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Comment by clickety_clack | Hacker News Reader

I think, sadly, these fields will collapse further into a tighter in-group. Anyone outside that group will find it increasingly hard to penetrate. Talent won’t get you there anymore.

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From my experience in research this was already the case 15 years ago (and from older peers, way before). Science has always has "in-groups". I forget the name of some philosopher in the 50's who was the opinion science is just a bunch of fads and it takes the old generation to die before a new idea can really be accepted.

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” Max Planck 1949

Commonly paraphrased to: The knowledge quest proceeds funeral by funeral.

Kuhn?

yea thats the name that was evading me, methinks.

For some reason I doubt Max Planck wrote or said this after his death (1947). The person i meant (maybe it was Kuhn). Either way I think it is too harsh, and many of the scientists I know strive to minimize bias as much as possible.... but I admit it being very hard to break out of conventional thinking and even more so as I age.

I always find this funny.

Max Planck himself got to watch physics radically change multiple times, through avenues that didn't involve the old guard dying.

But they were already a tight in-group. The difference was that now their combined output can provide additional insights not available before. I don't think that part is a problem. Expertise circles have always existed ( and will likely remain so for a while ).

The issue I am having is how members of the potential in-group is identified.

That said said:

<< Talent won’t get you there anymore.

Talent might not get you to the table, but you can make your own table now if you have useful like minds.

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