Guest essay by Abzats.
The most exciting period in science was, arguably, 1895-1945. It was marked by discoveries that changed the foundations of modern science: X-rays, quantum mechanics, superconductivity, relativity theory and nuclear energy. Then, compare this with the next 50 years in science. Incomparable. Nothing of that scale or impact. Yes, technology has advanced, but fundamental science – has come to a crawl. Have you ever wondered why? What changed as the 20th century grew older? Among other things, research budgets and the number of PhDs increased exponentially. This cannot be bad.
Well, it can. All depends on the rules of the game. And they have changed. The change went largely unnoticed by the general public. In this article I will try to bring everyone up to speed. I will explain to non-scientists the “business model” of modern science. People may want to know. After all, scientists are burning public money, billions a year. And, I am quite sure, those who get my message will react with “you cannot be serious!” And leaders of organized crime will be pulling their hair out in despair: “why did not we think of this first?”
Single most important element of the modern science machinery is the peer review process. It was introduced a long time ago, but it took over the scientific community at about mid 20th century. Why is it important? Every scientist must publish his or her work. If you do not publish, you will not advance your career. This works the same way as it does, say, for a businessman – if you cannot close a single deal, you are finished. Most journals have adopted peer review policies. Peer review process is also standard for research grants competitions. It is also the foundation of the tenure and promotion process at universities.
Well then, what is it exactly? To save time, let me explain peer review of papers submitted for publication in scientific journals. Once a journal receives a manuscript the journal sends it to 2-3 reviewers, who are experts in the field. Each reviewer writes a report that includes a recommendation on whether or not the manuscript should be published and advice to the author on how the manuscript can be improved. So far so good. Nothing seems wrong. This should work wonderfully. Well, in theory only. In reality it does not. In reality it is more of a disaster.
Let me explain. All the reviewers are anonymous. That is, they know your name but you do not know theirs. This is the first red flag: unless you plan to do something really bad, why do you insists being anonymous? The second red flag is that none of them gets paid. Those who believe in Santa Claus will say, well, they are just nice people volunteering their time to help advance science. Those who work for a living will smell a rat. I can give you one reason: being a reviewer gives you power over other people. Some just enjoy it, others use it to advance their own agenda. Such as approve manuscripts that praise reviewer’s own research and reject those that criticize it.
The power reviewers have is enormous. Put yourself in author’s shoes. You worked hard for six months on a manuscript. Your work is brilliant, if you publish it, not only will you advance your career, it will make you a leader in the field. Then, the manuscript goes to a reviewer who just happens to be having a bad day. He browses through the manuscript for 20-30 minutes, does not like the name of the author (never heard of him, “wrong” ethnicity, or … whatever), and rejects the paper. Can you appeal? No. You can write an angry letter, but you cannot call your attorney. Because nobody is breaking the law. because there isn’t any.
They can ruin your career and drive research, often funded by the public, to a dead end, and they are not accountable to anyone. In such a system, for most scientists the best, or should I say the only, way to advance their careers is by kissing up to those in higher positions: in person, in manuscripts, and in the whole research strategy. This has been going on for decades. As a result of this “natural selection”, the scientific community has been consumed by cronyism. Parts of it are rotten to the core.
Let me give you one example. Last year I attended a Radiation Research Society meeting. It was held in Maui, Hawaii. Why? Obviously it is a great spot for a vacation. You will not find any major research centers in the neighborhood. If you are still thinking of defending this choice, get this – the conference was held at the Grand Wailea Resort. The thing about this place is that luxury here is obscene. It is a kind of place a bum would go to after winning a lottery. And, guess what, I believe I have seen a few. Never before had I seen an invited speaker at a major conference making bodily function jokes. Here I had seen more than one, including a recipient of a lifetime achievement award spelling a word for body waste and thinking it was funny. Do not get me wrong, I am not judging here. But, if he jokes at a preschooler level, would you trust him to be a reviewer of your work? Do I need to mention who paid for the event? Or, that it took place during the worst economic crisis in decades?
