Let researchers try new paths
nature.com
nature.com
The best I heard on this site was that "alpha is the expected value of p". After a few years of calibration, each field collects just enough data (or adjusts the cutoff) to pump out "statistically significant" results at the appropriate rate. It makes it just hard enough to seem like an accomplishment, but most grad students will get something to publish if they just keep at it.
Of course, that is a totally arbitrary metric that has little to do with the quality of the research.
We set up a control group for science. An entire field of science devoted to studying a phenomenon which doesn't exist. And they still manage to produce tons of significant results and findings, despite using much higher standards than regular social sciences.
That this "phenomenon" does not and cannot exist is the foundational assumption of modern science. Back in the days when the Laws of Thermodynamics were being figured out to describe the properties of steam engines, a few chemists realized that everything in the universe could be described in terms of indivisible 'atoms'.
Atoms aren't indivisible anymore, but the assumption lives on.
Life is much more interesting if one assumes that our 3d-reality is but a projection of a higher-ordered reality.
The J.J. Thomson quote still seems applicable, even if the time horizon is slightly longer:
>>> “If you pay a man a salary for doing research, he and you will want to have something to point to at the end of the year to show that the money has not been wasted. In promising work of the highest class, however, results do not come in this regular fashion, in fact years may pass without any tangible results being obtained, and the position of the paid worker would be very embarrassing and he would naturally take to work on a lower, or at any rate, different plane where he could be sure of getting year by year tangible results which would justify his salary. The position is this: You want this kind of research, but if you pay a man to do it, it will drive him to research of a different kind. The only thing to do is pay him for doing something else and give him enough leisure to do research for the love of it.”
That points towards some plausible answers for supporting non-capital-intensive research (e.g. pay to teach instead). Supporting more capital-intensive research, I really don't know.
10 year fellowships with a guaranteed pension at the end might just do it -- but funding those for youngish researchers, even in pretty small numbers, would be expensive indeed.
These fellowships would not be a replacement for a normal academic position, but a way to give young scientists the breathing room to take a risk on high reward research. Given the chance many would - I certainly would have.
http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jour...
And if over the long period they fail to produce results, even though they try well, maybe let them work together with someone else who is more lucky with hypoetheses ?
(1) "I wouldn't have been able to do my awesome work in today's research climate"
(2) "Nobody believed me, but then I showed them all..."
(3) "I was a destitute street magician until I discovered probability theory and then won a MacArther"
(4) "My first 10^5 experiments were failures, but I persisted."
(5) "I almost failed high school trig" (a) ...because it was too boring for me. (b) ...because i was a misguided pothead back then.
Take these stories as "the set that gets published" because a wide audience feels better about themselves after reading them.
On the other hand, the same public votes for lawmakers who are intent on cutting research funding because they think it is useless (e.g., they randomly pick some funny-sounding grant from NSF, read it on TV in some sarcastic voice, and then declare that all research is bunk).
I see the NSF become less exploratory because of the pressure to "have practical impact," and I believe that is driven by one particular political party in the US.
When so many people present well-conceived ideas that will at least have some payoff (at least in terms of publications), it is hard to justify supporting wonky ideas by people who don't show evidence of mastery in the new area.
How many of you have a total-crank uncle who thinks he has a better idea for solar cells, electric cars, or XYZ?
Well, the same holds if you substitute "uncle" for "professor at a tier-one research university."
Actually opening science to hobbyists would be a good idea. I come from a country where diploma are required to be philosophes, artists and scientists however we hardly win any Nobel prizes or have good artists, while we had hobbyists who actually discovered stuff: Rousseau applied math for cheating the national lottery, Lavoisier discovered the composition of air and the azote...my grandfather was like that.
But, I guess people already know diploma don't make you anything more than a person with a nice paper to hang on your wall.
The problem is mainly the respect of institutions.
And you're probably not going to be able to do that, especially legally, if you live in a crowded apartment in a city, plus the days of doing experiments at a country home, or with very simple apparatus albeit in a formal lab like the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory, seem to be largely over due to the picking of all the low hanging fruit, although I'm sure there are niches where this isn't true, or quite so bad.
Some of this will depend on resourcefulness, like finding bargains on used equipment, but that circles back to first being a part of the scientific community so you've got a network to find out about those opportunities in the first place.
It isn't quite an age thing as much as it is a "establishment" thing. The establishment is, if you will, older and more established than any one individual, old or young.