The End of Individual Genius? 364
An anonymous reader writes "A recent study suggests the downfall of individual researchers, who are being rapidly replaced by enormous research groups. Quoting: '... in recent decades — especially since the Soviet success in launching the Sputnik satellite in 1957 — the trend has been to create massive institutions that foster more collaboration and garner big chunks of funding. And it is harder now to achieve scientific greatness. A study of Nobel Prize winners in 2005 found that the accumulation of knowledge over time has forced great minds to toil longer before they can make breakthroughs. The age at which thinkers produce significant innovations increased about six years during the 20th century.'"
Similar conclusions from bibliometrics (Score:4, Interesting)
Studies in bibliometrics also seem to indicate this pattern - not the genius aspect but the fact that many high profile or high impact papers are collaborations. In general the number of single author papers has declined.
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue2/walsh.html [indiana.edu]
A Recent Study... (Score:4, Interesting)
A recent study suggests that there are too many recent studies.
Eh. Whatever happened to multiple studies, or recurring studies over a longer period of time?
All you ever hear these days is 'a recent study', as if the mere fact that one group of researchers came up with it, it's golden fact.
Mind, it's a group of researchers...basically saying that group-research mentality is where it's at and that individual pioneers are all but over. Isn't that the fox guarding the hen house? ^^;
A great many studies are also done by fringe researchers, or paid for/sponsored by companies. If any news source runs with it, there often seems to be little (if any) fact checking done to make sure it's legit, and we never hear about/keep tabs on who is behind the studies. So you always here the 'a recent study suggests' part, but you never hear everyone else in the scientific/research community laughing or ignoring it because it's a joke.
Of course research groups would find out that research groups are great at research. Would Stephen Hawking find that Stephen Hawking is great at theoretical cosmology research?
Always take studies with a side of common sense and skepticism, particularly if there's not a fair mountain of corroboration.
A few things not considered here (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, I didn't RTFA but this is /. so when has that ever stopped anyone from commenting?
Standardized education has extended its tentacles farther and farther. And since it's .. standardized .. you get less chance of anyone standing out. That's kind of against the entire idea of standardized education. Smear all those little minds in to one mildly mediocre band of test results. So now you have brilliant children having to work twice as hard just to be themselves.
Companies (and universities) own your soul. You can't come up with a great idea on your lunch break - it's not your idea. You might get to put your name on the list of people who worked on it but the company/university is going to take the credit and the money.
Take away the precocious youth and the curious adult and you lose the independent researcher.
I won't even get into extended lifespans, artificially extended childhood or a whole host of other, related societal issues.
Re:good! (Score:3, Interesting)
If it's a proof, I'll bet you 10-to-1 that the real business of proving it was done by a computer, not by a human.
And in fact most discoveries these days are really done by computers, not by humans.
Just like building design (and esp. bridge design). Most of the work is done by programs. Chip design ... again ... mostly done by computers. Designing electrical or gasoline engines ... done by computers.
The list goes on. Humans are still a critical part of "the loop", but their importance is dropping lower every year.
Of course the reverse is also true. Computers are responsible for an ever bigger part of the "loop" from discovery to production. But they're a loooong way from completing the chain.
The death of the individual (Score:1, Interesting)
From TFA:
"Bejan's thinking, it should be noted, is supported by funding from the National Science Foundation."
Given this fact it should come as no surprise that the author's conclusion is a wishy-washy mess. He doesn't reject or accept the idea of "collective" research he just makes some broad strokes that provide for uninteresting conclusions. Ayn Rand would roll over in her grave if she read this.
Re:Similar conclusions from bibliometrics (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps this is just because we know a lot more (Score:4, Interesting)
At what point will it take a person their whole life to know enough about their subject to drop dead just as they are about to add a bit of new knowledge?
We can only escape this by becoming more and more narrow but that might present it's own limitations.
Perhaps we need to live longer and develop larger brains?
Edison (Score:2, Interesting)
The article incorrectly categorizes Edison as a lone inventor. Edison had dozens of other inventors working for him. He is sometimes credited with inventing the modern research lab. Notably, Nikola Tesla worked for Edison for a short time. I'm sure if he had spent his whole career with Edison, he'd be just as anonymous as Edison's other employees.
There's more to learn (Score:3, Interesting)
An analogy is video games. Back in the 80's, games were typically made by a few (or even one) people on a shorter timeline than today's top games, which require a large studio with typically a very large amount of people working together.
Re:good! (Score:5, Interesting)
If it's a proof, I'll bet you 10-to-1 that the real business of proving it was done by a computer, not by a human.
And in fact most discoveries these days are really done by computers, not by humans.
You've not quite got that right. Some problems can only be solved in reasonable time with computers, some hypothesis confirmations can also only be done in reasonable time with computers. That doesn't mean that the algorithms aren't the result of many hours of human work.
