“One question that comes to mind is whether there is still early stage science today. Maybe the patterns that you’re seeing are all about what happens if you’re very early in the development of science in general, but now you only get those patterns when people are playing around (like I am above)? So I’d be interested in the most recent cases you can find that you’d consider to be early-stage.”
This is also a great question.
It is totally possible that early stage science occurred only in the past, and science as a whole has developed past it. We talked to a number of people in our network to try to gather plausible alternatives to our hypothesis about early stage science, and this is one of the most common ones we found. I’m currently thinking of this as one of the possible views we’ll need to argue against or refute for our original hypothesis to hold, as opposed to a perspective we’ve already solidly eliminated.
On recent past cases:
If you go back a bit, there are lots of plausible early stage science success cases in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The study of radiation is a potential case in this period with some possible indicators of early stage methods. This period is arguably not recent enough to refute the “science as a whole has moved past early stage exploration” hypothesis, so I want to seek out more recent examples in addition to studying these.
To get a better answer here, I’ll want us to look more specifically at the window between 1940 and 2000, which we haven’t looked at much so far—I expect it will be our best shot at finding early stage discoveries that have already been verified and accepted, while still being recent.
On current cases:
Finding current cases or cases in the more recent past is trickier. For refuting the hypothesis you laid out, we’d be most interested in finding recent applications of early stage methods that produced successful discoveries. Unfortunately, it can be hard to identify these cases, because when the early research is still happening, it’s often still unclear if it’s on track to being successful.
That said, we think it is possible to identify areas that are potentially early stage science. This is a pretty different activity from looking at more confirmed success cases, but it’s something we’re looking into.
“One question that comes to mind is whether there is still early stage science today. Maybe the patterns that you’re seeing are all about what happens if you’re very early in the development of science in general, but now you only get those patterns when people are playing around (like I am above)? So I’d be interested in the most recent cases you can find that you’d consider to be early-stage.”
This is also a great question.
It is totally possible that early stage science occurred only in the past, and science as a whole has developed past it. We talked to a number of people in our network to try to gather plausible alternatives to our hypothesis about early stage science, and this is one of the most common ones we found. I’m currently thinking of this as one of the possible views we’ll need to argue against or refute for our original hypothesis to hold, as opposed to a perspective we’ve already solidly eliminated.
On recent past cases:
If you go back a bit, there are lots of plausible early stage science success cases in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The study of radiation is a potential case in this period with some possible indicators of early stage methods. This period is arguably not recent enough to refute the “science as a whole has moved past early stage exploration” hypothesis, so I want to seek out more recent examples in addition to studying these.
To get a better answer here, I’ll want us to look more specifically at the window between 1940 and 2000, which we haven’t looked at much so far—I expect it will be our best shot at finding early stage discoveries that have already been verified and accepted, while still being recent.
On current cases:
Finding current cases or cases in the more recent past is trickier. For refuting the hypothesis you laid out, we’d be most interested in finding recent applications of early stage methods that produced successful discoveries. Unfortunately, it can be hard to identify these cases, because when the early research is still happening, it’s often still unclear if it’s on track to being successful.
That said, we think it is possible to identify areas that are potentially early stage science. This is a pretty different activity from looking at more confirmed success cases, but it’s something we’re looking into.