A couple of other problems. Reviewers have no real motivation to work fast. Here is what you would see when checking status of your manuscript on a journal’s web site: manuscript to referee, unable to report – sent to another referee, and so on, several times, for weeks and months. Nonsense. With all the technology available, a manuscript can be published within hours. But, no, it has to sit for weeks on somebody’s desk. Somebody who just does not care enough. Or, worse, someone who is interested in delaying the process. The reviewer may be working on exactly the same problem and wants his paper published first.
Another problem that extremely frustrates me as an author are suggestions reviewers make on how I should improve my manuscript. Originally, may be, it was a good idea – your peers offering you advice that will help you improve your work. But it all has gone very wrong. These days these are not suggestions or advice – these are demands. You change your manuscript exactly as you are told, or it will be rejected. I am a well established scientist, why do I have to take advice from someone who would not even reveal his identity or credentials? And, finally, this system is perfect for stealing ideas. After you submit your manuscript you have no control of who will access it. All you can hope for is human decency, and it is not always there.
This brings us to the root of the problem. People, including scientists, are flawed. Few will miss a chance to stab competition in the back and abuse whatever little power they may have. I am not the first to criticize the peer review process. But I am not. Criticizing implies it can be fixed. It cannot. It was a bad idea all along. Then, what can be done? There is no quick and easy solution.
But I know where to start – ban peer review. And I know this can be done, this nonsense can be dealt with. This is not brain surgery, this is all about leveling the playing field, making rules for fair and open competition. These problems have been solved in all other spheres. Only scientists for whatever bizarre reasons received a special treatment and the right to live in lawlessness. Which is so wrong, I cannot find words to describe. Science is one most important sphere of human activity.
Who will find cure from cancer? Who will prevent the planet from becoming uninhabitable? Scientists. Not those from the beaches of Grand Wailea. Real ones. I hope we can still find some and reverse, before it’s too late, the depletion of brains. Let’s get started. Ban peer review!
That criterion would rule out review papers.
“Ban peer review!”
Symptomatic of just how bad the system is. How much trust do I have in the people running the system? Zero. I agree that the system is so broken that it can’t be fixed.
The fundamental problem that the author identifies is the fact that anonymous reviewers aren’t accountable. What could a journal do to fix this?
Firstly, tell the author(s) of a paper who the reviewers will be. Have a formal process by which they can challenge the choice of reviewers if they think that any of them have conflicts of interest or lack relevant expertise.
Secondly, get the reviewers to sign a contract that specifies when the work is to be completed by, and which limits how much they can disclose about the paper to third parties before it is published or rejected.
Thirdly, pay the reviewers. It’s not reasonable to expect them to work for free, and it’s inevitable that most people will treat unpaid anonymous work for someone else’s benefit as a pretty low priority.
Fourthly, in the print edition of the journal publish the names of the reviewers along with the paper. If necessary add a few bullet points to indicate any aspects of the paper that the reviewers do not agree with.
Fifthly, in the online edition of the journal publish the full text of the reviews with notes to indicate which criticisms were accepted by the author and which were not. If necessary, publish every draft of the paper and every comment from the reviewers in the form of an on-going discussion. There are no space limits online so let the readers see everything.
TLM
What is needed is more journals, or journals brave enough to print articles that challenge the orthodoxy.
Pretty much what I suggested in my second comment – instead of everyone doing exactly the same thing, set the filtering mechanism free to evolve – let scientists and journals work out their own codes of conduct, their own criteria, and let scientists choose that which works best for them, so the optimum solutions can emerge victorious from the open competition of ideas.
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Eric Worrall says:
June 25, 2013 at 12:30 am
I don’t think its that simple. If there is no peer review, how can you prevent creationists and people with a perverse agenda, such as promoters of fake medical treatments, from flooding credible journals with junk science?
