Hello, I am Mr. Nobody and I feel a bit alone (fortunately I have sense of humour). It is time to express what a lot of people know but nobody says (to mention the ghost in the science atmosphere): The king is naked. For what? Just to speak, for conversation. Where on hell are the ideas? I read scientific papers and papers but I do not see ideas (good or bad). Where is the new knowledge? What is the advance useful for Human development produced by psychology? At least in my field Psychology but I know that also in others fields this questions are unsolved. Today science is “much to do about nothing”. It is a system far from perfect, but is it the less bad one of the possible science systems? I do not think so. There is a war inside the labs, Universities, science Institutions…between explorers (people who wants to explore the space, the mind, the nature) and normatives (staff against any change, that believes that to build knowledge is like to build a wall, step by setp, stone by stone following the method). Both personalities are incompatible: rules against creativity, extrinsic motivation against intrinsic one, boring and false predictability against uncertainty. The normatives have developed a science system based on extrinsic motivation (with punishment and rewards, directed to our mamamiam brain if you follow or unfollow the rules, if you fill the forms, if you behave like a good boy…). But science needs rebelds with a cause (to explore), to go inside the blind zone we need metaphors not thousands of administrative acts. Scientifics today behave like philosophical zombies without alternative. There is a big pressure to copy the empty model (the young students believe there is just one option, the empty model or you will be rejected and in any case all the time supervised). Then you follow the wrong rewards (big CVs about nothing). A joke: Four scientifics around a table discuss “who is the best”: I put 85 on the table. Here you are my 100. I win. We can describe a long list of significant problems in Science: There is not self-criticism (where is meta-science, the science of science; self-conciousness, philosophy of science, pragmatics of science)? The peer review normative prejudices; the dictatorship of journals; the principle of authority. Replicability. The relevance of dependent variables like Reaction Time; the Neuro-mania; The absence of author rights. The abuse about post graduate students. The narcissism of scientifics (vanity). The automatic and biased long way between the idea and its publication in a journal: idea, scientific method, experiments, statistical analysis, scientific writing, peer review… At what point in this timeline an idea becomes science? At the end? Then unpublished research is not science? Journals are the bottleneck of scientific ideas? Imagine any other real domain (police, cooks, hospitals, sports…) where you must wait until at least two peers tell you that your work is well done. When did science forget its origin? Its relationship with real life, with people, with wellbeing, with consciousness, reflection, with knowledge, with a real product… And It becomes just a way of life, an ornament, business, religion, politics, a microworld , a club or an army? When did scientifics forget to think by themselves? We need a deep change, a revolution. We need to scape from the spiderweb, but who can stop the big machine in the wrong direction? The game: We can play a game (a youtube video-game) if you wish (it would be a good idea if researchgate let videos in the web). This is the game: Anyone of us (the researchers) can indicate in a video their main contribution to science, knowledge or humanity in just a couple of minutes, in an informative form (to be understood by anyone, like a friend conversation). Please not science-fiction: just say what you have done that is useful for world-space-mind- sea-society knowledge. Not what you wish to do or that you study a microlab effect that it is supposed to be related with a real important thing one day. Good sentences would be: I have done X (I discovered a good treatment against X illness). Probably after my death I will be remembered by that. Or perhaps your main contribution is just your CV, your impact index, your list of publications. Your indexes that nobody understands and are weakly related with microworld importance of sometype.
It is not difficult for any scientist to name a few of his most important achievements, usually no more than 3-5, which he would like to be proud of. The grounds for this may be scientific novelty or benefit to people. For me personally, such achievements are:
1. Participation in the development by the group of scientists in the 1980s of a method for the study of the brain - thermocephaloscopy:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4060946
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3736711
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3713920
DOI: 10.1007 / BF01052543
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3630386
DOI: 10.1007 / BF01185076
2. Participation in the development of the methodology for thermography of an open brain:
DOI 10.1364 / JOT.82.000459
DOI 10.1364 / JOT.82.000467
DOI 10.17691 / stm2016.8.3.09
DOI: 10.21611 / qirt.2018.p12
arXiv: 1512.07041v1
DOI: 10.21611 / qirt.2018.p12
3. Development of a method for training tissue blood supply before surgery with the risk of ischemic complications:
DOI 10.1134 / S0362119715030184
doi: 10.21037 / atm.2018.03.33
4. Development of the methodology of functional tests for thermography of the skin:
DOI 10.1364 / JOT.80.000393
DOI 10.17691 / stm2015.7.2.16
DOI 10.1364 / JOT.82.000445
http://nd-cogsci.iapras.ru/2017/index.html
DOI: 10.21611 / qirt.2018.p11
Each of these works, in my opinion, was not made in vain. At the same time, a significant part of my life in science was overshadowed by maneuvering and fighting the near-scientific bureaucracy, the meaningless transfer of paper to reports on grants and obviously failed (sometimes even artificially contrived, fictional) projects, etc.
