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Comment by ren_engineer | Hacker News Reader

modern academia has become a meta game where its more about being able to navigate the system(get grant funding, go with status quo to get tenure, collude with others for citations, etc.) rather than actually being good at the field. We spend drastically more government money on research funding than in the past yet get less in return

see the Alzheimer's amyloid plaque cartel- https://www.statnews.com/2019/06/25/alzheimers-cabal-thwarte...

https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2019/12/31/Amyloid-plaques-m...

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

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> modern academia has become a meta game where its more about being able to navigate the system rather than actually being good at the field.

Sounds like the entire history of academia (and most human endeavors, honestly)

> We spend drastically more government money on research funding than in the past

You didn't define "in the past" but pure science spending has generally declined as a percentage of GDP and has barely changed in inflation adjusted dollars in the last twenty years.

> yet get less in return*

As measured how?

Don't get fooled by that stat. In actual dollars not inflation adjusted dollars. If the US is making 10% more because exports of coal the fact that they spend 3% on coal investment means science gets more money at a lower percentage.

> Don't get fooled by that stay.

Which stat? The poster didn't provide any.

> In actual dollars not inflation adjusted dollars.

Scientists are paid salaries and need to eat and stuff, so it doesn't really make sense to me to ignore inflation there.

One good reason why the amyloid hypothesis persists in attracting support is that it is currently the only way to account for how the mutations in APP and presenilin cooperate to cause early onset familial Alzheimer's disease.

In particular, out of the 695 amino acids that constitute the APP protein, all the mutations that cause disease are located within the 42 amino acids that comprise the amyloid peptide, or just next to it.

I agree, as someone who's seen how the sausage gets made, it's discouraging that such a noble endeavor remains so vulnerable to financial conflict of interest from the individual to the institutional level.

We'll still ultimately learn more about what's true in our universe, but it will take even longer and be more expensive than necessary.

Agreed. I do sometimes wonder if academia shouldn't be blown up and replaced wholesale with something different.

The new thing would have to have different incentives, or the same problems would just re-occur.

Why blow it up? Just create something that parallels it, and organize it in a way you think will work better. Then we can decide which one to blow up once we see how it measures up.

Some examples of where this is being done: open-access journals, study pre-registration, requirement to publish source code. No one's saying the old way is banned now, it exists in parallel with all those innovations. Some will stick, others will fizzle out.

> Just create something that parallels it

... then see your new system get attacked from all angles by the existing establishment. Smears on TV, 'fact-checkers' in social networks, bans and cancellations, etc.

The stakeholders of the existing system you are trying to replace won't go quietly into the night.

They're not exactly going to go quietly into the night with an attempt to "blow it up" either.

How are the activities you listed a meta game instead of just a regular game with no Greek prefix?

If the game is scientific research, the metagame is as described.

Thanks. I thought the game was ego satisfaction.

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