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I think we underestimate the amount of politics that was going on in science previously.

Really compared to the shenanigans with Newton, Leibnitz or Hooke and Newton, much of what we see today is quite harmless. Or take for a more recent example Teller and Oppenheimer. I think in science (but not only in science) we tend to idealise the old days and scientists, because we remember the discoveries not the politics and their personal flaws. I would even argue that this greatly demonstrates the success of the scientific process. In the end the best science won, despite all the political infighting.

Teller touches upon this subject. In an interview published on YouTube, he says, increasing scholarships and science funding further doesn’t help; because money doesn’t buy science, money buys technology; we actually don’t have enough scientists on whom to spend the money. And that, most of the advances in quantum mechanics and atomic physics were made by individuals genuinely interested in problems in these domains, and worked in modest conditions. Quantum mechanics theory took practically nothing to develop.

Politics, of course, is part of the humanity, but it manifests differently in different environments (academia vs industry, or then vs now). There is undoubtedly politics in industry, however, there are also products and reality checks. The companies won’t survive if they operate entirely based on politics. In academia, on the other hand, the environmental feedback can be weaker depending on the subject; there, politics could come to the fore. Amusingly, Kissinger said, politics in academia is specially vicious precisely because the stakes are so low.

As for then versus now, there used to be a lot of low-hanging fruit that could be taken until 1980s, and there weren’t many researchers. But now there are fewer accessible opportunities, with far more researchers. If you consider that the size of the cake has not increased proportionally (due to factors mentioned in the article), while the number of players has increased substantially, you may conclude that the environment has become much more competitive. Increased competition indicates increased politics, emphasis on selling, networking, and other non-scientific factors relevant to industry, except there you actually get paid. The conditions are nowadays totally different. There all sorts of performance metrics (H-index, citations, number of papers etc), that have become target, in place of good science, which are gamed.

The argument does not hold any sort of deeper inspection. The greats of quantum mechanics, people like Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrödinger etc. we're all professors, which at the time put you up in the highest ranks of the middle class or the lower upper class + the status of the title it implied in Germany for example. They were amongst the highest paid salaried employees. In comparison now a typical professor salary is lower than what many junior software developers get straight out of undergrad. And that is after years of job uncertainty through PhD, postdocs and tenure track. Essentially the only ones left do out of idealism. (I also believe this long uncertainty is a big factor in the large gender imbalance, women are much less tolerant of this then men)

The other irony is that Teller himself was part (came out) of one of the biggest counter examples. The Los Alamos project pushed unprecedented funding into science, and it let to many discoveries that would have taken decades longer otherwise.

Since you specifically mention Germany: professors are incredibly well paid in Germany and also enjoy high social status. Of course, a lot of them don't do any science, they are the CEO equivalent of an institute.

Salaries for PhDs and PostDocs are a different story of course. They are alright in theory, but often you can only get a part time job, which in reality means a > full time job with a part time salary.

I was specifically talking about the days of the founders of quantum mechanics or even the times of Teller et al.. Today professors are in fact not that incredibly paid anymore in Germany. Sure they still have reasonably high salaries but compared to junior developers they earn approximately the same. Regarding PhD students yes depending on field, you might get a half position, however I'm not aware that postdocs get low paid positions. Compared to the US differences between professor and PhD salaries are much lower AFAIK.

>professors are incredibly well paid in Germany and also enjoy high social status.

Around 80k €/year as W2 professor base salary

Post-tax 55k €

Guess that might be considered incredibly well paid in Germany

I can't decide whether Teller's head is stuck up the rafters of the ivory tower he lives in or whether it is held up where the sun does not shine. There are so many students in academia searching for the magic path through graduate school where you can get a permanent role either in teaching or tenureship (research) that it is becoming a crisis for both STEM fields and otherwise. It is easy for him to preach when he is one of the few that have "made it" through a combination of intellectual pedigree, geopolitical necessity, and the plucking of low hanging fruits in an emerging field.

Yeah I really don't understand what he's saying there - where does he think his salary comes from? Money buys those interested individuals time to pursue that interest, and the more of it we have the more people we can put in the right time and place to find the next big thing.

I think the key point is the "and worked in modest conditions", emphasis on modest.

Injecting a ton of money creates perverse incentives and attracts people who are not interested pursuing something out of curiosity and interest, but for the money.

I think it probably creates a hostile environment for people who are there out of pure interest, because if there is a way to earn more money/status/power/whatever by doing something other than good work people will do it. So you effectively get punished for doing what you're supposed to instead of playing the game.

I think the "professional money extractor" explanation here is an apt description: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18003253.

Academia is a career, not some sort of side project for bored scientists. We don't measure the competence of developers by the time they spend on side projects outside of work. You don't have to be full of visionary ideas to do research, and talent is everywhere. Teller would't be where he was had he been born in South America or Africa.

If you only give money and positions to people with "passion" when there is a clear demand for more, that's called exploitation. Maybe consider becoming an aerospace investor instead, that field is full of talent chasing after lost dreams for pennies. If you are a software engineer on this forum, you know damn well what your net worth is in the current North American market compared to the other legacy engineering fields. It is patronizing to expect the other scientific fields to be worth "less" than CS.

