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On the Future of Science
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun Mar 19, 2006 02:51 PM
from the in-the-not-too-distant-future dept.
from the in-the-not-too-distant-future dept.
bj8rn writes "Kevin Kelly, the founding executive editor of Wired magazine, speculates about the future of science based on a talk he have gave a few weeks ago. Kelly sees recursion as the essence of science and chronicles the introduction of different recursive devices in science; projecting forward from this, he makes several interesting predictions about what the near future may hold in store. Some highlights: there will be more change in the next 50 years of science than in the last 400 years; the new century will be the century of Biology; new ways of knowing will emerge, with 'Wikiscience' leading to perpetually refined papers with thousands of authors."
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Wikiscience: see this post (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wikiscience: see this post (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wikiscience: see this post (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
NIH funding (Score:5, Interesting)
This will be interesting considering that the current administration has for the first time in 30 years, reduced the funding of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and not allowed its budget to keep up with inflation and shows their lack of commitment to bioscience research. I predict this damage will take at least 10 years to repair.
Not thinking in a big picture sense (Score:5, Insightful)
An honest question: What exactly makes you assume the next century of scientific advancement will happen in America?
It will be a great and sad loss if America decides to abdicate its position as scientific and technological leader of the world-- which seems to be exactly what is happening, between decreasing public funding; the decreased public perception of the importance of science; the increased difficulty foreign academics are facing under the new and restrictive INS policies of the last four years; and the raft of arbitrary and ignorance-fueled restrictions Congress has placed on bioscience research (while still somehow expecting innovative results).
But if America does decide to go the route it is currently on and abandon its position as science leader, the rest of the world can move on without us. It will just take a little bit of time to reshuffle things.
Parent
Re:Not thinking in a big picture sense (Score:5, Insightful)
This is actually a really, really good question. My answer would be that the NIH has historically been the leading funding source for bioscience in the world. Also, it is important to note that the NIH *does* fund research in other countries as well... However, it is also important to note that other countries are stepping up and the number of published papers in bioscience being published in other countries are on the increase. The next century is difficult to predict, but it would be safe to say that even over the next decade, the US will continue to dominate bioscience work and funding. The question is whether or not we have a commitment to maintain our lead in bioscience past this decade into the rest of the century.
Parent
Re:Not thinking in a big picture sense (Score:2)
I need to respectfully disagree. This process already happened. in the 1970s published research paper figures were around 30% USA, 19% Europe. This has more or less reversed afaik.
Re:Not thinking in a big picture sense (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Not thinking in a big picture sense (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article you linked:
In 1981, when the company began tracking the data, the United States accounted for 39.7 percent of the total number of papers published in the world (172,132 papers); the EU accounted for 32.3 percent (139,954 papers); and the Asia Pacific region accounted for 13 percent (56,644 papers). By 2004, the EU accounted for 38 percent of the total number of papers (292,067); the United States accounted for 33.3 percent (256,374); and the Asia Pacific region accounted for 25.3 percent of papers (195,001).
In other words, the total number of papers published in the US increased by 48% during this time period (172,132 to 256,374). A decrease in percentages does not equal a decrease in number. Considering that the EU has about 60% more people than does the US, they SHOULD be putting out a higher number of papers than the US. The reason for the unequal increase in papers published by the US and EU respectively should be clear to anyone who's lived in Europe; the US has always had a fairly effective, and reasonably accessible education system, whereas in many parts of the EU, education was limited, and economic difficulties meant a much higher dropout rate due to the need to begin working at an early age. Similar reasons explain the jump in papers coming out of Asia. If Europe and Asia were producing the same number of papers per capita as the US, the figures should looks something like this:
US: 256,374
EU: 401,015
Asia: 3,197,401
So obviously, the US is still way ahead of the curve, and Asia is still FAR behind. Europe's doing a decent job of catching up, but I don't expect to see them surpass the US any time soon.
Parent
Re:Not thinking in a big picture sense (Score:4, Insightful)
"It seems like you made up your mind that scientific research is on the decline in the US, and only then went looking for info to back that claim."
