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.
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.