✳flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

Which Kind of Science Reform | Elements of Evolutionary Anthropology

elevanth.org · saved by 1 readers

What hope is there for science reform, if we can’t agree on what to reform? Right now, principles are more important than practices. Science has always been a bit shit. In 1789, the historian (and minor playwright) Friedrich Schiller complained about the problem of “bread scholars” (Brotgelehrte) who resented rigor and reform, focusing instead only on career advancement and job security [link]. He enjoined his junior colleagues to resist careerist incentives and focus instead on the intrinsic rewards of seeking and accumulating knowledge. These days complaints about bread scholars persist. You might have heard that academia still has a reputation for sloppy, self-interested, and sometimes fraudulent output. People talk about a “replication crisis,” but it’s hardly new. But the scholarly landscape is very different than it was in 1789. Pre-publication peer review didn’t exist back then—that didn’t begin until the mid-1900s [link]. Impact factor had never once been calculated (or rather

What hope is there for science reform, if we can’t agree on what to reform? Right now, principles are more important than practices. Science has always been a bit shit. In 1789, the historian (and minor playwright) Friedrich Schiller complained about the problem of “bread scholars” (Brotgelehrte) who resented rigor and reform, focusing instead only on career advancement and job security [link]. He enjoined his junior colleagues to resist careerist incentives and focus instead on the intrinsic rewards of seeking and accumulating knowledge. These days complaints about bread scholars persist. You

Explore this link on the map →

saved by

related reading