. He was looking to hire men (remember this is the 1950s!) “of the same high quality as are required for distinguished pure research in universities”5. Attracting such talent was not a problem, rather the challenge was to create the right environment for it to thrive. “We give much attention to the maintenance of an atmosphere of freedom and an environment stimulating to scholarship and scientific research interest. It is most important to limit their work to that of research”5. Kelly believed that any distractions would make researchers lose “contact with the forefront of their scientific interest”5 and decrease their productivity in research. Above all, Kelly saw research as a “non-scheduled area of work”4, translating to no deadlines, objectives or progress reports.
This was also with 20/20 hindsight, and it has been possible to make decades of conceptual progress since then, too bad Bell Labs couldn't remain in existence to most likely participate.
Anyway, so without stable funding as a teenager that all left me with nothing but the long-term thinking, but at least I got a head start :)
But missing that key element, success would certainly not be achieved on the same financial terms or scale as at Bell.
Then again places like Bell weren't going to be there forever.
Accepting this, I persevered a full decade of continuous improvement until I could leverage far fewer resources to equal the accomplishments of my peers.
Continuing on the same course was a no-brainer and has allowed for pulling ahead in a number of areas.
Once I got to the point where I could solve some problems for billion-dollar companies faster than their researchers could do themselves, I never looked back.
Without a big enough organization you don't achieve critical mass, but I was raised to be a businessman anyway even if it could be a distraction from research, I just worked longer hours so the experiments themselves are not less than a full-time effort. And at least I own everything I invented while I was an entrepreneur.
>I'd much prefer to _build_ stuff
Me too, since there's negative incentive to disclose my findings to potential competitors, so less time wasted at the desk on publications or lack-of-progress reports, and more time at the bench.
The few profs I have run into over the years largest worry is getting grants. Thus the preoccupation with publications.
Where I work, it seems this trend is hitting commercial labs too, researchers are slowly being forced to "produce". Unless something changes, research for its own sake seems to be a rare thing, at least in the US.