There is a bigger and much broader crisis in science right now that academics refuse to face head on. From physics to social sciences to economics famous academics have promoted totally bumpkis theories as facts in order to justify PR and publication. Academics are more and more regularly taking data or exaggerating results and the public is starting to catch on.
One thing I've been trying to push is the idea of Goodhart's Hell and how we're all metric hacking. In academia, one of these things is fundamentally about how papers are written. As someone finishing up my PhD I can't wait to graduate and do real fucking research. The difference? I am not writing papers to my colleagues and fellow researchers in my niche; I'm writing papers to reviewers. These may seem like the same thing but they are very different. In a similar vein, many researchers are chasing hype and publicity. If you don't you don't get through these dumb filters. Journals and conferences do nothing (well at least conferences serve as a meetup, but not more than that). All they exist for, in modern times, is to give a signal to the bureaucrats at universities designed to operate as businesses to judge if a researcher is a good researcher or not (to be clear, this signal doesn't actually indicate such a concept, which is near impossible to tell). This, and other factors, underlines the whole replication crisis, hype (dear fucking god ML...(my area of study!)), and all this bullshit.
Research papers are about scientists communicating with one another. It doesn't matter if it is a preprint like arxiv, Nature, CVPR, or a fucking blog, these are all scientists communicating with one another. I can't wait to be out to just take my time with research, post to OpenReview and my blog, and move on not wasting my time explaining to a reviewer why metric we reproduced is different from the one in the original paper despite already including references of other works who also could not reproduce the original number and getting rejected because I had a broken link to my appendix. It's a fucking waste of time and it is a complete embarrassment that we call this process science.
The crisis in the sciences is very much a political one. Within a capitalist system, the sciences are actively hindered from being in the position to solve humanity's big problems, because bourgeois values so often dictate how and what is researched, funded, developed. (Profit oriented)
In this book was also the fist time I heard critical analysis of the big bang theory (aside from creationists in my youth), which I actually thought had a wide consensus. It really makes no sense when thinking about it materialistically. All the laws and known processes involving matter are supposed to have come from nothing? Helped me see how the big bang theory is nothing more than naked idealism. No wonder catholic popes got on board with it so quickly.
Another interesting thesis presented is that medicine in its form today is not actually a real science - infected by positivism and pragmatism, the way it's practiced is like a constant race to cover up symptoms rather than aiming to understand the human body in its entire complexity to heal issues at the root instead.
Anyway, highly recommended read. Covers several scientific fields and how they are being plagued by regressive ideology.
I really hate these lines. Not because capitalism doesn't have loads of problems but rather that it is missing underlying principles and incentives that exist to create these structures and incentives. They are coupled with the economic systems but not strictly dependent on them. These issues aren't fundamentally broken because the privatization nor nationalization of capital resources. Many of these issues exist because of metric hacking which exist due to bureaucratization and politicization. So in that sense it doesn't matter if your society is capitalist, socialist, feudal, monarchistic, anarchistic, or whatever. It has to do with how humans fundamentally organize structures, delegate, and evaluate. It is a crisis of the 21st century because only now have we had such scale and such specialization. But as complexity has been increasing at an exponential rate we are simplifying our metrics and decreasing trust.
No, this is untrue. Metric hacking doesn't really exist in alternative systems of doing science. For example, it didn't exist in the Eastern Europe during communism. There, being an authority in research was more based on nepotism than on merit, but to a large extent even fringe people were allowed to pursue research. It is also not a feature of a tenure system, which existed in the West during the Cold War.
The idea that we need to continuously monitor people for performance (measure them), rather than (for example) accept them into a community and just let them evolve there (for better or worse), is very intimately tied to capitalism.
Also, all the KPI systems based on objective metric ignore a really simple metric, that you can simply ask every scientist an opinion (for example, who are the leading people in your field) and use that as a metric, as a recommendation what kind of research is to be financed more and what kind is to be financed less. Again, this is because capitalism cannot trust employees by default, it has to put some other authority in charge of them.
