Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

https://aeon.co/essays/science-is-a-publ...-to-fix-it

EXCERPT: The rise of the 20th-century research university in the United States stands as one of the great achievements of human civilisation – it helped to establish science as a public good, and advanced the human condition through training, discovery and innovation. But if the practice of science should ever undermine the trust and symbiotic relationship with society that allowed both to flourish, our ability to solve critical problems facing humankind and civilisation itself will be at risk. We recently explored how increasingly perverse incentives and the academic business model might be adversely affecting scientific practices, and by extension, whether a loss of support for science in some segments of society might be more attributable to what science is doing to itself, as opposed what others are doing to science.

We argue that over the past half-century, the incentives and reward structure of science have changed, creating a hypercompetition among academic researchers. Part-time and adjunct faculty now make up 76 per cent of the academic labour force, allowing universities to operate more like businesses, making tenure-track positions much more rare and desirable. Increased reliance on emerging quantitative performance metrics that value numbers of papers, citations and research dollars raised has decreased the emphasis on socially relevant outcomes and quality. There is also concern that these pressures could encourage unethical conduct by scientists and the next generation of STEM scholars who persist in this hypercompetitive environment. We believe that reform is needed to bring balance back to the academy and to the social contract between science and society, to ensure the future role of science as a public good.

The pursuit of tenure traditionally influences almost all decisions, priorities and activities of young faculty at research universities. Recent changes in academia, however, including increased emphasis on quantitative performance metrics, harsh competition for static or reduced federal funding, and implementation of private business models at public and private universities are producing undesirable outcomes and unintended consequences (see Table 1 below).

Quantitative metrics are increasingly dominating decision-making in faculty hiring, promotion and tenure, awards and funding, and creating an intense focus on publication count, citations, combined citation-publication counts (h-index being the most popular), journal impact factors, total research dollars and total patents. All these measures are subject to manipulation as per Goodhart’s law, which states: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure....

MORE: https://aeon.co/essays/science-is-a-publ...-to-fix-it

(Nov 16, 2017 07:39 AM)C C Wrote: [ -> ]Science is a public good in peril

That sounds like hyperbole to me. I agree that science does face some problems, but I'm not convinced that this author has correctly identified what they are.

Quote:The rise of the 20th-century research university in the United States

The modern research university, along with the Ph.D. degree that they award, arose in 19th century Germany.

Quote:stands as one of the great achievements of human civilisation

I guess that at the graduate-research levels, American research universities are indeed the best in the world.

Quote:it helped to establish science as a public good, and advanced the human condition through training, discovery and innovation.

That sounds like a restatement of old 18th century Enlightenment faith, the 'Age of Reason' idea that Newtonian mechanics had been so extraordinarily successful that if its success could just be isolated and captured in a bottle, then obscurantism might be swept away, all manner of social problems might be solved and a glorious new age of "progress" would dawn. That's what motivated the 19th century creation of the so-called "social sciences".  Science has been imagined as a public good since long before research universities appeared.

Quote:But if the practice of science should ever undermine the trust and symbiotic relationship with society that allowed both to flourish, our ability to solve critical problems facing humankind and civilisation itself will be at risk. We recently explored how increasingly perverse incentives and the academic business model might be adversely affecting scientific practices, and by extension, whether a loss of support for science in some segments of society might be more attributable to what science is doing to itself, as opposed what others are doing to science.

Has there really been a "loss of support for science in some segments of society"? And if so, is that change really attributable to changes in professors' pay and working conditions? I sense some self interested special pleading here, a subtle attempt to twist the argument towards the writer's own personal self-interest in professorial labor issues.

Quote:We argue that over the past half-century, the incentives and reward structure of science have changed, creating a hypercompetition among academic researchers.

If science is supposed to be a "public good" and if it is funded with public and private funds, then it's only reasonable that those funds be directed towards the most worthy projects. So sure, there's going to be pressure to generate grant proposals that justify the desired funding.  

Quote:Part-time and adjunct faculty now make up 76 per cent of the academic labour force, allowing universities to operate more like businesses, making tenure-track positions much more rare and desirable.

I suspect that most of those part-time and adjunct faculty aren't researchers at the top research universities.

