Time can be tricky

Recently, I came across the article about peer review in natural sciences. And what intrigued me the most was the information that two-thirds of researchers, nowadays, failed at reproducing another scientist’s experiment. That shocked me. And as I was thinking about this problem a few issues arose.

Firstly, as I read in the article, the problem of reproducibility is the result of modern want of big breakthroughs. News, TV, and the Internet constantly expect scientists to bring to them new and shocking scientific theories. Even as a global society we are used to quick and new solutions (because of the Internet culture-we do not have to wait long for the answer, we can have it in a second). Therefore, scientists are always in a hurry and they want to discover or invent more rapidly and bring new, better solutions to our current biggest problems. And because of the short time in which scientists are expected to bring the results of their work, they make mistakes. It seems like a possibly very harmful approach in science, however it has its advantages. Looking at this from the other perspective it might help the development of science. Rapid discoveries or inventions might quickly help to solve our current problems. If the scientific experiments were to last for decades the development would be slow and not as exciting as it is now. However, the pressure to discover or invent things in a short period of time is tricky. It has its advantages, but do they overweight the drawbacks?

The concept of time is different in different areas of knowledge. For example, in human sciences it is sometimes to conduct a psychological experiment which last one day, same of the examinations might last even for decades! The same is with the economics, the trend in the market might be observed only after a long period (compared to other methods of obtaining fact in other areas of knowledge) like 10 or 50 years. On the other hand, in natural sciences some experiments might be a matter of a day or two. But what takes more time is an analysis and collecting the data. So, in fact, even then we can talk about new theories or breakthroughs after many years.


I believe that what I learned from this article is that time can be sometimes the key in the process of producing knowledge. It can help, but it can also lead to quickly jumping into conclusions which may result in errors and wrong assumptions.

Articles:
7 of the World's Longest-Running Experiments

Most scientists 'can't replicate studies by their peers'

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