>Metric hacking doesn't really exist in alternative systems of doing science. For example, it didn't exist in the Eastern Europe during communism.
Sure, metric hacking is not a problem when the crux of the matter is actually bending truth to follow the party line or face repercussions. Repercussions that could be years of imprisonment up to death penalty.
A cursory research on "scientific research under communism" yields [0], which seems to line up with the experience from people coming from former communist countries (including Mao's China and some former Eastern European countries).
I am also reminded of Luzin [1]. The previous article does not even mention pure mathematics as falling under repression, but even this domain (which was a strong point of Soviet Russia) could send researchers into concentration camps for dubious political motives.
So yes, metric hacking does not matter when the whole thing is bogus.
My father was a university researcher/teacher (assistant professor) in Czechoslovakia, during communist regime. It's not as black and white as these links might lead you to.
He was never higher ranking (didn't get professorship) until the 1989 revolution, AFAICT he was more interested in research (thermodynamics) than career.
During real socialism, academia was often a refuge of smart and freethinking people, if you were able to get there (some didn't for political reasons). It wasn't a highly paid job. And it also was very inefficient. There were completely useless departments, and the department heads were political positions. But some good science got done, without having to toe the party line, and without having to bend metrics and having to publish lots of repeated nonsense.
(I am not advocating that particular system, I think it was worse, but I am pointing out that measurement is not inevitable.)
One result of liberal (capitalist) approach to science is that people get really good at marketing themselves. That's why science in the Eastern Europe often gets bad optics, because that self-promoting aspect of it wasn't as prevalent there.
> But some good science got done, without having to toe the party line, and without having to bend metrics and having to publish lots of repeated nonsense.
Yeah no one should doubt that there wasn't good science coming out of Soviet Russia. Anyone that thinks so is ignoring a lot of history and this belief contradicts the entire premise of the Cold War. I mean how many countries have sent probes to the moon (~9 of them)? What about to other planets? What about Mars? (US/USSR/China. USSR and Russia all crashed and China is only 2020). And they produced a lot of good mathemticians, even if they discriminated against the Jews (google "Jewish Math Problems").
I agree, the system is definitely not preferred and too political, but no one should doubt that there weren't world class researchers from there. My concern is really that we're adopting such bureaucratic prioritization. It's also worth noting that this dominance of bureaucrats/politicians played a major role in the Chernobyl disaster, though neither should discount the fact that this was highly classified research at the time given how new the technology was. (Also let's not forget what happened to academic in China...)
If we're at anecdotes I know people from former Communist countries and their experience were worse than that, with many deaths within the family intellectuals in one case. As a result they tend to be staunch pro-capitalists, to a fault.
Under tyrannical regimes some people manage to live fairly reasonably well while many suffer. I don't doubt that but it doesn't invalidate a clear general trend.
During a long time under a capitalist regime academia was a refuge of smart and freethinking people.
The "real socialism" sounds like a "true scotsman" fallacy. Why wouldn't you apply the same standard and consider that the time academia was working prerry well in capitalist countries was "true capitalism" and the current state of failing academia (to a degree) is a symptom of a "false", degenerate form of capitalism?
I think your comment can be interpreted in different ways, but if I was to go with the more measured version I think you should agree with Godelski's points more.
In particular there isn't even really one example of a communist country that evolved with the political stability that democracies did. I'm not sure that if such a thing had happened, it wouldn't have devolved with the same bureaucratic tendencies --which goes back to my first point: given the level or brutal instability metric hacking could not arise.
The time when academia was working "pretty well" in the West was less capitalist than is today. It was quite social-democratic, with a relatively strong state (and academic independence).
I was talking about science, not planned economy in general. Planned economy is problematic for many of the same reasons for which capitalist production in large corporations is problematic. (And capitalist system which wouldn't have many large hierarchically controlled corporations doesn't exist.)
My point is, there existed different systems of doing science, which weren't measured as much (to the extent that would cause overproduction of articles that no scientist has time to read), because they had different preference than "scientific efficacy by an objective metric". For example, preference for somebody being authority in a scientific field for life. Or preference for academia to be a place for outcasts. Or preference for democratic decision making about what to scientifically pursue. These are all non-capitalist preferences.
