[hardtke]

This is why it is dangerous to think that the best scientific theories always prevail and that science is a meritocracy. The people invited to give talks are usually well known or have connections with the program committees. There is also an element of bias since the people on the organizing and program committees will invite speakers whose research is consistent with their own work.

[tracerbulletx]

I don't think anyone with even the slightest awareness of scientific philosophy or history actually thinks that though. Everyone knows that there are social factors involved to varying degrees in different fields, and that paradigms and research programs often only shift when the old guard in a field dies. The scientific method is a directional force guiding this messy social enterprise in the general direction of truth but if anyone thinks science as an institution is purely meritocratic they haven't thought about it hard enough or done the required reading.

[a_bonobo]

>I don't think anyone with even the slightest awareness of scientific philosophy or history actually thinks that though.

I don't know, this whole 'marketplace of ideas' thing is still very popular in politics and media (perhaps not academia; but what does academia count for in a neoliberal world?)

[dev_tty01]

Not true in any field I have been associated with. Many, if not most conference review processes use blind reviews. Conferences are not full of "invited" speakers. Maybe one or two plenary sessions at the beginning, but the rest submitted their own papers and went through the blind review process. Certainly true in the best EE, CS, and ML conferences. I've served on program committees for international conferences. Around 100 papers selected typically, only two invited papers.

[mnky9800n]

Most of the physical sciences have open conferences so anyone can submit without peer review. If a session has an invited speaker they are invited because the organizer knows their work.

[mathisfun123]

This is such a weird denialism. Let me ask you something: if you go look at the top 100 cited researchers do you really think their enormous citation counts come from the brilliance of their work? Or is it just possible it's something else?

I'll tell you first hand, my advisor who is among those top 100, accretes citations like a black hole because he/she is famous, sits on committees (at uni and a national lab), speaks in front of Congress etc etc etc. and thus gets invited to be a coauthor on a billion papers a year (and not because of his/her brilliance).

Also if you think program committees and reviewers don't know who wrote a paper when the same group has been submitting to the same top conference every year for over a decade then I have a bridge to sell you.

[throwaway4220]

Speaking as a failed scientist (I was “dishonorably discharged” with an MS from a top US institution) I will tell you that the brilliant people around me knew that paper citations don’t correlate exactly with the impact of work within. Certainly didn’t feel fair. But I can also say the system is way more meritocratic than medicine or finance

[marcosdumay]

Is it this or is it that people decide to see the talks they have larger odds of citing?

Getting to speak on a conference is easier than publishing in a periodic.

[ericpauley]

This definitely feels like the case in my field. Nothing good goes to journals.

[Natsu]

> This is why it is dangerous to think that the best scientific theories always prevail and that science is a meritocracy.

This is because people form trapped priors and so some scientific advances come "one funeral at a time", but it's equally dangerous to think that science won't or cannot form clear consensus on observable, factual matters or that if there isn't always meritocracy, then there must be none.

Science is the only reason we can even have this conversation right now, after all.

[j7ake]

Maybe from a far it seems that it is a meritocracy but there are documented examples of people falling through the cracks.

Eg Douglas Prasher did nobel prize winning work but couldn’t stay in academia.

Virginijus Siksnys did nobel prize work but never got the nobel prize.

The list goes on at the nobel prize level, so just consider the people who fall through the cracks for first class work, but not nobel prize level.

[peanutcrisis]

At this point, I’d ask what you mean by meritocracy here. Is the (supposed) lack of meritocracy in the awarding of accolades the same as a lack of meritocracy when it comes to the recognition of the actual science done? Clearly from your comments, while these scientists didn’t win the Nobel prize, their work certainly got the recognition it did and made the impact it’s supposed to have.

This whole thread is a cesspool of bait and switch and moving of goalposts surrounding the idea of meritocracy. Has the Hacker News community always been so dogmatic about such topics, or is this a recent trend I’m observing in the last few years?

[j7ake]

Douglas Prasher didn’t make it in academia, he was a shuttle bus driver until Roger Tsien hired him back as an associate after prizes were won.

I don’t know what kind of goalposts you’re thinking about, but doing nobel prize work but not being able to have a career in science is evidence that people fall through the cracks of this supposed meritocratic structure.