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You can’t and that is what Abzats is after.
richard verney says:
June 25, 2013 at 2:14 am
” would say that it is not only science that appears to have stalled in the mid 20th century.
Consider music. All the truly great composers pre-date the 1930s, with the 19th century being the zenith.”
Blech. Sturgeon’s Law applies: 95% of everything is crap. Meaning you live in a time where you experience all the crap as it happens but you didn’t experience all the lesser known bad composers and authors and painters of their days. Goethe for instance didn’t sell many units; there were pulp authors who outsold him by far, sorry I forget the names, as is natural with such things.
We don’t know what the 23rd century will cite as the great composers of our age. Philip Glass, Clint Mansell, or maybe Andrew Lloyd Webber? Kraftwerk? Laurie Anderson? I could go on and on.
A guy clicking around in a sequencer program today might accidentally produce the next big hymn of a transnational superstate. (The EU has picked some snippets from Beethoven as its “hymn”).
Ditto Verney. Everything has stalled. Or more precisely, everything with any connection to academia has stalled.
I’d say the worst part of the problem is not the publishing but what comes before you can publish. The tenure process GUARANTEES that nobody with unorthodox views will even reach the point of getting grants. Until hiring is loosened up, no change in publishing will matter much. The fraternity will still be a tightly closed echo chamber.
This topic should be a subject for debate, with panelists representing both sides. Clearly, not ALL science is corrupted; we don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
It might be instructive to address the most egregious claims and grievances (many of which will come from Climate Science). The promise of Phil Jones (University of East Anglia, Climate Research Unit), now immortalized for posterity, comes to mind: “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
Kurt in Switzerland
Why has nobody mentioned Climategate? The fact that the ‘Team’ plotted to get rid of a journal editor … QED. The fact that they managed to cow an editor into issuing a written apology … QED.
A very solid and well-considered piece.
“Once pre-publication peer review became common in the 1950s, it immediately pitted innovation in a particular science against the establishment of that area, and it’s a David and Goliath situation.”
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2013/02/15/were-going-to-have-to-do-something-about-peer-review/
Pointman
The medical sciences have faced this problem for a long time. Business interests from big Pharma bias peer review and paper submissions to favour their drug treatments.
The solution has been meta-analysis of the literature by independent research bodies like the Cochrane institute.
This is similar to the IPCC.
Some branches of medical research have also adopted an open, transparent peer review system. Some of the neurobiology journals I think publish the reviewers names, their comments and the authors responses along with the paper online so that the whole process is completely open.
The idea that abandoning expert assessment of research before it is published will eliminate bias seems ridiculous, and there are certainly no real world examples of this ever working. The sort of nonsense that gets published in journals with no or very lax review standards tends to get them a reputation, such as the ‘dog astrology’ journal! Those familiar with the literature will know which we mean.
I would expect that the writer of this essay would not have advocated abandoning some form of peer review when faced with the serious level of bias and distortion prevalent in clinical research and drug testing as a means of getting better medical science. But perhaps the inanity of the suggestion is a result of not being aware of how other fields of research have approached the problem of independent, open and unbiased peer review.
@ur momisugly Kurt in Switzerland says: …and others.
June 25, 2013 at 4:06 am
“Clearly, not ALL science is corrupted…”
———————————————————————————————————————–
How do you know that?
What is corruption?
Is corruption limited to the deliberate falsification of data or results? Does it include the manner in which any findings – legitimate or false – are presented to others, be they politicians, public, funders or those with with related interests? Does it include representing the basis for a perspective or conjecture as being sounder than it is – by excluding or downplaying alternatives. or by omitting proper weight to reasons that contradict support for the desired direction? Does it include using a position of influence within a certain field to dissuade others in the field from giving due weight to things considered undesirable for whatever reason?
Is there corruption in the not obviously venal or calculatedly strategic? In the processes and requirements that ratify the legitimacy of any participant? In the nature in which apparent or claimed understanding can be guarded as being “personal” rather than being open? Particularly when the “personal” is used as a base to accrue advantage?
