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by Donthatme
2138 days ago
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> I like this, as scientists need hypotheses to test and often those can come from non-scientists. Bold claim, or tortured use of often. > I wonder how many of our scientific discoveries have come from suggestions (or bold statements) from people in other fields. A lot of academic fields are fairly siloed from others. One example is presentations at a conference from a subfield that is just slightly oblique from yours is hard to follow because they use different jargon than you. It is getting a little better with some emphasis on interdisciplinary research. > Sure, many may prove to be false, but I like how you've framed it as a novel opinion that could spur further research into a topic. From my experience with being blasted by spam ideas just because my contact information is in a university's physics directory, a lot of/most 'novel opinion' is noise. |
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Fair point, it may not be that often.
> A lot of academic fields are fairly siloed from others. One example is presentations at a conference from a subfield that is just slightly oblique from yours is hard to follow because they use different jargon than you. It is getting a little better with some emphasis on interdisciplinary research.
True, jargon and other aspects can draw divisions really fast. I left the electrical and computer engineering department at my university to pursue international studies because it was interdisciplinary and I could basically build my own major from economics, intl business, anthropology, political science, and other areas. So I'm probably biased towards interdisciplinary stuff and maybe see more of it than there may be.
> From my experience with being blasted by spam ideas just because my contact information is in a university's physics directory, a lot of/most 'novel opinion' is noise.
I can only imagine how many novel theories of the universe you receive and how few have relevance. I still think sometimes we can see patterns in the odd/wrong suggestions they provide and come to hypotheses about things, but maybe more so in some fields than others, and maybe much less directly than I had postulated.
Anyway, really appreciate the back and forth dialogue :-)