On the Future of Science 275
bj8rn writes "Kevin Kelly, the founding executive editor of Wired magazine, speculates about the future of science based on a talk he have gave a few weeks ago. Kelly sees recursion as the essence of science and chronicles the introduction of different recursive devices in science; projecting forward from this, he makes several interesting predictions about what the near future may hold in store. Some highlights: there will be more change in the next 50 years of science than in the last 400 years; the new century will be the century of Biology; new ways of knowing will emerge, with 'Wikiscience' leading to perpetually refined papers with thousands of authors."
Re:Not thinking in a big picture sense (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Wikiscience (Score:3, Informative)
On the other hand, traditional scientific papers are hard to deal with, because a newer paper will often revise the understanding of some aspect of an earlier paper, but not entirely obsolete the earlier paper, due to not reanalyzing its whole content. That means that people will often have to struggle through reading the old paper with the out-of-date terminology and assumptions, figuring out what the new analysis of the unique cases in that paper should be, and this effort is not then made available to others.
With the way fields evolve over time, most of our understanding of most topics is nowhere in the public record in the current terminology. There is, essentially, a vast amount of bit rot in our scientific knowledge, and no standard mechanism for fixing it. I think that, in addition to papers reporting current work ("I did this experiment, this happened, this is what I think it means"), there some be Wiki-like expositions of current theory. To address your issue about disputes, I say that every author gets one, with the ability to accept theories from other authors, or ignore them, or modify them. Of course, there would be just as much bit rot, but readers could propose updates ("I think that the explanation of example 3 of S&C, in light of the refinements to the theory in T&MO should be as follows..." would be sent to the author, who would then accept the modification, figure out what it should actually be, or ignore the message). As it stands, there is no forum for an author to be asked for a modern clarification of an old paper, nor for the author to publish such a thing (since it's pretty boring as a new paper).
Re:NIH funding (Score:3, Informative)
Re:NIH funding (Score:3, Informative)
Nobody has claimed it was a funding crisis however. One might be more correct in saying that the priorities of this administration are what is at issue.
Re:Is there future to humanity? (Score:2, Informative)
--
The story of wheat [economist.com]
Ears of plenty
Dec 20th 2005
From The Economist print edition
The story of man’s staple food
[Image] [economist.com] (Still Pictures)
IN 10,000 years, the earth’s population has doubled ten times, from less than 10m to more than six billion now and ten billion soon. Most of the calories that made that increase possible have come from three plants: maize, rice and wheat. The oldest, most widespread and until recently biggest of the three crops is wheat (see chart). To a first approximation wheat is the staple food of mankind, and its history is that of humanity.
Yet today, wheat is losing its crown. The tonnage (though not the acreage) of maize harvested in the world began consistently to exceed that of wheat for the first time in 1998; rice followed suit in 1999. Genetic modification, which has transformed maize, rice and soyabeans, has largely passed wheat by--to such an extent that it is in danger of becoming an “orphan crop”. The Atkins diet and a fashion for gluten allergies have made wheat seem less wholesome. And with population growth rates falling sharply while yields continue to rise, even the acreage devoted to wheat may now begin to decline for the first time since the stone age.
It is time to pay tribute to this strange little grass that has done so much for the human race. Strange is the word, for wheat is a genetic monster. A typical wheat variety is hexaploid--it has six copies of each gene, where most creatures have two. Its 21 chromosomes contain a massive 16 billion base pairs of DNA, 40 times as much as rice, six times as much as maize and five times as much as people. It is derived from three wild ancestral species in two separate mergers. The first took place in the Levant 10,000 years ago, the second near the Caspian Sea 2,000 years later. The result was a plant with extra-large seeds incapable of dispersal in the wild, dependent entirely on people to sow them.
