[lambdatronics]

>To think deeply about meta science in any official capacity as part of PhD training requires you to go out of your way.

Yup. Not just life sciences, this applies to physics as well.

>I also imagine that even in less expensive/slow fields there is an increasingly unapproachable body of prior knowledge to learn, and people don't want to be trainees forever.

This is where AI might come in handy, for compressing the time it takes to ingest the prior work by providing tailored educational material, or even obviating the need for it by augmenting our intelligence (esp. when it comes to recall/search). Otherwise, we'll eventually be in the situation of Schlemiel the painter [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Spolsky#Schlemiel_the_Pai...

[caddemon]

I'd not heard of that problem but it's a funny story, thanks for the analogy!