> Injecting a ton of money creates perverse incentives and attracts people who are not interested pursuing something out of curiosity and interest, but for the money.

That's just an excuse to exploit people. The same nonsense as with teachers. "We want teachers that are passionate, not there just for the money". Bah.

In the end we're trying to get stuff done, and it doesn't really matter whether the pipes are kept clean by somebody really passionate for sanitation, or somebody who just thinks the pay is good enough to tolerate the smell.

> because money doesn’t buy science, money buys technology; we actually don’t have enough scientists on whom to spend the money.

I can only speak from personal experience and observations in my environment, but to me this statement sound like a dark, cynical joke.

There is plenty of scientists who would love to work on interesting things, are hired as scientists, but once they are hired, no one actually lets them work on scientific problems.

this is restricted in physics, e.g., life sciences need as more as they can get money, they even do not have enough money to pay assistant, there are so many species waiting for identifying, even use old protocol, scientists still need to pay salary, specimen storage fees...

I often wonder about this, and have talked about this all with older colleagues. My sense is some things were the same, but others were really different.

Even looking at the peer review process: it was much more informal in the distant past, and maybe more akin to what happens today with invited papers in my experience, or with small open source software projects.

There were certaintly very petty but intense personal squabbles in the past but that's a bit different from the pervasive structural issues in science today.

At some level too, I don't care what it was like 100 years ago. I can still see the problems today.

Peer review really was different in the past. Hell, Nature even used to occasionally accept papers without any review at all until the mid-1970s, if the editor thought they would provoke good discussions.

Watson and Crick's famous 1953 paper where they presented the double helix of DNA is one such example.

Yes I didn't mean to say that there are no issues in science. I disagree that politics and personalities are a big part though. I think we have huge structural issues, requirements and pressures are increasing constantly, the way into science takes much longer and much talent is burnt out in the process, current funding favors short term "low risk" research and disincentives trying out new things or changing direction/field...

My sense is the structural issues amplify the political and personality issues, in the sense that when those things arise they can maybe have bigger effects than in the past. But that's just speculation.

I wish things like the research in this blog post got more attention, because it's important in understanding how things have and have not changed.

Heck, you can see this in the difference between member contributed submissions to PNAS and ones that go through the normal system.

Yup, the point of the “scientific method” is that it works regardless of petty personal politics, so long as empirical evidence remains the standard.

To some extent it depends on the weakness of humans for status and competition, because they are powerful motivators to drive advances.

Science continues to work, but the work of being a "scientist" really sucks because of this stuff.

I personally left science because I could see it had 98% overlap with what I'd do as an engineer (or entrepreneur, in the case of a PI), with a tiny fraction of the monetary benefit. Being a winner in that system is a great life, but it rests upon a huge pyramid of people who are working their butts off at low pay and lower prestige, for a brass ring that few will ever grasp.

I agree with you. Being a scientist has become worse (although I would argue that is true for many other jobs as well). A PI nowadays really works like the leader of a small startup constantly looking for money to keep the ship afloat without the prospect of a big payout at the end.

This.

I am a PI.

What I spent my day doing was dealing with managerial tasks, fiddly stuff for funding applications, etc.

I got to actually code for a whole day last week, and it was marvelous. It was also only possible because it was an all-hands-on-deck, everything else can wait situation.

I spent like 10 total hours writing analytical code in 2020; maybe another 100 hours of analytic design. The rest was meetings, politics, coordination. I got a national award and millions in funding. I would trade it for more time playing with the puzzles. Do I feel good that my people got published and covered rent, hit major life goals (marriages, home purchases)? Yes. But, man, do I wish I got to do more science…

> A PI nowadays really works like the leader of a small startup constantly looking for money to keep the ship afloat without the prospect of a big payout at the end.

I said exactly the same thing when I first left academia for tech, and people would look at me suspiciously and ask why I'd ever do such a thing. I looked at every PI I knew, and saw a task essentially identical to running a startup, but with no financial upside -- and the downside risk of being jobless and adrift if you don't get tenure.

Weren't scientists of old after endowments from kings and royalty, too? Further, I seem to recall a Vertiasium about the guy who solved the cubic, fighting for a position at a college by dethroning another professor through an academic duel.

I agree, modern academia seems to be more about meta-skills of gaming the system and playing politics rather than who is the best at actual research. Probably why so many potential academics just go into private industry

>I don’t think this system will last for too long. Balaji has a good prediction on that.

link?

He addressed this topic in a podcast around two years ago (he has too many podcasts to find it).

He was asked about his views on academia vs industry, having been in both himself. He said capable people in academia will gradually realize that it’s better to start companies or do the same work in industry, rather than writing these grants.

I believe he is talking about this thread: https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1450324226129338369?lang=...

I'm a scientist at heart, and my PhD is science, but this is a very good description of why I decided to work as an engineer instead.

I worked for a midsize company that required the CEO be named on all patent applications. I am not sure engineering is exempt.

> I worked for a midsize company that required the CEO be named on all patent applications.

Unless the CEO actually was one of the inventors, that is grounds to invalidate the patents and there may be other consequences.

I believe this happened at Theranos as well.

But then Balaji also predicts that crypto is viable. So I would take his opinion with a pint of salt.

interesting thoughts, would you mind sharing the reference from Balaji? I'd like to hear his point.