alt Hacker NewsIt depends on how you think the limited resources to perform research should best be allocated, and whether scientists should become more like doctors or lawyers so far as centralization of credentialing and professional gatekeeping goes. Doctors and lawyers have boards that can actually revoke your ability to practice for falling outside accepted standards. Science deliberately doesn't. Is that good or bad?
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hnfong • today at 4:01 AM
My point is that the scientific establishment is already basically like those boards that can limit your ability to do research unless you have a license.
The "license" is a PhD (from a reputable institution) and publications in a select list of high profile journals.
I'm very curious why you'd think otherwise.
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They should be allocated towards intellectual freedom biased towards randomness.
Existing knowledge is preserved implicitly and be the public, and well-trodden ideas are furthered by industry. Academia is the best place for experiments, which are necessary to avoid stagnation, because there’s only so much obvious (low-hanging) research which isn’t experimental.
Related: “Can random experimental choice lead to better theories?”, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/26339137261421577