From ‘The origin of species’ by Charles Darwin:

Genes are not needed for Natural Selection, instead following are the three requirements of natural selection:

  • Variation
  • Heritability
  • Selection

This also is applicable to scientific research:

  • Variation: in different methodology that has been used to arrive at a particular result

  • Heritability: in the research group/advisor-student relations and the methods used to arrive to the result (Grad students + post doc)

  • Selection in who gets the job and is inundated to promote the ideas/methods used. If particular class of grad are hired we will end up promoting that particular line of thought.

But then what are the traits we are selecting for?

Truth. But what is the truth?

But we end up selecting those who’re productive and publishing in high-impact journal.

  • H-index, journal name, no of paper are proxies for this
  • Proxy can be sadly gamed because they are not the actual fact but the variable defined to be good enough to represent that fact

When measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure - Goodhart’s Law in Economics

Part of the problem is that no-one is particularly incentivized to be right. Instead, scientists are incentivized to be productive and innovative. — Richard Horton (the Lancet, 2015)

This ties in well with Safi Baccal’s idea of incentives being the real motivator for change and discovery. The organization is driven not only by the culture and structure, but also the underlying incentives. What incentives each person has for them ends becoming an important of how the organization would function in the long run.