Thanks for this post. I agree with many of your points. I see science as a problem-solving engine, and yes, if it’s not operating as well as it could be then that’s a huge opportunity cost for issues such as treating diseases, transitioning to clean energy/meat, etc.
One thought about the publishing and incentives: If funders can be convinced not to care about publications or to weigh other efforts the same or more, e.g. posting and commenting on pre-prints, then that could break the strangle that the publishing industry holds on the scientific enterprise. Institutions mostly care about how well a researcher raises money. If they see that they can hire a professor who doesn’t have lofty publications, but will have access to funding, then I suspect traditional publications will become increasingly moot. To a certain degree, we see this with Math and Physics, where many impactful papers just get published as pre-prints on ArXiV. The papers may never actually be traditionally published.
Life sciences research still has a way to go. I was thinking if private funders such as HHMI or the Gates Foundation could be lobbied to weigh publications less in their funding decisions, then that may help here.
I don’t know. I agree that we give too much weight to papers, but then, what would we substitute this with? How likely is it that we will face the same problem in a new competitive system? I think it is worth exploring, but my belief is that this problem comes from the competition, not from the articles. Any other competitive system would most likely have similar problems, in my opinion.
Indeed. To be clear, when I refer to publications, I refer to traditionally published ones: where the papers are submitted to journals, editors will determine if it’s impactful enough, and then it’s sent out to review. This is such a belabored process, especially in the age of the internet. And for what it’s worth, the competition is exacerbated by the lack of space in lofty journals.
And sure, we can’t jettison publications without something taking it’s place. It still could be papers, just not traditionally published ones. We saw this play out during the pandemic where papers on Coronavirus were placed on pre-print servers such as BioRxiv and MedRxiv. Comments and refutations were posted in real-time. In my view, science needs to proceed in this direction. We need more real-time science. We can’t have science that remains hidden from the public view because Reviewer #3 thinks one more experiment is needed, thus dragging out publication by another year.
We’re not going to diminish competition without creating more permanent positions in academia or opportunities for academic scientists. Competition is so fierce to become a professor, which is in short supply and seemingly the only path to work permanently in academia. One idea is to have more non-traditional routes, such as a loftier, permanent post-doctoral scientist positions. These could be scientists who don’t run a lab, but may work in one and do primary research themselves.
Thanks for this post. I agree with many of your points. I see science as a problem-solving engine, and yes, if it’s not operating as well as it could be then that’s a huge opportunity cost for issues such as treating diseases, transitioning to clean energy/meat, etc.
One thought about the publishing and incentives: If funders can be convinced not to care about publications or to weigh other efforts the same or more, e.g. posting and commenting on pre-prints, then that could break the strangle that the publishing industry holds on the scientific enterprise. Institutions mostly care about how well a researcher raises money. If they see that they can hire a professor who doesn’t have lofty publications, but will have access to funding, then I suspect traditional publications will become increasingly moot. To a certain degree, we see this with Math and Physics, where many impactful papers just get published as pre-prints on ArXiV. The papers may never actually be traditionally published.
Life sciences research still has a way to go. I was thinking if private funders such as HHMI or the Gates Foundation could be lobbied to weigh publications less in their funding decisions, then that may help here.
I don’t know. I agree that we give too much weight to papers, but then, what would we substitute this with? How likely is it that we will face the same problem in a new competitive system? I think it is worth exploring, but my belief is that this problem comes from the competition, not from the articles. Any other competitive system would most likely have similar problems, in my opinion.
Indeed. To be clear, when I refer to publications, I refer to traditionally published ones: where the papers are submitted to journals, editors will determine if it’s impactful enough, and then it’s sent out to review. This is such a belabored process, especially in the age of the internet. And for what it’s worth, the competition is exacerbated by the lack of space in lofty journals.
And sure, we can’t jettison publications without something taking it’s place. It still could be papers, just not traditionally published ones. We saw this play out during the pandemic where papers on Coronavirus were placed on pre-print servers such as BioRxiv and MedRxiv. Comments and refutations were posted in real-time. In my view, science needs to proceed in this direction. We need more real-time science. We can’t have science that remains hidden from the public view because Reviewer #3 thinks one more experiment is needed, thus dragging out publication by another year.
We’re not going to diminish competition without creating more permanent positions in academia or opportunities for academic scientists. Competition is so fierce to become a professor, which is in short supply and seemingly the only path to work permanently in academia. One idea is to have more non-traditional routes, such as a loftier, permanent post-doctoral scientist positions. These could be scientists who don’t run a lab, but may work in one and do primary research themselves.