Comment by jupiter90000 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jupiter90000 | Hacker News Reader

Is great science done anymore? It seems like there were prolific scientists making incredible advances directly impacting the standard of living of humans for a period, and now we're coasting and making small incremental changes. I'm sure some folks here have examples of amazing things being done in science now, but I don't seem to be noticing the discoveries impacting the same way that seemed to be happening in 1900-2000 era. We're moving into another dark age. Kidding about that last part, and I actually do love science.

It just seems like before people were making amazing discoveries and now it's like "let's make facebook work better and get everyone addicted to smartphones and track 'em so we can sell stuff. Starbucks and iPhones. Donald Trump."

In terms of the article, I don't see how knowing math could be anything but helpful for doing great science. Maybe one doesn't have to be an expert, but to pretend it couldn't be helpful seems silly. Maybe I don't need to know how to spell words to do great science either, but conveying ideas in a clear manner is so important. Hence math.

I don't agree...

"The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote... Our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals." Albert A. Michelson, speech given in 1894 at the dedication of Ryerson Physics Lab, University of Chicago.

Cool quote, thanks. Guess I'll want to keep an open mind about it all..

Death years of these guys: Maxwell (1879), Darwin (1882), Newton (1727), Mendeleev (1907). So it seems he was right. We have been just applying the science of the giants for the past 122 years.

> Is great science done anymore?

Yes. The problem is not a lack of excellent scientific results, the problem is the sheer number of mediocre people in the field and the amount of trash that's published as though it was either significant or science. These mediocre results tend to hide the high-quality work.

My theory is that there are just as many original thinkers as ever lived, but the noise level is much higher now, and scientific publications tend to publish page fillers with little or no significance or that are simply wrong:

http://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-f...

In my opinion, the problem is not that science is over, the problem is that it's become to a large extent a business instead of an exploration of nature for the sake of exploration.

Your theory makes sense to me -- it seems the number of PhDs produced yearly increased greatly since around 1960 [1][2]. Since maintaining a career in science requires journal publication, I'm sure this correlates with incredible increases in published results over the past (say pre-1960). Perhaps the mediocre results are published by those wanting to 'look like a productive scientist' without adding much to the knowledge-base. The result being what you're mentioning, and maybe what I'm noticing too.

[1] http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf06319/figures/fig02-04.htm

[2] http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf12303/

The low-hanging fruit was picked way back.

However, these small, incremental changes are going to pile up and amount to what ends up being a qualitative change.

Also: I'd not fear a new dark age. Chinese or other East-Asians are bound to get to the business of modifying embryos for higher mathematical intelligence before 2060. That's going to induce quite a jolt for the sciences, even if 3/4 of those kids end up doing something else.

Plenty from finding a Higgs-Boson compatible particle and PDS 456 to genome mapping to water on mars. Directly applicable would be the new antibiotic, name escapes me and well genome mapping has plenty of directly applicable implications etc.

Maybe it's the case of hindsight is 20-20 type of thing for me... the previous discoveries have a visible impact on my life. I'll have to give the more recent ones time to play out and see what happens.

We're also on the verge of eradicating both polio and guinea worm.

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