The hypothesis in my Ph.D thesis was demonstrated as being valid through use of computers. It took me two years to come up with the underlying principles, and weeks for the computer to crunch its way to the answer. The computer found that I was correct, but only through applying my algorithm.
That's how things work these days.
Too many distractions (Score:4, Interesting)
To become a genius, you not only have to be smart, but also have to put in a lot of single-focus effort from a young age. And the latter is what has become hard, these days. Too many distractions, from games, TV, Internet, Slashdot, etc.
Remember the Polgar sisters. Intelligence and hard dedicated work made them into chess grandmasters.
Interestingly, I thought I'd look at Wikipedia for her, to see how she is doing now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polgar [wikipedia.org]
Quote from her father: "Geniuses are made, not born"
Bert
Re:Ha! (Score:3, Interesting)
In today's society, it's very difficult to accomplish anything on your own.
Re:good! (Score:1, Interesting)
Nikola Tesla... The exception that proves your rule perhaps? And don't jump on the fact that he worked for Thomas Edison either, because a lot of Tesla's ideas were at odds with what Edison thought (See AC vs. DC for the national power grid). It's true that he did not discover the electron and that people like Micheal Faraday made huge break throughs with electricity before Tesla came along, but you can't say that he was stealing anyone's ideas, or that his discoveries and ideas were small hops forward.
Analogous to the Cathedral vs. the Bazaar (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:good! (Score:2, Interesting)
IIRC it was Lagrange who said that.
Re:I call BS (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:good! (Score:1, Interesting)
Your view is not based on history. Newton not only lied to claim credit for calculus but got the whole Britain to agree with him, with the result that the field of calculus is even to this day mainly the Continental school. British contribution had to wait a century after Newton. Some genius. Even if Newton invented the entire field of classical mechanics, others prepared the people to accept it, thus planted the seeds. And Newton did not invent the field. Didn't Galileo do a famous demonstration about different balls falling at the same speed?
Newton was also a alchemist, a dismal failure at theology. His failure as a human being is well documented. Just pick up any biography of Newton and you will see. Please actually read history before commenting on historical figures. TVs and movies are a poor substitute for good books.
Re:In elemental news (Score:5, Interesting)
Not sure why this is modded troll. Einstein's special relativity was simple stuff, sure you could claim that it took an outsider to see it (not a total outsider ofc as he did have a degree in physics and knew about Lorentz transformations), but his important stuff was defiantly not done alone. His work on quantum mechanics was almost always in collaboration with others and while he provided the insight to the physics of general relativity he got a lot of help with the maths. Most of Feynman's works were also collaborations.
It's fair to say that if Einstein had been an outsider, he would never have developed general relativity or EPR specifically because he wouldn't have known enough about the maths needed to support the theories.
Cross Discipline (Score:3, Interesting)
The easiest areas to make advances in are ones where others have not bothered to look at. Typically fields that are the intersection of various disciplines. There are the obvious ones, but I strongly suspect that almost any serious such intersection, as in intersection of real sciences, would yield interesting scientific insights after minimal or moderate work. But most people shun these because they like to specialise. This is why polymaths are so prolific, they see connections across fields that others don't see because the others only have one field.
Only my opinion of course.
Re:good! (Score:4, Interesting)
Err... no.
Your quote from Newton about standing on the shoulders of giants is from a letter to Hooke, who was extremely short, whom Newton was trying either to flatter for political reasons, or possibly subtly insult.
The second quote is a not-so-subtle put-down of Descarte, Leibniz and others whose conjectural claims Newton found pointless and stupid, and defence of his own approach of saying, "This is WHAT happens" rather than "This is WHY it happens."
Newton did NOT "collaborate" with anyone for the greater part of his career if you are going to give "collaborate" its ordinary meaning. If for some reason you want to stretch the meaning of the word "collaborate" all out of shape so that it applies to the use of ANY past result, then please be clear you are imposing on the word an entirely non-standard meaning.
According to your novel meaning of the word Newton also "collaborated" with the guy who invented the alphabet, because Newton's work was dependent upon that guy's work.
Science as always been cumulative. It has been increasingly collaborative over its three hundred year history. But it has not always been collaborative, and Newton was perhaps the least collaborative and most successful scientist who ever lived.
Even in the cases where he did arguably collaborate, as with Flamsteed at the Royal Observatory, he was remarkably fractious in the relationship, and while he was friends with Halley their relationship is mostly famous for Halley's encouragement for Newton to publish all of the work he had done in complete isolation over the past twenty years. That work was published under the title "Principia Mathematica", and owes much to Euclid, but was not a collaboration with anyone.
Attempts to get Newton to share credit with Leibniz for their independent inventions of calculus also quite famously lead to a long-running campaign by Newton against Leibniz.
None of this proves that science, especially today, is not mostly and increasingly collaborative. But Newton was a rare bird, and rarely engaged in anything resembling "collaboration" in the usual sense of the term.