Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Why are modern scientists so dull?

An interesting question...

Why are modern scientists so dull? How science selects for perseverance and sociability at the expense of intelligence and creativity

Bruce G. Charlton

http://kernull.com/bioradio.pdf

TBH this article made me wonder whether the author had ever met a leading scientist! It's contrary to my experience. I'd also like to know in which sciences he thinks one has to do "10, 15 even 20" years of postgraduate training before choosing one's own direction. In my field PhD students already get to choose their own direction, if they are up to doing so; in every field I know anything at all about, the very best new PhDs can get positions where they do so, even if the majority will work under someone else for a few years. The idea of anyone with the ability to be a leading scientist being forced to spend 20 years after graduation doing someone else's bidding is not reality-based, I claim.

I suspect the author of being someone who's got into trouble with his (or her; but I bet it's a he) departmental colleagues for not doing his marking on time :-)

I thought the most interesting part was the discussion about the factors of general (g factor) intelligence (IQ), Big Five Conscientiousness (C), and Creativity. I didn't necessarily agree with his conclusions but I could see his point.

The thing he didn't address was how to increase the Conscientiousness and Creativity of those with high IQs. In some ways, we do almost the opposite with learned underachievement and an emphasis on convergent thinking.

I'd have to agree with this thesis to some degree. I agree with Colinsmum that one pretty much knows the trajectory in ones mid 20s. Eminent people will begin making contributions in their teens.

This is my view of the academic track from my own experiences and those of my friends.

First, most students work for professors doing grunt work for the professors. A student who liked to go off on their own and look at stuff that interests them is not going to advance the professors' work. A professor is going to find students who will work for him.

Second, really far out ideas and methods are not a sure bet nor will they get funding. University admins want the bigger, surer bets to get money for burden. A prof who goes after risky stuff with low payoffs will not get as much support as the prof going after bigger, surer projects.

Third, a prof wants to be cited. Doing quirky stuff is not going to get you cited in the next 5 years because it is not mainstream. I've seen this first hand on several occasions where a prof could be handed state of the art tools to do ground breaking analysis and they backed off because, "no one will be able to reproduce my work for some time."

Fourth, in the soft fields like Literature and History, stuff like Social Justice has to be included or at least spoken to. This is conformity and it turns many people off even if they agree with it. Global Warming is another example. Dark Matter is another example. Weapons Research is another example.

Fifth, much of science today is really about keeping stuff filed and not breaking new ground. Philology is fine, but when a young or aggressive personality comes along, the philologist will be the first to complain about their papers getting scattered.

Sixth, private industry is doing a lot of very interesting things that require high creativity and tolerance of chaos. This tends to draw those who are creative due to the interesting nature of the work. Why get a PHD when you can be at the leading edge of your field every day and not have to deal with publishing and petty politics? For me, this is the clincher. I find most professors to be 10-15 years behind the curve in my chosen field with no clue as to how real work gets done. Talking to them is like talking to a mannequin.

Seventh, there are some very nasty people with tenure. They go out of their way to target people they do not like or are just are weird. It runs the gamut from sexual predation, psychological games, to outright intellectual bullying.

Real creative science will always be done on the margin on one's own time. There is some very interesting work being done in a number of fields and with the web, they are more than willing to blog about it. There is big, expensive science - but for the most part, there are fundamental things that can be done on a shoestring.

Great article, thanks for posting, haven't read the whole thing but it certainly is interesting!

"Talking to them is like talking to a mannequin. " - Ouch!

I'm going to add an enthusiastic HE'S RIGHT! to this debate. I'm a scientist and am constantly confronted with the way the system works.

Universities aren't what they were even 20 years ago (much less 30, 40, or 50+ years ago). Nowadays, they're completely organized around grants. Principal investigators (eg entry level faculty and up, plus non-tenure track independent researchers) are responsible for obtaining their own salary money, in addition to money to pay technicians, postdocs, etc, and money for supplies. People who don't get grants pretty much don't get tenure. Which means they get fired.

NIH in particular simply will not fund a grant application deemed to be too risky, and "risky" has a broader definition than you'd expect. The standard conventional wisdom among applicants is that you have to have done the work already before they'll fund it. This sounds ridiculous, but it's generally true. Even SBIR grants to small businesses, which are defined as being risky, don't get funded unless the risk is extremely minimal.

The problem is compounded by an application rejection rate of 80 - 90% (80% now with the stimulus money, like back to 90% sometime soon). This means that only the applications with the highest likelihood of succeeding (meaning, the most incremental work) will get funded. The people who get funded are getting older too: the average age to get your first R01 (what you could call your basic meat-and-potatoes NIH grant) is over 40 now.

In the early 1970s, success rates with applications at NIH were somewhere around 1/3 and the average age of getting your first R01 was around ten years younger (maybe more).

I've heard that the mainstream science directorates (as opposed to science education departments) at the NSF are much the same.

Lee Smolin has a detailed analysis of the whole mess in the last few chapters of his book "The Trouble with Physics." These chapters are separate from the topic in the rest of the book and I recommend them to anyone interested in reading more.

This is a huge mess and if it isn't fixed, the US will lose its position as a leader in scientific research!

Val

I've been out of science for 10yrs (Dh is still in science) and it is just as Val describes. Val what branch of science are you in? I was an immunologist. I remember as a graduate student when my PI got her first R01...it was almost unheard of to have it funded on the first try and nearly 100%. And yes, you need to have most of the work done before you get money to do it. So you get a grant for work you've already done, to pursue your next project. IN our field you used to could postdoc for 6months-1yr, get your position, get your grant, set up your lab.... now folks are postdocs for years and years and then become research ass 1, research assistant 2 blah blah blah.

ALS research. We're doing a biomarker study (trying to find them in the blood;we have a list of cadidates).

Val