Individuals focused on real discovery and not publishing much until they really have something significant to say don't fit into this well.
Obviously, you then only get very incremental, low-risk, low-reward research, but high-profile scientists who mainly serve on the committees at the NIH and dole out funding get to keep their small business (err, I mean lab) going with minimal disruption in funding.
Fuck, even the head of the institution publicly announced that only quantity matters, not quality. Because the government funding for research also depends only on quantity.
Graduate school, MS at Harvard & MIT, PhD at UIUC.
Both my MS and PhD supervisors were brilliant and strongly believed in publishing only when they had something real to talk about, which I respected a lot. But it was clear this wasn't what the top professors were doing. They were running paper mills.
>> What fields in academia?
Elec engineering & CS.
>> Do you work there or have friends there
I don't work there, although I was offered several positions. This culture is pretty much why I chose industry. In the real world, most customers care about real achievements.
Lots of friends, yes.
I don't have any idea how to calculate those proportions, but it's an awesome puzzle.
And have their own internal politics - they want science that does not disrupt the VP/CEO's plans, or make the chief scientist look bad.
Hence patents. The new Hep C treatments are hundreds of thousands of dollars cheaper than older treatments, but were still researched and developed.
My point was only that (by the definition I think makes the most sense here) they are doing science to the exact extent they give up the intellectual-property monopoly, whatever that extent happens to be.
That does not mean that dissemination of new information has to work like it does now. The Republic of Letters was very different but quite successful. But if you have taken no effort to make your discovery available to others, I’d say you’re not advancing the cause of human learning; if you have taken effort to ensure it is not available, like what many patents aim for nowadays, I’d say you’re working against it.
On the other hand, those who at the same time were experts in, for instance, making shoes, made efforts to keep secret their techniques.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-...
Charles Darwin, for example, was born into wealth and doesn't really need to work for a living.
Even ones that are not all that prosperous per capita achieve things like moon landings.
You can have the monarchy without being a colony - several former colonies do.
Basic science funding seems sparse though. Investments tend to favor commercial entities.
This is still true, although to a lesser degree, because everyone is much better off. 500 years ago, you could only pursue some things if you were born rich. Today, the field has greatly expanded, to everyone's benefit.
1. Government funded research
2. Private industrial research
3. Private personal research
Usually, those involved in #3 are made fun of constantly by the lumpenproles. Before someone in category #3 makes it they look like Bryan Johnson doing Blueprint. That's the defining characteristic, actually. If you were to look at Ms. Kariko before she was successful, the majority of HN users would have made fun of her.