[peanutcrisis]

The fact that prizes were won and he got hired back because of that are both evidence that merit is recognized. You made points that contradict your own stance.

The comment of mine you were replying to describes an example of the moving of goal posts; conflating the merit of the issuing of accolades with the merit of recognition of work allows one to fallaciously reject the notion of merit altogether if one of these definitions of merit fails. Yet clearly, they are not the same thing.

For what it's worth, meritocracy is not a topic that I have a concrete stance on (yet). However, the top comments for this topic lacks nuance, and resorts to the kind of motte and bailey arguments I remarked about earlier. Imagine trying to have a productive conversation about anti-corruption, only to get remarks like "anti-corruption has failed with respect to my specific conception of anti-corruption in some specific scenario, therefore anti-corruption as a whole is a terrible goal or ideal". Given how broad the notion of "anti-corruption" can be, someone's specific conception of it in some scenario doesn't (necessarily) represent every conception or instantiation of the notion of anti-corruption. It's in this broadness where nuance can be found, and unfortunately, I don't find that in the top comments.

[Natsu]

"Sometimes people do good work and don't win major awards" is hardly a rebuttal to the notion that meritocracy exists, because it's not some binary state. To say there's no such thing as merit, you have to say that recognition of merit is on average directionally wrong.

Given the huge technological advances of even just the past few decades, that's a pretty hard sell.

[j7ake]

Thanks for the quote but that’s clearly not what I said.

Try quoting my first paragraph instead

>>“Maybe from a far it seems that it is a meritocracy but there are documented examples of people falling through the cracks.”

Some nuance in the discussion would be appreciated.

[Natsu]

Well, we went from talking about whether the best 'scientific theories' were recognized to whether certain individuals won certain awards, so it's hard to do anything but broad strokes.

I'm not here trying to refute the idea that sometimes people get passed over undeservedly, I'm refuting the all too common idea that this means that meritocracy is binary and anyone ever getting passed over means that merit doesn't exist and cannot be recognized.

If you don't hold that idea then good, we don't have to argue.

[hervature]

It should come as no surprise that if you develop a new theory and then proceed to burn it and all evidence of its existence that no one is going to hear of said theory. If you care about your theory prevailing, you need to go out and make an effort to communicate it. Science is meritocratic in the sense that even the small guy has a chance of fighting the machine as eventually things need to be defended on their technical merits. After all, Galileo was able to defeat the Church which was the largest country in Europe at the time. I think its dangerous to conflate meritocracy with not being required to communicate.

[revelio]

> Galileo was able to defeat the Church which was the largest country in Europe

The Church is not a country and never was? And Galileo was forced to recant then spent the rest of his life under house arrest. The Church defeated him.

> Science is meritocratic in the sense that even the small guy has a chance of fighting the machine as eventually things need to be defended on their technical merits

Nobody who has followed the shenanigans of scientific institutions in the last decade believes this anymore, sorry. Modern science consists of credentialed charlatans plying entirely fraudulent claims and those being accepted, over and over, with no end in sight, and everyone who tries to point out the problems in The Science end up being cancelled or burning out because the employers of said charlatans are the modern Church. They simply do not care if their people tell the truth or not.

[theurerjohn3]

Just addressing the Galileo part, but as was recently linked in hackernews [1][2], Galileo was wrong (in the sense that he was arguing for an already discredited theory, and that the theory he was arguing against was also already discredited).

Using Galileo as the standard of the suppression of free thought is sorta painting the Church as overzealously standing up for good science, not highlighting the Church as an enemy of truth.

1. http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/9-great-ptolemaic-smackd... 2. https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/galileo%E2%80%99s-gr...

[revelio]

Interesting, thanks!

[lou1306]

> The Church is not a country and never was?

The Papal states were literally a country, although surely not the largest in Europe. Galileo did not live there but rather in the Duchy of Florence (later Grand Duchy of Tuscany); however, as a Catholic he could still be tried by the Inquisition, which was essentially the Interpol of heresy.

[machina_ex_deus]

It's true in the same sense as the efficient market hypothesis or saying that the truth will prevail. It just tells you nothing about the timing of it.

Which is why it is especially important to have different expectations regarding newer science with little data and testing. But that's still where all the active research is going to happen.