Is there corruption in the most elemental sense – of something rotten – in acceptance that it is legitimate to refuse to acknowledge a basic reality, with the claim that this is part of discourse and healthy contention?
This is an issue that goes beyond the degradation of “climate science”. It goes beyond any science. It is a requirement for any human interaction, with others or with physical realities.
There is no “baby” that is at risk along with the “bathwater”. This is a question of basic principle.
Regardless of what any particular person might claim to have “seen” or “experienced”. Or how much Blind Faith someone may yearn to have in any area of endeavour or group of participants. No-one can know, even in an area they are involved with, what MIGHT have been but for the nature of the processes and culture that prevail at any time.
Contemporary culture does not manifest itself only in “climate science”. It is validated and vociferously dictated by all the institutions of science. Of supposed learning.
It is comprehensive in its extent. It has not come from nowhere. It will not be absent from anything.
This is very simple.
Is it by nature antithetical to knowledge to have it adjudicated on by the unseen, the unknown, and the unaccountable, and who are in that position because they accept those terms?
Is it possible that such a system, of things not seen, can NOT be corrupt?
One possible answer is for unorthodox thinkers to publish their own peer-reviewed journal with rules that allow risky, innovative ideas to be proposed just so long as they are based on logic & scientific evidence. Those who have doubts about the sufficiency of the modern neo-Darwinian synthesis, for example, are typically labeled creationists as a way to dismiss their arguments. As a prominent Chinese paleontologist remarked about their findings in the Cambrian fossils, “In China we can criticize Darwin but not the government. In the US you can criticize the government but not Darwin.”
The doubters have responded by creating Bio-Complexity, a peer-reviewed journal which allows innovative, non-Darwinian perspectives to be heard, critiqued, rejected, or refined. Transparency is emphasized, as is quick publication.
This is relatively new, so I do not know if it will work on the long term. However, when a scientific article critical of neo-Darwinism was published a few years ago in a peer reviewed journal, the guy in charge, Richard Sternberg, was harassed and eventually driven out of the Smithsonian. Peer review should weed out the junk, but not what is merely politically incorrect.
What exactly will banning peer review achieve? Every whacko theory will get published and no one will have any idea what’s legitimate or not. Not that I’m saying the current system does a stellar job of that now. Just make the authors anonymous or make the reviewers known, and call it a day. Oh, the reviewers don’t want their names known? Why not? Have an agenda to take care of or something? And paying reviewers is a bad idea, simply because of the abuse it could lead to (Big Corp. paying reviewers for favorable reviews, etc.)
Actually, when it comes right down to the beginnings, the Internet was designed for that purpose (peer review). And today we have it. But the disdain and contempt the ‘establishment’ has for the reviews from the Internet is evident (in the recent submission of Dr. Tol alone).
But that it is not liked, reviled, and generally spat upon by the establishment does not detract from its effectiveness, nor its utilitarianism. A paper is reviewed in days (at worst weeks). Grammar is not the cause of rejection, flaws in both method and results are. And they are discovered. Why? Because there is not a concern about protecting ones turf, but rather in using the research to further knowledge. The reviewers are not paid. They get no credit for finding the flaws. What they do get is another piece to a puzzle which they are seeking to fit together.
Perhaps the answer has been right under our noses for the past 40 years. We have seen papers shredded – justifiably so – by Internet reviewers. None anonymous. These were not petulant criticisms, but detailed analysis of flaws with the papers themselves. Sometimes the problems were minor in which case the author can then rewrite the paper with corrections. other times, they were major enough to warrant (and sometimes with success) the withdrawal of the papers.
The Peer review process as is is a hindrance to science. The peer review process as it could be might bring us back to another golden age of discovery.