> I was talking about science, not planned economy in general.
I was talking about metric hacking, which isn't exclusive to science. I could have been more explicit though. But I still think you unnecessarily brought in a red herring by bringing up economic systems and I could have responded more appropriately. But our discussion is off the rails now.
> My point is, there existed different systems of doing science, which weren't measured as much
Science has always been about measurements and philosophy. It is the balance. The issue is about the over metrification as to what the science means. You're definitely right to point out these issues within capitalist frameworks. You'll find many of a comment from me complaining about how we do this within corporations as well. KPIs rule everything even when they mean nothing. Quarterly profits over long term profits. Yes, these are metric hacking and incredibly short sighted things. But at the same time it would be naive to assume that there are not parallels under communistic rule[0]. There are plenty of examples as there are under all the systems that I mentioned.
The problem here is that you're willing to look at flaws in a system you disagree with (which you may notice no one is claiming the capitalism is flawless nor are many even countering your critiques. Pay close attention), the problem is that you're unwilling to look at the flaws within your preferred system. There are no globally optimal solutions to problems such as these, and thus there is no flawless system. The irony of this is that by ignoring such flaws you're actually performing the very metric hacking we are complaining about and it would not be unreasonable to call this hypocritical. Think about comedians if we need an analogy: you can't make fun of others if you aren't willing to make fun of yourself even more. With belief systems it is similarly more important that you are more critical of the ones you prescribe to than the ones you disagree with. After all, don't you want to improve upon them? We can have discussions of which is better and which is worse but that needs context and honesty about the downsides of each system. But no discussion can exist if you're unwilling to admit to flaws.
[0] It's hard to give a specific example because the Scottsman card has already been played elsewhere. A difficult part of conversations in this whole abstract "communism v capitalism" is that no one agrees on the fucking fundamental definitions and so arguments are abound. IMO the capitalists seem to have lower variance but I digress. For an example, if you are one of the people that considers modern China communist then we can point to them. They're doing the same shit as we are in the US in terms of papers, but I'd honestly say worse simply because there's more of them doing it. If you don't think China is communist, then well I'm not sure we can really make comparisons if no true communist regime has existed and it's probably not worth talking about "true communism" if it is so vulnerable that every attempt has failed within a few decades (sorry, can't just blame it on the CIA. They play a role and did fucked up shit but they aren't wizards either).
> But I still think you unnecessarily brought in a red herring by bringing up economic systems and I could have responded more appropriately.
But I didn't brought economic systems into it, others did. I was drawing on my own father's personal experience (as well my observations from the transition) in academia, which is that the metrization is not an inevitability for doing (even good) science.
Anyway, I also admitted the system's flaws. Again, I have heard the stories (BTW, the communism wasn't black and white either, different countries had different problems, even in Czechoslovakia there were about 4 different periods during 40 years of communism).
I don't know what system China uses internally to measure scientific output. Perhaps they adopted the Western system based on free market competition of scientific institutes for grants and students, and that's why they are also gaming the metrics. In that sense, their current system is based on capitalism.
Addendum: I would say since free market competition for labor is the main distinguishing feature of capitalism (together with its dual - private ownership of capital), it's not surprising that such a system is most prone to gaming this competition. It also manifests in the economy at large as "bullshit jobs". There are other parallels of current organizational problems in science with current form of neoliberal capitalism - rise of large actors (for example universities that are single-mindedly focused on publishing at the expense of everything else), abusing precarious labor (for example treatment of PHD students), etc.
I agree. Every time I see such a phrase as "in a capitalist system," I ask whether it would not happen in a communist or socialist system as well, and in the vast majority of cases, it would, simply because human nature does not differ regardless of what layer is added on top at a societal level.
