Re:Peer-reviewed papers are getting increasingly boring
by unishark on Friday January 01, 2021 @07:30PM
(#25608914)
The problem with research is similar but even deeper. Researchers are supposed to show feasibility or existence of some result, then applied scientists and engineers take this off into industry or elsewhere to build on it.
But there's no direct trading going on at that state to ensure they deliver what is claimed, the research "product" is just dumped into papers. And those papers serve as an impediment to subsequent researchers, since you can't publish or get funded for the same thing that's already been done and supposedly proven by someone else. Of course you wouldn't have to if they had really solved the problem. But they just threw together some minimal effort to stick their name on it first before moving on to the next low-hanging fruit somewhere else. Doing a literature review can be really frustrating.
But there's no direct trading going on at that state to ensure they deliver what is claimed, the research "product" is just dumped into papers. And those papers serve as an impediment to subsequent researchers, since you can't publish or get funded for the same thing that's already been done and supposedly proven by someone else. Of course you wouldn't have to if they had really solved the problem. But they just threw together some minimal effort to stick their name on it first before moving on to the next low-hanging fruit somewhere else. Doing a literature review can be really frustrating.