http://judithcurry.com/2013/12/01/has-science-lost-its-way/
Thoughtful comments please.
Has science lost its way? Well, yes and no ... which isn't a definitive answer, but it's the best I can do.
The problem is that we have created a system of 'publish or perish'. Young scientists need to publish papers before they have the remotest shot at tenure. This causes, in my opinion, three problems:
1. Papers tend to be shorter, less involved, and less rigorous. For example, if you look at scientists in the 1960s or 70s it would have been common to publish one or two papers per year. Now we have PhD candidates who will have published four or five papers over the three or four years of their PhD, bearing in mind that they're learning their craft at the same time! So rather than one or two large, rigorous, detailed papers (as in years gone by) we have a system where several smaller, less detailed, less rigorous papers are produced. This is preferable because it increases the number of publications. Quantity, not quality. Anyone who disagrees need only look at materials science and solid state physics - I went to the lab, grew this weird nanostructure (preferably in a wide bandgap semiconductor or carbon allotrope), did some AFM, SEM, and Raman on it, paper please ... next week I'll change the temperature and repeat.
2. Papers that are highly cited are papers in popular areas. It doesn't matter how good your paper is on a new thermodynamic model of polar crystal structures when someone across the corridor is publishing a paper on dark matter - guess which one will end up in a journal with a higher impact (i.e. readership) factor. Guess which one will potentially have more citations? The point is that this mechanism distorts science. People end up narrowly funnelled into a small area of 'cool' fields. Recent examples are string theory (every head of a theoretical physics department, bar one, in the US had a background in string theory according to Lee Smolin), carbon nanotubes, graphene, anything in which a femtosecond laser was used, 'wearable electronics', and well, you get the point. This must surely stifle science.
3. Journals for everything. We've created a vicious circle in which we demand scientists publish lots of papers. Publishers respond by creating journals for everything. The end result is, no matter how crappy your paper, you can probably find someone, somewhere who will publish it.
What about peer review? Well, peer review only works if the scientists who are looking at your work are not as crappy as you are. Hence rubbish papers make it into rubbish journals - the decent scientists wouldn't be bothered taking the time to review a paper in a crappy journal. What's in it for them? Reviewing for Nature ... cool! Reviewing a paper in the 'North Alaska Journal of Carbon Compounds and their Associated Uses' ... pass. So who does the reviewing? Probably PhD students who are delighted to have been asked.
Can we solve it? Yes, and the way to do it is for universities to simply decide that certain journals are too low in terms of citations or impact factor for their employees to bother with. It'd be called 'Quality Assurance' in the private sector.
No true science hasn't lost its way. but we have strayed away from true science.
Joseph Goebbel,
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
As soon as anyone lies about science and that lie is accepted, then science is no better than Dr. Smith's Snake Oil.
How much money was wasted by grant money on those false documents? In true science, a scientist would prove some sort of viability before asking for a research grant. But today grants are given out for political purposes not for science.
Gary F has shown himself to be an partisan idiot. I assume you aren't agreeing with all of his comments. In fact, there is no doubt in my mind that I know far more than Gary F does in just about every line of science from biology, geology, etc. Arguing with most of these alarmists is about as intellectually challenging as debating my wife's second graders.
In fact I am an engineer and a scientist. What Gary F said is learned in the first couple days at my school. There is a divide between engineering and science. That isn't a revelation to anyone except maybe the simple minded. Gary F may be correct about grade school science but he ignorant about the what is taught in college obviously since he has a grade school education in science.
Most alarmists like Gary think science is whatever they want it to be and or whatever their favorite leftist scientist tells them.
I agree with Jeff. When science and politics meet, science suffers. There is still good science conducted in many fields, even in climate science. In biology and paleoanthropology, my two favorite science subjects, we have learned a vast amount in the last 20 years.
Anyone who believes in science needs to understand the human element involved. Humans are intellectually incapable of understanding how the world works. It's way to complicated for them. Climate Science doesn't understand climate changes and is being intellectually dishonest if they say they do understand it. They have openly admitted that they don't understand, yet they will stand by their claims because if one part of it falls apart, the whole thing dies and funding ceases to exist for it. Their jobs are on the line and people lose faith if they are proven wrong.
Science is an arrogant and angry religion.
"... the traditional model in which leading journals pay nothing for papers often based on publicly funded research, then charge enormous subscription fees to universities and researchers to read them. ..."
Financial and political gain only!
Hi Kano, I'm sure you can follow up on non-denier blogs too. The link has a discussion about that article. It not about global warming or any field of her direct expertise, so it's really just an opinion
Where politics and science mix then YES science loses its way. When science is a scientific or objective pursuit then now it has not.
I agree there is a problem, but the fundamental problem is that society has lost science – so much so that as time passes more and more young scientists do not, themselves, understand what “Science” means. Somewhere along the line during and following the post-WWII explosion in technology (including the moon landing – for which my father received an engineering achievement award), “scientific research” became confused with (lost within) “engineering problem solving.”
The two are completely different. They have different intellectual foundations, different methods, and different objectives – they have different purposes. When public, political, and economic expectations and demands redefine scientific research in terms of engineering solutions, it fundamentally changes the “research” part of scientific research.
Engineering departments do not teach science and, more and more, neither do science departments. They teach problem-specific techniques and methods without demanding that their students understand something of the history, philosophy, and purpose of science.
Jim z, for example, may be great at what he does for a living – but he doesn’t know sh-t about science, including geological science. It’s not that researchers are supposed to somehow be better than technicians – it’s that researchers and technicians are supposed to be different. If jim thinks that he is a scientist – and society recognizes him as a scientist – then science is losing its way.
Judith Curry would be one to know that science has lost its way when she herself is a part of the problem. She is a scientist that refuses to look at the evidence presented before her and merely resorts to pointing fingers at the scientific community for not adhering to her train of thoughts. She simply does not allow the science to speak for itself and turns a deaf ear to anything the science will say that does not follow her own ideology. So while some within the scientific community have lost their way, this is not true of the vast number of scientist around the world. No matter their field of study.
Kano
You should be more realistic in your talking points. Anthony Watts is a well known denier of the scientific evidence put before him whenever it upends his opinions on the science. The only reason Anthony Watts claims Judith Curry to be lukewarm on anthropogenic climate change is because even Judith Curry's realizations on climate change have led her to see that humans are at least a part of the influence that is changing our global climate. This goes against what Anthony Watts always denies about climate change. Anthony Watts loves that Judith Curry will say any mitigation efforts would prove to be too costly and he loves it when she deviates from what the science tells us to express her own opinions. He likely detests the fact that Judith Curry will say that anthropogenic causes are changing our climate. Judith Curry has thrown out her own scientific hypothesis, from time to time, and becomes bitter with the scientific community as a whole when it does not tell her that her hypothesis is correct and should become the dominant scientific theory concerning climate change. In other words, Judith Curry has lost her ability to be an objective scientist and prefers to just be objectionable.
No, but anti-science people have gotten way out of control
http://ncse.com/climate
That article had nothing to do with climate science...
Okay this is a serious question, not just about climate science but all science.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/12/01/has-science-lost-its-way/
Thoughtful comments please.
No, sounds like sour grapes from a non-scientist
Curry is a card carrying skeptic who's sole focus is to deny AGW and deny the consensus of climate scientists and she is an opponent of the IPCC Not to be trusted as a source. not surprised you latched on to her.. Since her evidence is lacking,,,it is really her that is lost.