Yeah like I'm totally fine with the phrase when it is actually something that doesn't happen in a socialist system but it's just become a standin for "bad". But there's things that are bad that are divorce of capitalism and socialism. I mean... what I referred to is more a result of the human condition and specialization. And I'm not sure why every response is always followed up with a great assumption that I'm capitalist. I'll dunk on capitalism and I'll dunk on communism, but they aren't really related to the topic at hand and don't need to be ham fisted into everything. Weren't we literally complaining about politization and bureaucratization? Those definitely exist in literally all forms of governments, from anarchist to dictatorships. Can we just talk about the thing we're actually trying to talk about? SMH
Exactly. It's just "capitalism = bad" now, there's no nuance of understanding of the pros and cons. Ultimately, human organization is the same everywhere and there will always be bureaucracy, as you say.
Metrics hacking is the beating heart of every corporation. Private corporations are the core of capitalism. How did you come to the conclusion that is a result “bureaucratization and politicization” instead?
Because bureaucracies and politics also existed under every communist regime. They exist in anarchist communities. They exist in households. But the difference is the degree of separation you are from those in power structures. And before you say that anarchism doesn't have a power structure (and there's many forms of anachism, just as there are many forms of socialism, communism, libertarianism, capitalism, liberalism, etc) if a power structure isn't explicit it is implicit. Which is rather well known in anarchist literature. We saw metric hacking in The Soviet Union, in The US, in China, in The UK, in Germany, France, Cuba, Colonial Korea, Colonial India (hell, we even got a stats term that everyone now knows out of that one), Feudal Europe, and far back into the Greeks, Ancient China, and as far back as we have literature. Which last I checked, most of those things predate capitalism but do not predate bureaucrats nor politics.
I hate to break it to you, but not everything is about economics.
Your answer implied that science is not hindered by the incentives that exist within a capitalist society, as the parent suggested. Was science hindered in the same way in the soviet union, in early US history, China, UK, Germany, France, ancient greece and so on?
I don't recall having heard about the greeks complaining on how they had to fine-tune their treaties for the review board or journal acceptance.
> Your answer implied that science is not hindered by the incentives that exist within a capitalist society
Weird take considering I'm complaining about things that happen in America and I'm not sure of anyone who would claim America isn't capitalist (well... at least not communist, but let's not get in the weeds there). Of course science is hindered by incentives driven by capitalism. But science is also hindered by incentives driven by communism. That's my entire point.
> I don't recall having heard about the greeks complaining on how they had to fine-tune their treaties for the review board or journal acceptance.
Sure. But I do recall ancient Greeks murdering people who "believed" in irrational numbers. Idk about you, but I'd call this a step up. You're acting like there's a system that has no flaws or that if a flaw doesn't exist in one area we can ignore all other flaws. Which, ironically is metric hacking
Woof if you don’t think metric hacking wasn’t a huge part of Russian communist bureaucracy your don’t know your history.
Like my dude quota systems were at the heart of all successful capitalist, socialist, communist, and fascist nations. I can give examples. My man your logic is deeply flawed.
Because it’s wildly obvious that bureaucracies are the organizational form of control whether you choose a capitalist, fascist or socialist or communist system, it’s been proven over and over in everything from the NHS to shareholder capitalism to communist industrialism. They all relied on metric measured bureaucracies. I mean it’s a part of basic history here that you seem to be entirely missing.
If you want a hyper explicit example it would be the cybersin project in socialist Chile.
I'll check out the book but your description that "sciences are actively hindered from being in the position to solve humanity's big problems" sounds accurate to me. I suspect you think that's a problem whereas I tend to think it's not.
Solutions to problems involve trade offs. Trade offs come down to questions about values. This is not he purview of Science. That's politics.
If it's a political problem, the problem is with our democracy. If its an economic problem, the problem is with capitalism. They can be considered independently if we choose to.
I don't know much about the crisis the OP is talking about, but I do know a bit about how our Australian Government gutted environment sciences because it was telling them things it didn't want to hear.
I wonder if the CSIRO needs to be an independent body like the ABC. (Not that the ABC is immune to pressure. )
It’s eroding rational sciences as a whole.