I support in general Abzats’ comment. There are multiple problems related to how scientific research is funded, as to what subjects are investigated, and there are problems concerning how research results are discussed and disseminated. I do not however necessarily believe or support the solution is the end of peer review. There needs to be scientific review of results before publishing to clear up basic errors in the analysis or the data. The reviewers should not however be able to block research because it challenges their beliefs or their hidden agendas.
Let’s park what the solution is and look at some specifics to understand the problems. There are a list of outside forces that block and inhibit the progress of science. The key issues differ somewhat from field to field.
We are all aware that political forces and commercial forces can affect research and block changes. An example would be medical research. For example, the cause of roughly 80% of the cases of cancer, 95% of the cases of diabetes, 95% of atherosclerosis disease, 90% of arthritis, and so on was discovered roughly 15 years ago. The problem, as to why the majority of the people are not aware of the solution is not scientific. The solution works and has been proven to work, the problem is the solution has profound implications on commercial medicine and agriculture. Another example is climate ‘science’. One of the forces blocking and shaping climate science research is AGW is being used as the justification to push a political agenda. Another force is there are companies and individuals that are taking advantage of the green scams.
The solution when there is conflict between scientific truth and commercial/political agendas goes beyond peer review. The existence and function of this blog is part of the solution. When there is obvious conflict between scientific truth and commercial forces/political agendas a necessary part of the solution is to publically discuss the specific forces/conficts, to discuss the observations, and to discuss the conflicting analysis. As the truth becomes known to a wider and wider audience it appears in the end the truth will prevail, there is an optimum solution based on truth.
Abzat I believe is discussing a different inhibiting force. Something that block the progress of normal science.
I found it puzzling when I started researching astronomical observational and analysis anomalies, twenty years ago, that it appears the astronomical observations and anomalies point to multiple fundamental breakthroughs in basic physics; star trek type breakthroughs; related to the connection between matter, space, and energy.
The anomalies in question concern what happens when very large objects collapse and how the very large objects resist the collapse.
Twenty years ago, the astronomical community blocked telescope time to investigate the anomalies. The logical premise was it would be a waste of valuable observation time to investigate the anomalies. The astronomical/astrophysics community also blocked papers that attempted to discuss the anomalies, as the anomalies in question challenged fundamental beliefs concerning cosmology. The researchers that continued to attempt to discuss the anomalies and to push alternative hypotheses were marginalized, branded as crank like. The careers of some of the assistant graduate people were ended because of their support of the principal scientists that were involved. Advances in astronomical observational science in the last 20 years have confirmed the anomalies are real, not due to the observational error or due to statistical biases.
What is interesting to our climate science story, is the explanation for the anomalies in question, explains the physics of what is currently happening to the sun, explains what causes the glacial/interglacial cycle, and so on.
We truly live in interesting times.
Blame the bean counters.
Consider a bean counter working at a university employing a bunch of scientists doing research. The bean counter worries that these very expensive and highly skilled people (some of them get paid more than the bean counter) might be wasting the budget and not working hard. But the bean counter doesn’t really have a clue what these guys do. In the back of his mind he is utterly convinced that some of them are lazy and should be sacked. But frustratingly he can’t tell which ones.
Promotion time comes around and a lot of the scientists apply for promotion. The bean counter can’t tell which of them are doing the mysterious things they do well enough to be promoted. What to do? From the bean counter’s point of view it is a mess!
Ergo peer review – the bean counter’s friend. It gives a way of keeping score – a concrete output which even a bean counter can understand and feel comfortable with because of course it is something that can be counted. The bean counter now thinks he understands what is going on in this strange world of science. It is all about producing these peer reviewed paper thingies. Scientists with lots of papers are good. Those with few are bad. What was hard is suddenly made simple.
It is a touch more complicated than this; some journals are regarded as better than others; some papers are cited more than others. But this is the kind of problem the bean counter feels very comfortable with. He is very happy constructing all sorts of weighted schemes for adding up the numbers of the papers and the citation rates and the qualities of the journals and thus comparing one scientist numerically against another. He now feels fully empowered to pass judgement on scientists – sacking some – promoting others – despite the fact that he still doesn’t have the slightest clue what it is they do.
