Science in the age of selfies
pnas.org
pnas.org
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.
I'm not saying it's a perfect system, or it wouldn't be nice to a be a little less competitive, easier to get longer-term grants, more stable and certain paths for careers, etc – but to say the system is not producing important results is in my opinion wrong.
Can you share some with us that we might not have heard about outside of the field of biology? I'd love to share a little of the excitement. :)
"Shinya Yamanaka proved that introduction of a small set of transcription factors into a differentiated cell was sufficient to revert the cell to a pluripotent state. Yamanaka focused on factors that are important for maintaining pluripotency in embryonic stem (ES) cells"
That you can revert a differentiated cell into a pluripotent embryonic stem cell using just four transcription factors is astounding.
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.
You want spectacular. You missed the real advances.
Going from steam turbine to kerosene-fueled jet engine took some doing, but the fundamental concept had been validated. What needed to happen were improvements in fluid mechanics, in materials science, in machining, and in the iterative process of design, build, test, and refinement that simply takes build cycles.
Both the Germans and British were flying jet-powered aircraft by the end of WWII (though only the Germans flew these in combat IIRC). So again, the fundamental principles had been worked out, but iterating on design took more development.
I'm kicking around an ontology of technological mechanisms (or dynamics), which tries to detail what the specific bases of technological change are.
https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/klsjjjzzl9plqxz-ms8nww
Taking the case of the jet engine:
* The engine itself is an energy transformation system (converting fuel to thrust), and relies on numerous other energy transmission and transformation components (shafts, bearings, fan blades, turbine blades, actuators).
* It relies on fuel -- vast amounts of cheap liquid hydrocarbons, or similarly energy-dense fuels which are safe and convenient to handle.
* It requires a fundamental understanding of fluid dynamics -- systemic scientific knowledge.
* It requires materials capable of supporting operation under the conditions of a jet engine: very high RPM, high stress, high thermal load, high pressure load, resistance to material creep, resistance to vapour or cavitation damage, etc. Containment that is light but effective for the fan casing itself.
* High levels of precision in specification, machining, and inspection of components.
* Specific imaging and sensing capabilities (multiple x-ray, acoustic, and other sensing beyond mere human abilities) are required.
* Organisational structures capabile of designing, producing, operating, and maintaining highly technical equipment.
* Information recording, processing, and transmission of the technical requirements for building, operating, and maintaining highly technical equipment.
* The technical domain skills required to design, build, operate, and maintain HTE.
* Understandings and mitigation of adverse consequences of design and operations.
Vaclav Smil has a book dedicated to the two most significant prime movers of the 20th century, diesel engines and gas turbines, which might have a better breakdown of power output over time. In his earlier Energy in World History (1994), his plot of gas turbine outputs from about 1940 - 1990 increases from about 10^5 watts to 10^8 watts, with a distinct trailing off toward the last decade or two of the plot. (Steam turbines exceed these with maximum power in the gigawatt range.)
The gas turbine plot on a log-linear scale (log power, linear time) is largely linear through the 1970s, though detail is low. Sources aren't provided, I suspect this is Smil's own compilation.
"...the pace of fundamental innovation, the kinds of theories and engineering practices that will feed the pipeline of future progress, appears, to some observers, including us, to be slowing..."
That's not to say that we haven't accumulated a tremendous amount of knowledge and techniques, but our findings don't seem to be simplifying in a way that makes them easier to understand.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
No doubt the proposed solution has problems of its own, but it is certainly an interesting idea.
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.
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.