A personal perspective on how capitalism hurts science

In a number of my recent blog entries, and also occasionally on twitter, I have made statements about how bad our current late stage capitalism is for science. It is time that I follow up with a more detailed blog entry on this.

Before delving into it, I should discuss reasons why I hesitate to write on this subject. Those who have read my scientific blog entries may have noticed that I work on many ideas, which are unconventional. While I do my best to back them up with many different types of calculations, I have not been (yet) able to get these issues across as important. Thus, despite there have been quite a number of people in the past who did work on these subjects, and my own results are in line with theirs, there are very few contemporary people doing so. It is quite easy to be frustrated about this, especially since I think that are important things which need to be taken into considerations. Because they may change a lot of particle physics on a very fundamental level.

If you are in such a situation, it is very tempting to search guilt for your continued failure to make your stuff popular in some external reason. Hence, I am very much double guessing myself, if part of what I write here is affected by this. Probably part of it is. If I would be the only one having these thoughts it surely would be the case. However, over recent years I saw more and more studies being published or popping up on the arXiv which agree with my own perception. Hence, I am more and more convinced that a larger issue is at work here. And whether I am affected by this or not is not easy to say. Hence, I will try to avoid making any personal connections here, and just tell how in my perspective I see the results of these studies realized. Most of the studies I linked on twitter over time.

The gist of many of these studies is twofold. The way how research results are published and perceived is not necessarily correlated with its relevance. In fact, there appears to be anti-correlation between long-term relevance (measured by number of citations) and the impact factor of the journal in which the research has been published. Meaning more prestigious journals tend to not accept research where the short-term relevance is not obvious. On the other hand, also in funding there is a strong tendency that those who have get more, and bold claims are more important than well-funded statements or even checks.

While these issues are on their own troublesome, it is the way how they resemble other elements of public life, which is alarming. To say the least. And which is typical for late-stage capitalism. This is the fact that those who have get more. That those who have, or have the favor of someone who has, can do anything essentially anything, and get rewarded. While those who do not have a hard time to get anything. This is amplified by gate-keeping and a lack of diversity in academia, which is far from resolved. Of course, this is also a problem appearing in society in general.

In my personal experience, this manifests itself in a very strong tendency to create hype. If the results is only promising enough, any assumption, even if it is just wishful thinking, becomes acceptable. Theoreticians seem to be much more prone to this than experimentalists. The reason is simple. As long as no one disproves your statement, you will get attention. And if somebody, who has, picks it up and promotes it (or is actually the origin), it will gain traction. If it fails eventually, you just cook up another thing, and so on. This is in particle physics supported by our current lack of hard experimental evidence beyond the standard model. Thus it is easy to escape experimental falsification. Theoretical falsification is much more complicated. Because in sufficiently complicated theories, doing an exact falsification is technically hard. Even if you there is a lot of evidence, it is always possible to find a loop hole to not accept a falsification. And given the promises made, it is for most much better to just ignore any claim of invalidity. Especially, most of the assumptions often simplify, or even trivialize, calculations. Hence, it is possible to get results with little effort. And since they promise so much, it is easy to publish them or get funding for them.

This even happens in a less dramatic fashion quite often. Even without anything wrong any new field has first a lot of simple problems. They can be done with little or moderate effort. Thus, the return-on-investment is large. Therefore many people flock to these new fields, to have a large output compared to work invested. Thereby, they gain resources. As soon as the inevitable complications set in, most of these leave the field, and move to the next field of the same type. However, they take with them the resources, leaving those trying to solve the hard problems with little. While in any case resources are limited it is necessary to focus effort, this should be decided upon the relevance of the question, rather than on how easy it is to get results.

All of this mirrors trends in society. As long as one can get much without solving actual problem, everyone goes for it. And if you can gain an advantage by making too strong claims, the better. We see how this damages our society from the climate crises to the rise of authoritarianism. All of that follows this pattern. You claim that there is an easy solution how you can get profit and avoid investing solving the reason for the climate crises. See greenwashing. Or you claim social problems have an easy solution, because others are at fault, so you just need to get rid of them. Yielding the rise of rightwing extremism and authoritarian systems. All of this is fueled by capitalism, which puts profits before solutions.

And these effects find their mirror in science, as science is not set apart from society. Thus, capitalistic thinking - gathering resources, in science renown and funding, become more important than the actual solution of problems.

How can this by avoided? Well, probably the same way as in society at large. That what damages the scientific process needs to be got rid off. A scientific system which focuses on what people did instead of who did it, and a distribution of resources based on the relevance of problem rather than renown or promises, would probably go a long way. This was recognized by quite some people. And there are tentative steps ongoing. Like banishing renown as a measure of success. Putting the actual works at center, rather than how and where they are published. But it is a slow process, and one which can again be misused. Probably, only if we as a society change fundamentally science will get closer to its ideals.