And being a fully modern manager he of course also feels obliged to crack the whip and increase productivity. Those damned lazy scientists must work harder! We want MORE papers in BETTER journals. More, more, more! A bonus for Phil who published the most. Jones didn’t publish? Sack the lazy sod – he is letting the side down.
Scientists of course know this is a load of crock. The production of papers is not the real output of science. Putting too much emphasis on this distorts the way in which science is done. It drives people away from the controversial – the difficult – the fundamental – the important – into working in peculiar little niches where results are easy to come by and papers can be churned out by the score. Most scientists are aware that the system has serious problems. Wed rather spend more of our time thinking about the science and less of it fussing around with papers and journals and peer review. But the bean counters have control of the money and insist on these rules. If you don’t play their game you are likely to have trouble feeding your kids.
Things are slowly changing. There are much better ways of publishing work today. A paper can go up on the preprint server and be commented on and revised in real time. It is quick and accurate. Good work is recognised. Bad work is obliviated. Scientists don’t need to publish papers to exchange ideas and talk to each other. We have telephones. We have skype. We can hop on a plane and go visit someone. But the sticking point is always the people with the money – the bean counters. They are just extremely reluctant to give up their measuring stick. And those high up in the academic world are the ones who have been most successful at pumping out peer reviewed papers. They may not see an urgent need for change.
MattN says:
June 25, 2013 at 5:09 am
“What exactly will banning peer review achieve? Every whacko theory will get published and no one will have any idea what’s legitimate or not. ”
Totally unlike today…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_matter
jc says:
June 25, 2013 at 5:04 am
“Is there corruption in the most elemental sense – of something rotten – in acceptance that it is legitimate to refuse to acknowledge a basic reality, with the claim that this is part of discourse and healthy contention?
This is an issue that goes beyond the degradation of “climate science”. It goes beyond any science. It is a requirement for any human interaction, with others or with physical realities.”
Human interactions depend on trust. Trust becomes impossible in a society under the control of a secret police.
Hope that answers your question.
Just a drive-by comment, this list could be expanded, and I’ll extend the 50 years by a bit:
Transistors (and the work leading to integrated circuitry so tiny that there are more transistors in use than there are ants).
Elucidating the structure of DNA.
Lasers, touted as a solution looking for a problem, have been found to be solutions for an amazing array of devices.
Understanding the chemistry behind photosynthesis and many other biochemical processes. (Laser femptosecond light pulses are a vital tool in this arena.)
Restriction enzymes. One reason I did not pursue a career in biology was that I realized how important protein sequencing was and that the best way to do that was by sequencing DNA, and that I just couldn’t see any way of doing that. Six years later, restriction enzymes were put to use. 20 years later I was on conference calls with Celera Genomics about issues with the operating system on the computers they used to complete the human genome. Much of the tech involved was post 1945 tech….
Giant magnetoresistance (GMR) immensely increased the data density usable on computer disk drives. In 1972 I had my own 25 MB disk pack at work that I mounted on a $30,000 disk drive. My home computer has a drive that fits in my pocket that has 40,000 times the storage. However, the main storage is a small box of “solid state disk” with 10,000 times the storage and no moving parts, just lots of transistors.
Take your typical teenage cell phone of today. Mental exercise: Transport it back to 1945. Show it around to folks at the Manhattan Project. Even without the infrastructure for GPS, Internet, or even phone calls, it would be an astonishing device.
“The most exciting period in science was, arguably, 1895-1945. It was marked by discoveries that changed the foundations of modern science: X-rays, quantum mechanics, superconductivity, relativity theory and nuclear energy. Then, compare this with the next 50 years in science. Incomparable. Nothing of that scale or impact. Yes, technology has advanced, but fundamental science – has come to a crawl. Have you ever wondered why?”