First of all, I REMEMBERED about the trend in that matter and quite frankly I was right. I didn't remember the exact numbers so I went searching for them. And they backed me up. Now WHY DO YOU mix per capita numbers into the discussion when we were talking about absolute numbers?! Of course the US increased since 1981, well, so did Europe and Asia!
Please note, I have no problem of you emphasysing that the US is increasing it's number of published scientific papers, but that is NOT what I was talking about so I don't know why do you try to conclude that my statement was false when I was talking about absolute numbers all the way.
I've never said scientific research is in decline in the USA, I only said it is in decline RELATIVE to the rest of the world!
Oh btw, I have to correct this: "The reason for the unequal increase in papers published by the US and EU respectively should be clear to anyone who's lived in Europe; the US has always had a fairly effective, and reasonably accessible education system, whereas in many parts of the EU, education was limited, and economic difficulties meant a much higher dropout rate due to the need to begin working at an early age."
What you're saying is simply doesn't match up to the real situation. Most of Continental Europe has state sponsored university level education for the majority and had for the past 50 years at least. Those countries who had to limit education because of economic difficulties are still not churning out a lot of papers - Albania, Belarus, Ukraine, Yugoslavia come to the mind in the soviet period. The situation of those countries in terms of published papers don't significantly matter to the European total and never did. As for the rest of the countries who practically publish the vast majority of papers - education is mostly better starting from primary school and finishing at universities compared to the USA (If you need to back this up I'm happy to discuss detailed data). So the question arises, why did the EU have a quite lower number of papers for years and why the sudden increase?
The situation is two fold. Effects of the cold war on the USA and effects of the cold war on Europe. In the USA the 50s had the sputnik-shock education reform which effects lasted for 2-3 decades, but Western Europe had no such thing and was after ww2, partly in ruins and economy problems at least until the 60s. Countries like Poland, Hungary and East-Germany were behind the Iron Curtain and while the situation started to relax starting from the 80s, it certainly wasn't allowing optimal collaboration of scientists Europe-wide.
Since you've allowed yourself to guess my motivation, allow me to guess yours: When you've been confronted by information rocking your beliefs in regards of scientific leadership of the world, you've been trying to poke holes in that information. The original statement that the USA still retains the world lead in scientific advancement, is not true anymore, which is shown clearly in absolute numbers. Now, you can tell me about per capita numbers and I'll happily argue about them, but they have no relation to the subject.
Parent
Re:Not thinking in a big picture sense (Score:3, Informative)
Re:NIH funding (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with the academic research system is that it's an unsustainable pyramid scheme. Propping it up with budget increases just pushes the problem out another year. That is what needs to be fixed. In the meantime, though, researchers might consider
Re:NIH funding (Score:3, Informative)
Re:NIH funding (Score:3, Informative)
Nobody has claimed it was a funding crisis however. One
Re:NIH funding (Score:3, Informative)
The administration's cutting of the NIH budget is part of an overall effort to reemphasize funding of the physical sciences. In the decade after the Cold War, health and biology research saw a funding boom due to the inherent political attractiveness of funding efforts to fight disease. On the other hand, basic physical sciences suffered from shrinking governmental support because of dissipation of competitive pressure from the USSR. Today, with new competition from Asia and Europe, the US is seeking to ree
Re:NIH funding (Score:5, Insightful)
Ahhhh, spoken like a person who has no real understanding of the history of science. Are you aware that essentially *all* applied scientific knowledge and applications are derived from basic science research? Nuclear power, the Internet, genetics, medicine, and more. Applied research that corporations and private companies are interested in is generally applied research that is only made possible after the basic science work has been done.
Also, on what do you make this prediction that it'd take 10 years to repair the "damage" anyways?
This is based on the number of existing grants that have been failed to be renewed from senior investigators due to reduced funding, the number of jobs that have been eliminated by even recent cuts this year (many labs have had their grants cut by 20% this year alone), and the number of post-docs that have failed to achieve more permanent academic positions in the past few years.