Many of those who are, are employed elsewhere, in industry or government, and also have adjunct professor status in the universities. The scientific staff at the US Dept of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory sometimes hold adjunct positions at next door UC Berkeley. All the PIs at the Gladstone Institute have adjunct positions at next door UCSF. These adjunct professors run their own laboratories in their own home institutions, while taking on and advising doctoral students from the universities. Medical schools are often filled with "clinical professors" who are prominent physicians in local hospitals with real-world experience. Again, UCSF has close ties to San Francisco General Hospital in that regard.

Quote:Increased reliance on emerging quantitative performance metrics that value numbers of papers, citations and research dollars raised has decreased the emphasis on socially relevant outcomes and quality.

How does this writer propose to identify "socially relevant outcomes" and "quality" (things that can increasingly become antitheses of each other)?

Research dollars raised are typically a function of how worthy the funding bodies think the proposed research is. So that's something of a peer-review standard, however imperfect it is in practice.

Citations are a very crude indicator of how important your professional peers think your work is. The more they discuss your work and incorporate your ideas or results into their own thinking, the more valuable your contribution arguably was.

Numbers of papers isn't a very good indicator of anything in my opinion, since it just promotes the publication of drivel to pad one's stats.

Quote:There is also concern that these pressures could encourage unethical conduct by scientists and the next generation of STEM scholars who persist in this hypercompetitive environment.

I think that there's a lot of that. It's what is motivating much of the current "replication crisis".

Quote:We believe that reform is needed to bring balance back to the academy and to the social contract between science and society, to ensure the future role of science as a public good.

I don't think that it's necessary for this author to wrap him/herself in the flag like that. "Social contract between science and society". 'Society' isn't even aware of these labor issues the author is raising and cares less. "Public good", fine. But when public resources are being spent on something, isn't it in the public's interest to put some conditions on the largesse?

This author just seems to be complaining because academic life is demanding and competitive. Well, welcome to real life. If you were flipping burgers at McDonalds, that would be demanding and competitive too. The grill is hot, the uniforms are ugly, everyone looks down on you for working there and you will have to work fast enough to keep your job. There's no such thing as tenure out in the real world, a plush status with gold-plated job security and benefits, where you can lord it over the non-tenured faculty and doctoral-student slaves who are dependent on you to keep their jobs and get their degrees, and where you can essentially behave as you like.

The OP in this thread reminds me of that line from early in 'Ghostbusters': "You don't know what it's like out in the private sector! They expect results!"

That's not a bad thing, especially when we are talking "public goods" that consume public resources. The public has a right to expect results.

(Nov 16, 2017 04:49 PM)Yazata Wrote: [ -> ]This author just seems to be complaining because academic life is demanding and competitive. Well, welcome to real life. If you were flipping burgers at McDonalds, that would be demanding and competitive too. The grill is hot, the uniforms are ugly, everyone looks down on you for working there and you will have to work fast enough to keep your job. There's no such thing as tenure out in the real world, a plush status with gold-plated job security and benefits, where you can lord it over the non-tenured faculty and doctoral-student slaves who are dependent on you to keep their jobs and get their degrees, and where you can essentially behave as you like.

The OP in this thread reminds me of that line from early in 'Ghostbusters': "You don't know what it's like out in the private sector! They expect results!"

That's not a bad thing, especially when we are talking "public goods" that consume public resources. The public has a right to expect results.

Maybe accountability when it comes to wasted money and resources or the level of efficiency. But the other expectations that the public, business, and government can have concerning scientists reminds me of Freeman Dyson's reasons for having went rogue in climate change (and anything else he turned against the grain on over the years).

The politicians and the public expect science to provide answers to the problems. Scientific experts are paid and encouraged to provide answers. The public does not have much use for a scientist who says, “Sorry, but we don’t know”. The public prefers to listen to scientists who give confident answers to questions and make confident predictions of what will happen as a result of human activities. So it happens that the experts who talk publicly about politically contentious questions tend to speak more clearly than they think. They make confident predictions about the future, and end up believing their own predictions. Their predictions become dogmas which they do not question. The public is led to believe that the fashionable scientific dogmas are true, and it may sometimes happen that they are wrong. That is why heretics who question the dogmas are needed. --Heretical Thoughts About Science and Society _ Aug 7, 2007 _ edge.org

With regard to science that feeds engineering and technology, any flawed research and impotent hypotheses might arguably be exposed and weeded-out quicker by the failed, unreliable, or dangerous projects and products that result from such.[*] But the applicable "gospels" and their effects as dispensed by scientists in the social sciences (and especially as published in the current avalanche of East Asian and some Western journals that lack even sloppy peer review) might linger and take far longer to clean up.

footnote

[*] But expecting the physical sciences to have swifter corrections / adjustments whenever the source is their own competitory rat-race subculture may be Pollyanna optimism, too. Like biological and environmental chemists and other experts working for culprit industries accommodating their bosses' agendas and profit goals; and thereby similarly allowing questionable, biased, or bogus science propaganda to hang around retentively.

