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Comment by DonCopal | Hacker News Reader

If publish-or-perish didn't exist in his time, then what criteria was used back then for academic assessment? He doesn't say that in the article.

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Social inequalities and limited access to higher education created a high barrier of entry. Economy was strong, positivist, the status of doctors was still high and they had more agency into how they spend their money, overall, assessment of productivity was less of an issue because there was enough money for science.

I'm curious if the meritocratic system that we have now in a way is counterproductive. It assumes that only the smartest and best could advance scientific knowledge, so we have a system that tries to filter for them, but obviously, it fails or ends up being a time sync even to those, rendering them less productive.

But maybe this is not what scientific advancement takes. All you might need is randomly choose someone passionate about it, and just give them free reign without condition, no time limits, no stress, to just express their passion.

But the problem is that system is not meritocratic. Otherwise there would be no need for “publish or perish”. PhD is no longer a credible signal, that’s the problem.

The system is meritocratic, you just don't agree with its definition of merit.

I'm enthusiastic about this idea, with the caveat that I worry filtering for passion will be much harder (given that we must assume candidates will actively seek to hack the filtering process) than filtering for ability.

I am pretty sure every scientist would agree. But the issue arise because there are too many scientists/passionate/smart people for limited resources. What you are describing does happen for a selected few, the extremelly gifted esp. in maths and physics live their research career in this bubble.

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