[naasking]

> Imagine a suite of ten hypothesis, one of which is correct but each of which requires 6 effort units to prove or disprove or discover or whatever. If we only have a 10 units of effort to devote to research, we won't get anywhere if we divide them equally but we can eliminate each hypothesis if we work serially.

A model of research without evidence demonstrating its accuracy is not convincing.

You might claim that we could never have discovered the Higgs without such coordinated efforts, and I could counter that without such coordination, we might have sooner discovered and advanced alternative paths that require considerably less funding and coordination, like wakefield accelerators.

I don't think science that advances by stepwise consensus will outperform random, independent search in general, but only in very limited scenarios.

> It is totally reasonable for a community to more or less work on proving or eliminating the few most reasonable hypotheses

Only if "the community" consists of largely independent thinkers that reach their own conclusions, and are not influenced by fads or celebrity personalities. That's the only way to actually ascertain "the most reasonable hypotheses", and unfortunately, scientists are not immune to such influences.

[biomcgary]

I think current funding mechanisms for science select for non-independent thinkers. At the beginning of the scientific era, most researchers were funded by patrons, which supported much more independent research (at least, independent of other researcher's opinions, not the patron).