Re:Academic success is either a crapshoot or a scam
by jgmjgm on Sunday December 24, 2017 @05:02PM
(#16001518)
Depends what you study. If you're an economist you need access to data like compustat or other. If you're a political scientist in the US much of the data is available but you also need to spend a while cleaning it (although there are great resources now too.)
You're really talking about small scale interviews or qualitative work. That's an aspect of social science but it's not all of it.
Re:Academic success is either a crapshoot or a scam
by shard972 on Sunday December 24, 2017 @04:57PM
(#16001494)
Money to pay their own salaries so they can do it full time? Not trying to be a complete asshole but seems like the most logical conclusion for someone with a SS degree which can't help you get a job outside of things like this.
Re:Academic success is either a crapshoot or a scam
by abecedarius on Sunday December 24, 2017 @03:29PM
(#16001181)
See http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/29/my-irb-nightmare/ for one relevant story.
On the other hand, outside of institutions there are cases like https://www.gwern.net/zeo/Vitamin-D and I hope there'll be more.
Time - do it as a hobby so it's limited to people who are passionate about discovering something, not just trying to rack up points.
Access to human subjects - get people off the street. Universities can make access to student subjects easier but they're not representative of the world's people anyway so it's not that valuable.
Money to pay the human subjects - save up? People who're passionate about cars, for example, somehow find the money to build modified cars and don't need funding.
Ability - With the oversupply of researchers, maybe just leave it to those who can do it under their own steam? Hopefully undergrad degrees taught them enough to get started. This article says that university researchers aren't doing it with skill anyway but with luck or cheating.
Motivation - if nobody can be bothered investigating some effect, then maybe it's not really that interesting anyway and there's not much value in studying it?
What am I missing?