Parent
Re:NIH funding (Score:3, Insightful)
Now that is a cynical view, of course, and intended to be funny -- but there is also a ring of truth to it. Public institutions are the ones whose primary focus is on public benefit and not shareholder gains. While I value the role of competitio
Re:private research then becomes worth more (Score:4, Insightful)
I should point out that when basic research is privatized, there will be much less incentive for rare medical defects to be investigated. If there is not an economic incentive, then the work would not be done. It should also be mentioned that there are many profound discoveries and improvements of understanding of basic science that have been made as a result of the investigation of rare genetic defects. These discoveries have been applicable to other more general problems as a result and would never have been made if the basic science research had not been funded.
So, you could write off much of our understanding of the molecular biology of genetics which took some years for companies to even understand how to exploit for profit. Where would we be do you think if there were no government funding of basic science research?
Parent
Tough to predict (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Tough to predict (Score:3, Insightful)
You're right. Back when I was in colleg
Re:Tough to predict (Score:5, Insightful)
Science make bold and utterly false prediction, just to have some other upstart technology steal the show. Sure, we don't have flying cars. We do have a world wide communications grid though that is having rapidly changing society in ways that a few flying cars couldn't even begin to compete with. The reason why science seems slow these days is because we are so damn used to change.
Few people even remember what it was like to look up information before Google. A lot of people forget that less then 10 years ago you couldn't instant get in contact with anyone you wanted via a cell phone. While we were waiting for rocket ships, a significantly more profound technology in the guise of the Internet and communications technology made itself at home. Multinational corporations used to be disjointed heads only vaguely sharing the same financial body, now they are well oiled machines that operate with ease across thousands of miles.
There absolutely have been profound changes in just the past 20 years. Our society is being remolded in reshaped by technology at a blinding speed. The only reason why we can look back with a 'ho-hum' attitude is that one of the changes this technology has made to our society is a near complete acceptance of constant change. Most people complain that nothing change all the while ignoring the fact that they get pissed off when someone leaves their cell phone off or can't find an address or a movie time without using the Internet.
The future is here and we are running head long into it faster and faster. Open your eyes to the science and society that is rapidly changing around you and stop looking for flying cars.
Parent
Wikiscience (Score:5, Insightful)
I do not want to read a science paper put together by a committee. Can you imagine a natural selection paper written by the masses? Truth is not a democratic sport. I'd rather read two papers contradicting each other than one paper written by those two parties. IN the former case, I can easily compare and contract. In the later, I am forced to sift through revision histories to try to piece together original intent.
Add in the "lol, jews" camp, and we are back in the middle ages.
Re:Wikiscience (Score:3, Informative)
On the other hand, traditional scientific papers are hard to deal with, because a newer paper will often revise the understanding of some aspect of an earlier pap
Re:Wikiscience (Score:2)
Read the IPCC report on global climate change that so much climate research is authoratively based on. Science by committee, right there. I will let you come to your own conclusions as its merits, depending on your political bias.
Re:Wikiscience (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the key idea here isn't so much the "Wiki", but the idea that you can turn the fundamental unit of "science" away from "the paper" to something more dynamic and electronic. While you don't want to lower the standards (or at least less trustworthy material should be clearly labelled as such), this can correct some serious issues that "the paper" has:
- Constrained by physical publishing. I'll admit I don't have much academic experience, but every published paper that I've seen the "inside" of, it turns out there's a lot more good material the research generated, there's just no space to publish it, and the author has to pick and choose.
- Difficulty of publishing original data: A standardized way to post the source data would be useful.
- Static: Once the paper is published, that's it. It would be nice that if somebody replicated the experiment, say, there would be a standardized way to "attach" that information to the original paper. Thus would each "paper" also become a statement of how thoroughly (or incompletely!) attested the result is. A paper could also play host to a "conversation" of sorts about the result, eventually resulting in further refinements and such.
All of these problems of course have some solutions in the current world (or so I would presume), but a (semi-)unified*, standardized system would make the current solutions look primitive and piecemeal.And again, I emphasize that while it might not be all bad to allow "unverified" claims to be added by a broad crowd (perhaps not everyone), I would never suggest not using standards or peer review and clearly labelling what has been reviewed to what extent. However, the scientific process can benefit from borrowing from the Wiki, the discussion board, and a few other formalized, standardized pieces of the Internet and other electronic communication techniques without losing its essential nature, indeed, enhancing it.
