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Comment by evacchi | Hacker News Reader

I'd say it produces enough. At the cost of the health of the researchers. Many people (including me) leave not because they do not like research, but because they have grown to hate the environment.

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I can relate to that. I would go as far as hate, but definitely disappointed. As an PhD in CS I've seen my share of pressure and I agree completely that it's just not a way to do meaningful research as much as it's mass production of small incremental steps. It's debatable whether big breakthroughs Van happen this way

I totally agree with the 'mass production' observation. I have just submitted my thesis, on day one I was told almost verbatim, "do not expect to contribute anything of note". It feels like they do not even want you to try.

Big breakthroughs too are really just a collection of small incremental steps -- but the observer isn't aware of the intermediate steps.

Well, this is isn't always the case. Most of the time they are not really hidden, they are just a huge amount of new results not correlated with each other, that everyone knows about. Then someone comes and finds the thing that correlates them all. Think about special relativity and what will probably happen when we will finally solve the general relativity/quantum theory riddle.

Same here.

> At the cost of the health of the researchers.

Absolutely. We burn through our scientists (and those who want to become ones) at an incredible rate.

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