Can we do worthwhile science outside academia?

[upupa-epops]

@GeolTel

Of course, anyone confident enough in their own expertise and in the worthiness of their ‘research’ is welcome to self-publish on ArxiV, a blog, or through AmazonKDP, and forgo editorial-critical annoyances. They’ll definitely find their readership.

I had a bit of an argument with @charlie last year about whether independent informally published research is feasible:

@upupa-epops

@charlie

Cos when i hear ‘blog’ in 2024 i don’t think a good faith suggestion at all.

Oh no I’m serious. I agree there are a lot of issues with academic settings; as a result a lot of the cool research these days is happening on anonymous blogs. This guy’s blog is mostly about them. This includes personal iNat journals too; a lot of novel research and exploration is being done there. Like we can write out taxonomy hypotheses and discuss them on iNat; I just mean we shouldn’t be implementing them on the whole website.

The way I’m imagining you’d do it in a blog is basically writing out academic proposals but in a more informal way and doing distributed peer review through other random interested people commenting on the blog, rather than the normal formal academic process.

Now I have no doubt that it’s possible for iNatters to propose taxonomic hypotheses in their iNat journals which are helpful and intriguing alternatives to the academic consensus taxonomy. What I do have doubts about is whether anyone influential will take them seriously in that context. Which goes partially to the question of motivation and whether you need someone to take your contribution seriously, which a great point:

@spiphany

I also think the “why” is relevant. I hardly think that anyone pursues knowledge merely for the sake of pursuing knowledge – rather, we do so because we feel something is gained by it.

I am motivated largely by curiosity and learning for the sake of learning. But there is some joy I get when I can learn things the easy way as a result of other people learning things “the hard way” through tough research, and I have gratitude for that and want to contribute in a similar way when I have to work to learn something that few other people know. I also feel drawn to more obscure subjects where less is known by anyone and some hard work is required.

@spiphany

• contributing to collective knowledge/sharing what you have learned

My first response in this thread was in agreement with @jasonhernandez74 and I’ve kind of been walking back from that since, but it’s because the subjects I’m most curious about are ones where the unknowns require more resources to answer. I’m curious about them because they’re (relatively) big exciting things that nobody else knows, and nobody else knows because the few people who care don’t have the resources to commit to the project. So it is a bit circular there. If I were less ambitious then I could be more satisfied with documenting something less significant.