On black swans, publish-or-perish driven golems and other creatures

How is science built? Is it through small incremental changes or through “revolutionary”, disruptive and singular events?


As emphasized by Nassim Taleb, it is not the expected and mundane events (the white swans) the ones that shape the world but the improbable and unexpected (the black swans). The point that Mark Buchanan makes in his recent Physics World article is that "the publish-or-perish ethic too often favors a narrow and conservative approach to scientific innovation". Are we then pushing the most innovative ideas/people to the margin and transforming valuable people into some kind of golem? poor beings limited in their free will by being stimulated to follow the main stream?

Here it is a brief excerpt taken from Buchanan's article:

Unfortunately, today’s academic and corporate cultures seem to be moving in the opposite direction, with practices that stifle risk-taking mavericks who have a broad view of science. At universities and funding agencies, for example, tenure and grant committees take decisions based on narrow criteria (focusing on publication lists, citations and impact factors) or on specific plans for near-term results, all of which inherently favour those working in established fields with well-accepted paradigms.

 
 
 
 

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