[...] for more than four decades, all scientific research regarding the health implications of leaded gasoline was underwritten and controlled by the original lead cabal–Du Pont, GM and Standard Oil; such research invariably favored the industry’s pro-lead views, but was from the outset fatally flawed; independent scientists who would finally catch up with the earlier work’s infirmities and debunk them were–and continue to be–threatened and defamed by the lead interests and their hired hands [...] (The Secret History of Lead)

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(Nov 16, 2017 07:39 AM)C C Wrote: [ -> ]https://aeon.co/essays/science-is-a-publ...-to-fix-it

EXCERPT: The rise of the 20th-century research university in the United States stands as one of the great achievements of human civilisation – it helped to establish science as a public good, and advanced the human condition through training, discovery and innovation. But if the practice of science should ever undermine the trust and symbiotic relationship with society that allowed both to flourish, our ability to solve critical problems facing humankind and civilisation itself will be at risk. We recently explored how increasingly perverse incentives and the academic business model might be adversely affecting scientific practices, and by extension, whether a loss of support for science in some segments of society might be more attributable to what science is doing to itself, as opposed what others are doing to science.

We argue that over the past half-century, the incentives and reward structure of science have changed, creating a hypercompetition among academic researchers. Part-time and adjunct faculty now make up 76 per cent of the academic labour force, allowing universities to operate more like businesses, making tenure-track positions much more rare and desirable. Increased reliance on emerging quantitative performance metrics that value numbers of papers, citations and research dollars raised has decreased the emphasis on socially relevant outcomes and quality. There is also concern that these pressures could encourage unethical conduct by scientists and the next generation of STEM scholars who persist in this hypercompetitive environment. We believe that reform is needed to bring balance back to the academy and to the social contract between science and society, to ensure the future role of science as a public good.

The pursuit of tenure traditionally influences almost all decisions, priorities and activities of young faculty at research universities. Recent changes in academia, however, including increased emphasis on quantitative performance metrics, harsh competition for static or reduced federal funding, and implementation of private business models at public and private universities are producing undesirable outcomes and unintended consequences (see Table 1 below).

Quantitative metrics are increasingly dominating decision-making in faculty hiring, promotion and tenure, awards and funding, and creating an intense focus on publication count, citations, combined citation-publication counts (h-index being the most popular), journal impact factors, total research dollars and total patents. All these measures are subject to manipulation as per Goodhart’s law, which states: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure....

MORE: https://aeon.co/essays/science-is-a-publ...-to-fix-it

Quote:We argue that over the past half-century, the incentives and reward structure of science have changed, creating a hypercompetition among academic researchers.

stopped on this point...
the general public(on the whole) have absolutely 0 contact with scientific accademia.
thus published & non-published studys are purely defined by interior hyrachy.

social media controls social opinion.
this includes and is a majority of TV.
thus what is broardcast on tv is subject to viewers personal interpretation, ... and... generally speaking the vast majority of viewers do not turn on TV to gain scientific knowledge.
Rather quite the opposite.
it is only recently that science channels have become known mainstream availibility inside high end pay per view product options.

when it comes to the majority of mainstream societys association with ground breaking science(ground breaking for its newness to the general public) it is purely at a level for a 10 year old child as the parents interact with school content, just after the basics classes and just before the teenager switches off from(socially & accademically seperates) the parents colaborative need & ability to help, support or plagerise.

soo... as you may see, here i have an issue with terms of reference.

companys making TV adverts faking scientific models & scenes & credentials to sell products...
that makes up a large % of the opinion of the average persons perception of science.
..."what does a scientist do?"
... "a scientist makes new things"
... "what are new things?"
... "new things are new things you buy from the shop"