I've come to the conclusion that the biggest problem facing science is that it doesn't scale well. If there are a dozen people working in your field, you can read all of their papers and know what all of them are doing.
If there are 250 people in your field, then you cannot read all of the papers and even know what's being worked on.
This means that a lot of cool results are simply missed by the field, and a lot of work is duplicated, both of which is making science inefficient.
This means that a lot of cool results are simply missed by the field, and a lot of work is duplicated, both of which is making science inefficient.
Combine this with the incentive that seems to exist in a lot of institutions to publish as many papers as possible, without regard to their usefulness ➡️ we're drowning in publications.
This is going to get a lot worse as countries like China ramp up their scientific output.
This is going to get a lot worse as countries like China ramp up their scientific output.
This reinforces inequities in science. In a world where you can't read every paper, you'll probably read the paper from the famous prof. at the Ivy league univ. rather than the unknown postdoc from the unknown university.
I don't know the solution. But I know that we're about to drown under a sea of CMIP6 publications. Get ready!
[you are correct: this thread is just a plea for people to read my papers]
[you are correct: this thread is just a plea for people to read my papers]