The story actually starts much earlier, around 12,000 years ago. At the time, after several warm millennia, a melting ice sheet in North America collapsed and a gigantic lake drained into the North Atlantic through the St Lawrence seaway. The torrent of cool, fresh water altered the climate so drastically that the ice age, which had been in full retreat, resumed for a further 11 centuries. The Scandinavian ice sheet surged south. Western Asia became not only cooler, but much drier. The Black Sea all but dried out.
People in what is now Syria had been subsisting happily on a diet of acorns, gazelles and grass seeds. The centuries of drought drove them to depend increasingly on wild grass seeds. Abruptly, soon after 11,000 years ago, they began to cultivate rye and chickpeas, then einkorn and emmer, two ancestors of wheat, and later barley. Soon cultivated grain was their staple food. It happened first in the Karacadag Mountains in south-eastern Turkey--it is only here that wild einkorn grass contains the identical genetic fingerprint of modern domesticated wheat.
Who first replanted the seeds and why? For a start, he was probably a she: women have primary responsibilities for plant gathering in hunter-gatherer societies. The time was certainly ripe for agriculture: the ability to make tools and control fire (cooking makes many plants more digestible) was already well established. But was it an act of inspiration or desperation? Did it perhaps happen by accident, as discarded grains germinated around human settlements?
Re:Not thinking in a big picture sense (Score:3, Informative)
I don't disagree that the current administration seems to be doing everything in its power to cripple American innovation, research, and creativity.
Triple Blind Experiment- Bad Idea (Score:2, Informative)
Re:NIH funding (Score:3, Informative)
The administration's cutting of the NIH budget is part of an overall effort to reemphasize funding of the physical sciences. In the decade after the Cold War, health and biology research saw a funding boom due to the inherent political attractiveness of funding efforts to fight disease. On the other hand, basic physical sciences suffered from shrinking governmental support because of dissipation of competitive pressure from the USSR. Today, with new competition from Asia and Europe, the US is seeking to reenergize research in the physical sciences with massive budget increases. Not all of this money could come from net increases in the overall science budget, especially in tight fiscal times, so part of the money was shifted from the biological sciences.
From the 2006 State of the Union address [whitehouse.gov]:
"...
And to keep America competitive, one commitment is necessary above all: We must continue to lead the world in human talent and creativity. Our greatest advantage in the world has always been our educated, hardworking, ambitious people -- and we're going to keep that edge. Tonight I announce an American Competitiveness Initiative, to encourage innovation throughout our economy, and to give our nation's children a firm grounding in math and science. (Applause.)
First, I propose to double the federal commitment to the most critical basic research programs in the physical sciences over the next 10 years. This funding will support the work of America's most creative minds as they explore promising areas such as nanotechnology, supercomputing, and alternative energy sources.
Second, I propose to make permanent the research and development tax credit -- (applause) -- to encourage bolder private-sector initiatives in technology. With more research in both the public and private sectors, we will improve our quality of life -- and ensure that America will lead the world in opportunity and innovation for decades to come. (Applause.)
..."
Here's another write up from Texas A&M: [tamu.edu]
"....
President George Bush is proposing to double the budget of the National Science Foundation (NSF) over the next ten years. As the first step in the doubling process, the President's budget request would increase funding for the National Science Foundation by $439 million or 7.9 percent to $6.02 billion in fiscal year 2007.
....
Noting that most of the increase in federal funding for research and development since 2001 has gone toward biomedical research and advanced security technologies, President Bush wrote, "To ensure our continued leadership in the world, I am committed to building on our record of results with new investments - especially in the fields of physical sciences and engineering"
...
Optimism about the current proposal to double the NSF budget in ten years is tempered by the failure of recent legislation to double the NSF budget in five years.... The FY 2007 budget request for NSF is nearly $4 billion below the level authorized in the last doubling initiative. However, the current doubling initiative has been given a high priority in the President's budget request and has strong support from key members of Congress.
"
The bottom line is that one should not jump to conclusions based on one piece of information without knowing its context. People are always going to want more money, but some times one has to juggle between priorities.