(*: Personally, if I were designing this, I'd support a very distributed system that would only be "semi-unified", based on open protocols and data descriptions that would allow anyone to host their own "journal" (mostly universities and university departments), and to try to encourage people to be open with their data and such so that it would be easy to negotiate backup/mirror agreements and such, allowing one to do away with "the journals" while still being very aware that certain people and groups will have enhanced reputation and this would need to be dealt with directly. This would be a lot of fun to design.)
Parent
Re:Wikiscience (Score:5, Funny)
Because of course something as irreducibly complex as Darwinian theory could never arise from the competitive random chance interactions of a normally-distributed population.
Parent
Re:Wikiscience (Score:2)
In no way was it intended to be a jab at jews... just a jab at those who jab at jews... or blacks... or whatever the troll du jour is.
Don't count out religious influences. (Score:5, Insightful)
He speaks of biology. What we see today is religious individuals and organizations taking a very active stand against such research. This is especially true in the United States. Christian fundamentalist groups have had a truly astounding effect. Between getting religious dogma (in the form of 'intelligent design') taught in science classes, and the outright prevention of stem cell research, they have become the greatest hinderence to scientific progress.
We will likely see such progress happen anyways, however. It just won't be in America. Countries like China, and to a lesser extent India, will soon become the hubs of scientific research. Instead of them sending their best and brightest students to America for an education, we may see it go the other way.
Slight correction (Score:2)
Change to "broad based scientific achievement". For example in some areas, the Soviet Union was superior to the rest of the world. But by and large, they lagged the west. If science wasn't in the "people's interest" (as defined by a core communist group), then it wasn't worth funding.
Re:Don't count out religious influences. (Score:3, Insightful)
Nazi Germany had a tremendous amount of scientific and technological achievement. Freedoms or not, war seems to be to good of a catalyst to spur advancements.
Re:Don't count out religious influences. (Score:5, Insightful)
What is necessary is a willingness to disclose the results of scientific studies.
It doesn't matter how free the U.S. of A. or China is, if their Governments put all the really interesting and useful research under the lock and key of National Security.
Think about the advanced studies being done in bio-warfare and materials sciences that will never come to light, because no one wants to give their 'enemy' a military advantage.Ummm... you must be new here. You obviously have no clue what kind of rediculous studies get funded by central bureaucracy. Go read up on the kind of things the Soviet Russians did research on.
Parent
bio vs. IT and social change vs. science progress (Score:5, Insightful)
The next 20 years will one of vast social change, enabled by computing and communications technology. The social change will be driven by a realization that basic physical goods to support life are of such low value compared to information that it's in the best interest of large social groups (governements) to feed and house people effectively for free - and harness their THINKING ability toward global value instead of their more classic PRODUCTION value. This will radically alter our view of work and production. Mental participation at a basic level will sustain large groups of people at minimal levels (housing,food) for the value that simple participation will generate.
In terms of biology and biotech - yes, it's exciting - but by comparison to the aboe radical changes in our society, the technology for biological change is still really really hard. We don't have the ability to probe deeply enough, the systems we measure are noisy and all unique, so while there will be advances, they will not shift our lives so much os the shift happeneing because everyone is talking. Spending 30 minutes looking at Myspace will give you an indication of the amount of energy the NEXT generation will be willing to put into connecting online.
Re:bio vs. IT and social change vs. science progre (Score:2)
Those "<insert some area here> is the next big thing" predictions are always BS. They happen because on the past we had a big thing. That was physics, but on the pas we didn't have much more than physics. Nowadays, we have plenty of areas that can lead to great opportunities, and need to (and will) explore all of them.
No old area lose (scientifical or economical) importance, and no new area is much bigger than the old ones. But the oposite is true, normaly, new areas normaly are quite small, and when
Re:bio vs. IT and social change vs. science progre (Score:2)
triple-blind? (Score:2)
Won't this have a slight effect on the quality of data that's gathered (or lack thereof)?
Re:triple-blind? (Score:2)
Big difference philospophically, and a terrificalyl interesting topic.
