No Scientific Innovation Since the 1920s? Is Academia's 'Publish or Perish' Stifling Science?

Welcome to TOE's Rethinking the Foundations of the Academy: How to Improve Scientific Inquiry with Gregory Chaitin

Would someone like Einstein flourish in academia's "Publish or Perish"?

Gregory Chaitin is a pioneering mathematician and computer scientist, renowned for founding algorithmic information theory. Gregory published his first groundbreaking paper at the age of 15 and has been a key figure at the Institute for Advanced Studies, contributing extensively to the fields of metabiology and complexity theory.

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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 - Intro
01:20 - Lack of Scientific Progress
06:22 - The Academic System
12:03 - Crisis in ‘Fundamental’ Physics
18:18 - Ancient Societies (Greece, Egypt, Alexandria)
23:05 - European Bureaucracy
27:08 - Albert Einstein
29:14 - Heterodox Experiments (Cold Fusion)
34:34 - Outro / Support TOE

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[TheoriesofEverything]

TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 - Intro
01:20 - Lack of Scientific Progress
06:22 - The Academic System
12:03 - Crisis in ‘Fundamental’ Physics
18:18 - Ancient Societies (Greece, Egypt, Alexandria)
23:05 - European Bureaucracy
27:08 - Albert Einstein
29:14 - Heterodox Experiments (Cold Fusion)
34:34 - Outro / Support TOE

[wetwingnut]

I have a friend who is neuroscientist. He states categorically that peer review is nothing but an excellent way of ensuring that no one works on anything truly novel or interesting.

[friendlyone]

Einstein said he spent his last years researching the unlikely because no young scientist could afford to "waste time" on fringe ideas if he wants a career.

[DrVictorVasconcelos]

Rich people are buying authorship. There are entire FB groups where people advertise approved papers and you can put your name in for a price. As someone from Brazil with zero funding, it's impossible to compete with them for a postdoc in neuropsych.

[friendlyone]

He's living example of Mark Twin's life-experience: “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”

[joelharris]

Thomas Kuhn actually addressed this problem way back in the 1960s in his book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." Seems nothing much has changed since then

[csjaybit]

I 100% agree with this, science was subject of fascination before, now its just industrial machine

[raderator]

Music is also dead. Most young people listen to 60s-90s stuff. Movies and TV suck as well.

[TheCinmatra]

Another example is Halton Arp and his analysis of galaxies' distances from Earth, which was totally rejected upfront. He was chased out of the scientific community by the ruling physicist's ideologies, silenced, overlooked, not published, etc. Now others are trying to take credit for his remarkable idéas as recent observations and deep space photographs seem to support his theories.

[PhillipECannata]

Killing the Bell system and with it Bell Laboratories was the most destructive blow to innovation ever.

[drcannata]

When I joined Bell Labs in 1979, I joined the Unix development lab. My first day on the job I was told, "Yes, you joined this lab but you know, you're allowed to work on whatever you want. You can work on Unix or whatever good idea you might have."
Where can that attitude be found today? That was the magic of Bell Labs.

[robertsykes]

“Publish or perish” was a 60s 70s thing. For quite a long time the rule has been, “Bring in money or perish.” The usual money quota is your own salary plus enough money to support 5 to 10 graduate student stipends plus the lab/computer expenses.

[piehound]

I was a budding physicist about 50 years ago. But i gave it up. It's kind of nice to hear Gregory Chaitin say things i was sensing even back in the day. Especially how we're in a phase of tech innovation but in a basic research slump. Mostly because committees have to cater to the dumbest in the group.

[GreatUncleBuck]

Love your thinking Greg. I'm in your camp. Had a vivid dream many years ago... was flying through the atmosphere, unassisted, came across a old man sitting on a carpet high up in the air. I stopped mid-flight, reversed to him and looking me in the eyes he said: "Learn everything you can... you going to need it", after which I flew off! Today, I'm doing just that and a few things already popped forward after my mind started fitting pieces from different puzzles together making the new! Nice innovative pictures on your wall.

[piggypiggypig]

Andrew Wiles was told to forget his childhood dream of proving Fermat's Last Theorem and instead build his career on more mainstream mathematics.

[nickjohnson]

"Geniuses Love Simplicity" - Terry A. Davis
If you tell a real genius that they have to deal with the insane bureaucracy of todays academic world just so the stuff they say and think has validity... There are reasons why the average competency of college graduates has been decreasing for decades.

[villevanttinen]

Heidegger also pointed this problem, calculative thinking where outcome is already decided forehand, as it is, where there is no room for creativity or poetry as he describe it. Money making kills art and creativity.

[joemarchi]

Remove MBAs in the fields of research and things will improve

[ingvaraberge]

Since we are here mostly talking of fundamental physics, it is a question how much of the actual knowkedge in the field is actually open. We had these landmark discoveries in fundamental physics in the beginning of the 20th century. Than came WWII and it became clear that the new physics had military applications. The leading physicists got enrolled in the military to design nuclear weapons. And then came the cold war, where the race for weapons of mass destruction just continued. Fundamental physics became military secrets in the cold war arms race. And the question is if that ever stopped... Can we be sure that all there is known in fundamental physics is open and public?

[Sanchuniathon]

You know what happens to organizations that become insular and so overly protective of themselves that they can no longer innovate or respond?

They become irrelevant. Academia's issue is that the institutions make themselves an obstacle to everything until everyone works around that obstacle and suddenly they're just museum artifacts.

In 30 years I don't even think universities will be offering competitive research programs in comparison to private ones. They may get more research money, but it's hard to tell if even that will last in perpetuity.