I think you have started a serious discussion, which may be for many very painful.
Thanks Mikhail. I agree with: you 3 to 5 in a background of 50 to 150 published papers. It means that I can feel proud of 1 to 10% of my research (we can call this special ones, signals). Then, from 90 to 99% of the scientific publications are just noise? The ratio between noise and signals is a low one. Why we publish noise?
At least in my case, it was much more difficult to publish signals that noises. At the same time, it is important not to confound the content (the research) with the continent (the journal and its impact factors), the correlations between the quality of the content and continent can be weak. In my opinion, frequently Proyects finances and grants applications are not able to make this discrimination. They value noise over signals. Accepted definitions of science, knowledge, quality, signals.. are bad ones (at least debatable), but it looks like that nobodies cares about too much to do something. But It is supposed to be science, not religion, army, politics... or other human development affected by cognitive bias, irrational beliefs... It is supposed that science has the options to analyze it, to produce a system not too much affected by them. These "human sins" are more accepted in other domains, but they should be under control in the context of science (if science pursued knowledge over other goals). Yours. Emilio
I fully agree with the majority of the ideas. However, the gist is that most people are programmed to receive reinforcement (and specially punishment), and the scientific life is the perfect environment for this. I honestly think that this is not place for rebels.
By the way.. we are aware that peer review system is not perfect, however under your point of view which would be the solution? to upload all your work to RG. How will you be granted by scientific project without a scale to be compared?
Dragan Pavlovic.. pointed out regarding the use of RG too judge somebody’s scientific contribution that " the commissions will have to read and understand the scientist’s work. They will have to judge the scientist and not statistics." Under my point of view.. most reviewwes and editors did not go into the depth of the papers. So, is it real to think taht commisions will read (and understand) the scientist’s work)?. I do not think so, specially nowadays...
In my opinion the peer review system is based on rejection (almost 90 to 95% of the papers in most journals) what is a bad foundation for any system. It promotes envy, hate, feelings of incomprehension... and overall an implicit model of reviewer. Most reviewers behave in a similar way, with a unique thought, like outsiders detectors. They seem to follow an algorithm with several steps (option A): step1: your goal is to reject the ms. Step 2:Layout or format is the important test (the ms follows APA rules, Statistics power...). It is more important than the idea or content. Then the reviewer must check the format. Step 3. Beware of ideas, if you smell a new idea, speculation or theory, then go to step 1. But if the content is a repetition or a small variation go to step 2 (look a the previous references of the idea, they must follow a recent discussion in a scientific microworld ).
Imagine for a moment a peer review system that works inversely (option B): Step 1: your goal is to accept the ms. Step 2: do step1 only if it contributes a new idea. 3. Check the format but it is secondary task, format problems can be solved during the reviewing process. The science would be worse, better, equal? In my opinion, science looks for the change, upsetting, not for repetition-verification.
For me the best peer review system should include bot options A and B, and you can indicate your option before the reviewing process. But if both options can work, then perhaps any peer review system is arbitrary.
Anothers ethical and economic problems are the payment to publish, or that you can select the reviewers...
With respect to the scale to be granted by a scientific project, the answer is the content, the project itself, not the CV. And yes, i am in favour of an open and public access to scientifc knowledge like RG. For example: Each university can create a base data with the research of the members. It is important to maintain the University autonomy and also the value of research and of researchers (effort, results, method) , the value of a thesis or a full professor. All of these things are loosing weight and autonomy, too much supervised and everything depends on spureous numbers (indexes, publications). Science is what we do in our labs. We are intelligent enough and with academic experience to take own decisions not just external ones. After the open access, the selection depends on society, media, the public, the utility, the knowledge or advance produced. Think what would have happened with Darwin and his evolution theory in our peer review system to be granted by a scientific project.
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