Seth points to this wonderful suggestion by Tim Hartford on “how to enjoy the thrill of the lottery without the fool’s bet”:
Choose your numbers, but don’t buy a ticket. You’ll win almost every week – the fear that your number might actually come up is an adrenaline rush to beat them all.
I love this. But now I want to return to Seth, who draws a connection to what scientists do. I don’t quite agree with what Seth writes–I think he gets his argument tangled up–but it’s interesting, so let me repeat it and then follow up with my own comments. Seth writes:
It is the average [lottery] consumer who is gullible and makes the whole thing work . . . Scientists are no less gullible. Self-experimentation, like Hartford’s advice, takes advantage of that gullibility. Because scientists essentially play the lottery in their research — devote considerable resources (their careers) to looking for discoveries in one specific way (scientists are hemmed in by many rules, which also slow them down) — this leaves a great deal to be discovered by research that doesn’t cost a lot and can be done quickly. All of my interesting self-experimental discoveries have involved treatments that conventional scientists couldn’t study because their research has to be expensive. Could a conventional scientist study the effect of seeing faces in the morning? No, because you couldn’t get funding. And all research must require funding. (Research without funding is low status.) In practice, this means you can’t take risks and you can’t do very much. Like the lottery, this is a poor bet.
Let me untangle this. Seth is saying that the typical scientist is like a lottery player whereas, by doing self-experimentation, Seth is more like Tim Hartford’s reverse lottery player, going for the near-sure thing rather than investing time in the hope of a hypothetical breakthrough.
It’s funny that Seth says this, because I’ve always told him the opposite: conventional scientists such as myself are the plodders, squeezing out little research results each year, publishing in journals and getting grants, whereas Seth has always seemed to me to be the gambler, stepping away from the near-sure thing of the scientific treadmill and risking something like 10 years of his life on self-experimentation–it was about 10 years after he began that he started to get useful results. I’ve always admired Seth for his gamble.
Right now I can see that Seth views self-experimentation as a grind-it-out way to make discovery after discovery, but 20 years ago, not so much. Conversely, I don’t think of conventional scientists as staking their careers on the chance of making a single big discovery. Rather, we make no risks at all! To paraphrase Paul Erdos, a scientist is a machine for turning hard work into little bits of publishable research.
P.S. I don’t buy Seth’s claim that “research without funding is low status.” My impression is that people seek funding because they feel their research is important and they want help getting it done faster. I don’t see that status has anything to do with it.
Thanks for writing about this. I'll comment in my blog in a few days. Why did I say research without funding is low status? Because, at Berkeley, I heard constant comments about how much grant money this or that faculty member had. For example, "So-and-so gets half a million dollars a year!" This was meant to indicate how important So-and-so was. The more grant money you had the larger (in terms of workers) your lab could be; this was a more visible sign of status. Just like a large office. The more money you can get, the more important — the higher status — you must be. Maybe this is more true in laboratory sciences (biology, chemistry, etc.) than in fields such as math and statistics that rely less on grants.
Perspective is important here, personal, individual university, funding agency, or as CS Peirc chose "an ongoing (over many generations) community of inquirers".
The personal perspective was nicely demonstrated by Frued's choice to remain in psychology even though he believed a scientific psycology was not possible in his life time [ref K Primbram] (and Frued had a nice career)
Very breifly and roughly Peirce held replication of interesting claims above personal interest and belief (perhaps also excluding informative priors – hey it was late 1800,s early 1900,s)
>(scientists are hemmed in by many rules, which > also slow them down)
These would be good if they ehance replication and increased focus on interesting claims (or claims that can be argued for as should be interesting)
> — this leaves a great deal to be discovered
> by research that doesn't cost a lot and can be > done quickly.
See no reason for that other than oversight
> To paraphrase Paul Erdos, a scientist is a
> machine for turning hard work into little bits > of publishable research.
(Like this quote) this spreads the work around and lessens delays in communication of interests and results (which Peirce suggested was one of his biggest mistakes – delaying publication of his work prevented interaction with/ crticism by others)
But if Seth's work is now considered interesting and can be replicated by others – its good for a community of inquirers (and the cheaper the better!)
Large amounts of funding to individuals often works against the "community" as these idividuals demand (on threat of leaving) that their Deans and University presidents promote/demote their choices (rather than the "communities").
No, I think that—universally—unfunded research is low status. In fact, in Canada, when asking for a grant, funding agencies like NSERC specifically take into account the amount of your current grants as a measure of your worth.
Disclaimer: I have had both, large and small grants.
"My impression is that people seek funding because they feel their research is important and they want help getting it done faster. I don't see that status has anything to do with it."
Tell that to Robin Hanson and see what he says to you…
So, people do research for high status (whatever this means), not personal satisfaction?! Hmmm.
Regarding status etc:
First off, I think that many of us are motivated by curiosity, personal satisfaction, and the internal logic of our research. That said, I think status can definitely be a motivation. (It is for me, much as I hate to say it.)
But I think the links from grants to status is indirect; rather than grants -> status, I think it's grants -> top quality research -> status.
I agree that getting grants can give you status _within_ your institution as well as perks such as more office space, but, really, that's low-grade status. High-grade status is the respect of your peers, most of which are at other institutions and don't give a damn whether you got a grant; they're just interested in what research you're up to.
There's also a parallel track of people who are not highly productive as researchers but are recognized as wise men and women who can synthesize and make insightful comments on others' work. You certainly don't need grants to do this.
About the lottery thing: I have done this for a while; more important than the actual adrenaline rush, I have kept a count of how much money I saved by not playing every week (after accounting for the (smallish) gain that happen if only some of your numbers come up).
I also bought a ticket the first week, so that I had a printed paper with my numbers, but it does not make any difference :-)
Frédéric
This reminds me of Kuhn's structure of scientific revolutions: he argued that scientific research was just toiling away and producing those small results time and again and, as little unexplained errors piled up, someone would have a brainwave (all right, a breakthrough discovery) and there would be a paradigm shift in that specific area. Seth just seems to want to jump into the revolution without the hard, tedious work.