See this paper in Science -
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/307/57
Re:triple-blind? (Score:2)
I don't believe he knows ANYTHING about science. (Score:5, Interesting)
Can you imagine the invasion of privacy that would be required to get that kind of data on that many people?
Sure, they can match the cigarettes you buy when you use your bank card
They would have to monitor 100,000 people, 24/7 and record EVERYTHING from where you worked, live, travelled to what you ate and where you bought it (and where it was produced and what chemicals were used on it).
And that won't even allow you to try to isolate the variables. Once you get into multiple variables (dosage, exposure rate, etc), you don't have a valid experiment anymore.
He's confused "science" with "demographics".
Parent
Change will occur much more rapidly than that (Score:2, Interesting)
If you see Moorse's law as applied to electronics, and the similiar explossive exponential growth we see in all areas of human development, and you extrapolate the available data, you will see that even the next 20 years will see more progress than the past millions of years of human and non-human-derived evolution. Not only will we see major revolutions in biology, but in na
Re: Change will occur much more rapidly than that (Score:5, Funny)
Moorse's law: the number of people who know Moorse code is halving every decade.
Parent
food production and energy harnessing (Score:3, Insightful)
It's the usual suspects from Tired (Score:2)
Should he hang on to the old
Should he grab on to the new
He's an old hippie...his new life is just a bust
He ain't trying to change nobody
He's just trying real hard to adjust
-- Bellamy Brothers
This is TOTALLY wrong... (Score:2, Funny)
Need more than biology (Score:2, Insightful)
Not to bash biology and medicine, but we need breakthru's in physics and AI to progress to the next stage. We need phyz to break free of oil, and AI to allow things such as solar farms and efficient remote construction in space. Maybe AI would allow us to build solar farms and mining colonies throughout the solar system. In short, we need plentiful energy and slave-like-labor (AI) to really "build out" as the human race. Biology will only give us incremental
Re:Need more than biology (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to bash biology and medicine, but we need breakthru's in physics and AI to progress to the next stage. We need phyz to break free of oil, and AI to allow things such as solar farms and efficient remote construction in space.
No, the physics to 'break free of oil' are pretty well set, it's now more in engineering, to make it cost-effective and practical. "AI's" possibly, but you're assuming cheap ground-to-space launching to begin with, and the issues of getting power back from space - and no, it's not as simplistic a solution as you might think.
Oil isn't just for energy. It's also a basic feedstock for the chemical industry. That's where biology will be important. Production of feedstock chemicals, as well as alternatives for fuels are just a part of what will be happening.
Biology right now is where physics was almost a century ago. Theoretical boundaries, and the tools to actually test them are now coming onto the scene. The practical and ethical sides are still being developed. A little over 20 years ago, if I wanted to sequence a gene, I was looking at months, if not years of work to do it. Now, it doesn't take much time at all. Determining what it does, and how it does it is now the tough part. This is followed by the part of deciding what you're going to do with it - or if you should do anything.
Parent
Painfully Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
A big economic meltdown could do it too. Or a major bird flu epidemic. Or plain simple glabl warming with major storms, flooding, and droughts. The challenges haven't gotten smaller.
He didn't mention the dark ages, where there wasn't much in the way of development for over 500 years from 500AD onwards after the fall of Rome. It could happen again.
Weak psuedoscience (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a deadly mixture of the meaningless "Kelly chronicled a sequence of new recursive devices in science...", the statement of the obvious, "Technology is, in its essence, new ways of thinking", the silly "We retain reptilian reflexes deep in our minds (fight or flight)" and the irrelevant "Information is growing by 66% per year while physical production grows by only 7% per year".
Re:Is there future to humanity? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not?
Parent
Re:Is there future to humanity? (Score:3)
Why not?
Because a significant number of us will have to be thought police.
And you're going away for a looong time for even thinking otherwise.
A. Bester
Re: The last century of biology? (Score:3, Interesting)
But if you expect that will provide an end game for things biological then you need to remember that despite all the progress of multi-cellular eukaryotes, the prokaryotes continue to be the underlying drivers.
And even if we do manage to bring some planetary-scale biological disaster to ourselves and much of the rest of the biosphere, whatever biology is left will soon enough adapt to vacant niches.