1/ No, as the post 1945 era has been the most productive in the history of fundamental science.
Quantum electrodynamics
Discovery and explanation of parity violation in the weak nuclear force
Discovery of the weak force neutral currents
Discovery of quarks
Unification of electrodynamics and the weak force forces of nature
Concept of spontaneous symmetry breaking
Development of quantum chromodynamics – theory of the strong nuclear force
Confirmation of the existence of the Higgs boson
The development and completion of the Standard Model in particle physics
Discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation
Discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating
BCS theory of superconductivity
Discovery of high-temperature superconductivity
Development of the transistor based on QM and, later, VLSI
Discovery of graphene
Plate tectonics and continental drift
The double helix structure of DNA
The “central dogma” of biology: DNA makes RNA makes protein.
Information theory: Shannon’s entropy and mutual information
Proof of the Poincaré conjecture
Etc.
2/ Peer-review existed pre-1945
3/ There are many problems with peer-review.
This is well-known and had been a subject of much debate
As a minimum, it should be double-blinded.
The reviewers should not know the names and institutions of the authors and vice versa.
The case of climate science is an interesting one in that a small group of activists had managed to hijack the process turning peer-review into pal-review.
For example, the quality of climate science papers submitted to journals such as Nature and Science are sub-standard when compared to most other fields.
If nature continues to ignore the man-made global warming script,
then eventually people will start to ask question regarding the the AGW hypothesis.
This had already started to occur
4/ In physics and related fields, idea theft is difficult due to the existence of the arXIv pre-print server
http://arxiv.org/
where papers are posted pre per review
5/ This article exhibits the common myth of a past “Golden Age” and the author would do well to familiarize himself with the basics regarding the history of science. Otherwise it comes across are an amateurish diatribe.
My brush with academia.
While getting my MBA, I took a class with a finance professor who was into stock analysis. This guy was impressive at first. Everyone thought he had it together..
The currently accepted method for stock analysis involved a large flat file…and tedious manual extraction and comparisons. It took a day to do a single regression with a pair of stocks. The mathematician in me appreciated the approach, but the data analyst in me just laughed.
I offered to set him up with a modern RDBMS with R and some other tools and a full load of the flat file with all the attributes described. I showed him what we did at work with a MUCH larger data set and a much greater population of attributes. He was astounded and excited. He saw he could do regressions of a whole industry in a day or a whole economic period in a week.
I dropped by his office two weeks later and he was cool to the idea. When I pressed him on it, he said, “But how will anyone reproduce my work?” I still think he is playing with his flat file and manual regressions and publishing papers based on this.
The current state of climate analysis is not much better.
DNA, physiology, cell biology. Science today is moving faster than ever before. It just seems like the old discoveries matter more because the new ones haven’t been exploited in technology to their fullest extent yet.
And regarding item /1/ in my previous post, someone had previously mentioned lasers as a post-1945 development.
When discovered, lasers were a solution in search of the problem. Today lasers are everywhere.
Mr Guest Blogger,
You certainly got the period right 1895 to 1945 was a period of practical science that gave us our modern world. The advances since have been small advances on old themes. Practical things have advanced, the theoretical not so much, a wrong turn around a century ago has seen science mired in imaginary particles, imaginary dark energy and dark matter, to save their imaginary science. Thus new ideas are pilloried to save their precious theories. Ric Werme Oddly the first use of a cellular type phone was used in WW2 used by the secret service from aircraft contacting resistance fighters on the ground in occupied France. Not a lot new under the sun. Science has been going backwards, it is the practical experimenters that have given us the modern world.
There are “hot” topics in physics where several groups are publicly known to be pursuing the answer to the same problem. The solution often results in publication in one of the top ranked journals. The possible conflict of interest for the reviewer is obvious. What to do? Well, when I submitted a manuscript in that circumstance, I would include a very short list of competing groups and ask that the reviewer not come from one of these. As fas as I could tell the editors (e.g. PRL) generally met my request.