Quote Originally Posted by marct View Post
Hi Bullmoose,



...

Well, from my side of the academic street, I would put it at

  1. Start with a theory
  2. Submit a proposal for funding which requires you to say beforehand exactly what you will find
  3. Develope hypotheses if that will help you get funding / published
  4. Collect the data that is defined as such by your theory; junk any that disagrees with the theory ("outliers")
  5. Publish the same research in 20 different articles and 3-4 books.

Then again, I may be just a touch cycnical .
My goodness, quite hilarious and insightful.

Either way I see great detriment to us all due to the Scientific method's late transformation into the Scientific Business Model.

However, I suppose we cannot return to the day when c. pre WWI all science was the hobby of the elite & no one else ever touched it, can we?

Or might I agree with Ben Stein that today its simply in the hands of a different elite ? I know not.

I do not care for the totalitarian spirit inherent in the system today, i.e. close governmental oversight & incentivisation, cover-ups, silencing & institutional retribution, so I suppose a middle ground of some type is necessary, also a strong collegiate culture which is eroded in the US by "poison ivy" the professional guilds & yankee arrogance, in my uneducated opinion.