Risk Aversion Is Ruining Science
https://undark.org/2022/04/27/risk-avers...g-science/
EXCERPT: . . . To be sure, some risk-aversion is to be expected in science. As research fields mature and scientists pick off more of the low-hanging fruit, the problems become harder, requiring more people and more resources to solve. It’s also easy to fall into a trap of conformity. Graduate students work on the problems that their advisers find interesting, almost always probing a specific sub-problem of a much larger domain; junior scientists, under pressure to please the senior scientists who make grant and tenure decisions, opt for small, incremental advancements of existing knowledge over risky, high-payoff research lines; even senior researchers tend to choose research directions that their peers will approve of.
The realities of the current grant funding climate play a role, too. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to get a federal grant. According to the National Science Foundation’s annual merit review report, during most of the past decade the agency has funded around 20 percent of the research proposals it receives, down from roughly 30 percent in the 1990. Two-thirds of all grant awards go to researchers who are more than 10 years beyond their Ph.D., and proposals from these senior researchers are accepted at a higher rate than those of junior scientists, by about 5 percentage points.
The fierce competition has set the stage for a cultural shift from “What problems am I interested in?” to “What problems are likely to be funded?” Because without funding, the ability for a scientist to do science becomes severely limited.
This culture of risk-aversion is putting science itself at risk. An incremental approach to scientific study — where large collaborations spend enormous amounts of money to refine existing knowledge to greater degrees of precision — may win grant funding in the short term because it’s a sure bet, but it cannot be sustained in the long run. Eventually, policymakers and the public will lose interest in science and disconnect from what makes science so illuminating and engaging: namely, discovery.
To prevent science from becoming yet another bureaucracy that exists only to perpetuate itself, scientists have to begin by making changes at a cultural level. The first step is to reward risk... (MORE - missing details)
Woke MIT realizes it has to reintroduce standardized tests
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/resto...ized-tests
EXCERPTS: We wrote last November about MIT, our alma mater, that it "has caved repeatedly to the demands of 'wokeness,' treating its students unfairly, compromising the quality of its staff, and damaging the institution and academic freedom at large." A commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion had become an article of faith, with an aggressive program of minority admissions one of the commandments.
"Equity" is at the heart of this issue. [AKA socialism in disguise]
It sounds a lot like "equality," and many people glide over it without appreciating the difference. In an email one of us received from an MIT professor, his signature block said "Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion." However, in current usage, they are essentially opposites: Equality means that each person is given equal opportunity; equity means that outcomes must be equal, without regard for the capabilities or efforts of the individuals concerned.
[...] for the last two years, MIT dispensed with the requirement that applicants take the SAT or ACT tests. But last month, there was a new development: MIT became the first prominent university to reinstate the requirement that applicants submit SAT or ACT scores.
[...] There was still more woke rationale to come: "Our ability to accurately predict student academic success at MIT is significantly improved by considering standardized testing — especially in mathematics." Thus, "not having SAT/ACT scores to consider tends to raise socioeconomic barriers to demonstrating readiness for our education."
What Schmill was really saying was that MIT doesn’t know what to do with students who just can’t cut it... (MORE - missing details)
https://undark.org/2022/04/27/risk-avers...g-science/
EXCERPT: . . . To be sure, some risk-aversion is to be expected in science. As research fields mature and scientists pick off more of the low-hanging fruit, the problems become harder, requiring more people and more resources to solve. It’s also easy to fall into a trap of conformity. Graduate students work on the problems that their advisers find interesting, almost always probing a specific sub-problem of a much larger domain; junior scientists, under pressure to please the senior scientists who make grant and tenure decisions, opt for small, incremental advancements of existing knowledge over risky, high-payoff research lines; even senior researchers tend to choose research directions that their peers will approve of.
The realities of the current grant funding climate play a role, too. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to get a federal grant. According to the National Science Foundation’s annual merit review report, during most of the past decade the agency has funded around 20 percent of the research proposals it receives, down from roughly 30 percent in the 1990. Two-thirds of all grant awards go to researchers who are more than 10 years beyond their Ph.D., and proposals from these senior researchers are accepted at a higher rate than those of junior scientists, by about 5 percentage points.
The fierce competition has set the stage for a cultural shift from “What problems am I interested in?” to “What problems are likely to be funded?” Because without funding, the ability for a scientist to do science becomes severely limited.
This culture of risk-aversion is putting science itself at risk. An incremental approach to scientific study — where large collaborations spend enormous amounts of money to refine existing knowledge to greater degrees of precision — may win grant funding in the short term because it’s a sure bet, but it cannot be sustained in the long run. Eventually, policymakers and the public will lose interest in science and disconnect from what makes science so illuminating and engaging: namely, discovery.
To prevent science from becoming yet another bureaucracy that exists only to perpetuate itself, scientists have to begin by making changes at a cultural level. The first step is to reward risk... (MORE - missing details)
Woke MIT realizes it has to reintroduce standardized tests
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/resto...ized-tests
EXCERPTS: We wrote last November about MIT, our alma mater, that it "has caved repeatedly to the demands of 'wokeness,' treating its students unfairly, compromising the quality of its staff, and damaging the institution and academic freedom at large." A commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion had become an article of faith, with an aggressive program of minority admissions one of the commandments.
"Equity" is at the heart of this issue. [AKA socialism in disguise]
It sounds a lot like "equality," and many people glide over it without appreciating the difference. In an email one of us received from an MIT professor, his signature block said "Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion." However, in current usage, they are essentially opposites: Equality means that each person is given equal opportunity; equity means that outcomes must be equal, without regard for the capabilities or efforts of the individuals concerned.
[...] for the last two years, MIT dispensed with the requirement that applicants take the SAT or ACT tests. But last month, there was a new development: MIT became the first prominent university to reinstate the requirement that applicants submit SAT or ACT scores.
[...] There was still more woke rationale to come: "Our ability to accurately predict student academic success at MIT is significantly improved by considering standardized testing — especially in mathematics." Thus, "not having SAT/ACT scores to consider tends to raise socioeconomic barriers to demonstrating readiness for our education."
What Schmill was really saying was that MIT doesn’t know what to do with students who just can’t cut it... (MORE - missing details)