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Risk aversion is ruining science + Woke MIT brings back standardized tests

#1
C C Offline
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)
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#2
Yazata Offline
(Apr 28, 2022 04:00 PM)C C Wrote: Risk Aversion Is Ruining Science

I think that a number of things are ruining science. (Maybe "ruining" is too strong a word.) But its highly institutionalized culture is probably part of it.

Quote: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

I think that we are seeing that with much of physics today. As is often noted by people like Sabine Hossenfelder, there haven't really been any big developments in theoretical physics for the last 20 years at least. Despite the fact that there probably have never been as many theoretical physicists as today, or as many papers being published. Compare that to the situation 100 years ago when both relativity and quantum mechanics were turning everything on its head.

Quote:requiring more people and more resources to solve.

Ever more energetic particle accelerators, ever more sensitive telescopes...

That BTW, is part of why I personally prefer philosophy over science. There are philosophical problems literally everywhere. They don't require ever higher energies or ever more powerful telescopes before they become visible to us.

Quote:It’s also easy to fall into a trap of conformity. Graduate students work on the problems that their advisers find interesting

A student is never going to be accepted into graduate school, never going to be awarded a doctorate, never going to be hired and never going to be awarded tenure unless he or she agrees with and supports those already established in the organization. Original thought or even (horrors!) disagreement isn't likely to be welcome.

Perhaps science advances more rapidly when it isn't so institutionalized. In the 19th century and before, a great deal of science was done by amateurs, or at least by individuals not associated with the universities of the time. Just consider the kind of people presenting their work at the early Royal Society. Many were wealthy aristocrats with the time and money to perform their investigations. Many others were clergymen, a common career for poor intellectuals in past centuries, who would be supported by a parish, preach a sermon a few times a week and practice intellectual pursuits the rest of the time. It's only since the 19th century that the practice of science has become increasingly monopolized by universities.

Quote:almost always probing a specific sub-problem of a much larger domain

Sometimes the little incremental questions can be important and even exciting. To appreciate them, one needs to be up to speed on the debates, controversies and open questions in the field.

But part of it is the publish-or-perish academic culture. Scientists are informally ranked by how long their lists of publications are. So there's a natural tendency to publish small topics that can be written up quickly and relatively easily.

Quote: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.

Yes.

Quote:The realities of the current grant funding climate play a role, too... 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.

Again, advantage philosophy.

Quote: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.

The same kind of things can be said about engineering.

Manned space exploration is the poster-child for that. In the twelve years of the Space Race from 1957 to 1969, Great Things were accomplished. Humanity went from Sputnik to landing men on the Moon! Since then? Even today, we remain trapped in low Earth orbit after having gone nowhere for fifty years! Artemis was supposed to be us busting out, but after the bureaucrats got done with it, it was just a safe (if obscenely expensive) re-do of Apollo.

Risk carries with it the possibility of failure. Failure can destroy bureaucratic careers. (Just look at the Challenger disaster.) So it's much safer to hang your career on something that is already well understood and more likely to succeed.

Then along comes Elon. A science-fiction nut with a few hundred billion in his pocket who is only too happy to be taking risks. (Self-driving electric cars? Let's do it!) Part of the hiring process for engineers at SpaceX is their willingness to take risks and consider unconventional solutions.

Space travel will only work if its affordable. That demands reusable rockets that can fly over and over like airplanes. But that was way too risky for the government bureaucrats, who preferred to think that it was impossible. So Elon and his crew of crazy engineers did it. In so doing they cornered the market for commercial satellite launch, and humbled companies like Boeing.

And Starship! Far more ambitious than Artemis and consequently far riskier, but if it succeeds it will start to open up the entire solar system to human exploration. Risk -->Reward.

Quote: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...

Exactly.
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