Is Musk right in saying most academic papers are useless?

[Grands]

In a video Elon said that most of the academic papers and work is useless.
Is he right?

 

[BillTre]

Not about mine!

 

[Fred Wright]

In a video Elon said that most of the academic papers and work is useless.
Is he right?

You have taken his claim out of context. I think he was defending his reason for not publishing some discovery or scientific proposal (?) and subjecting it to peer review. Basically I think he is saying; "Why would I imperil my corporate image to investors with academic criticism? I just sent my car to Mars. Quod Erat Demonstrandum" .

Peace
Fred

 

[jtbell]

Is he right?

Sure... it's an illustration of Sturgeon's Law.

 

[Grands]

Sure... it's an illustration of Sturgeon's Law.

Yes, but we are talking about Science, not Science fiction, I mean, every scientific paper have to respect scientific standards.

 

[phinds]

Yes, but we are talking about Science, not Science fiction, I mean, every scientific paper have to respect scientific standards.

Apparently you do not understand Sturgeon's Law. It applies to EVERYTHING. Did you not read the article?

 

[gleem]

Is Musk implying that most papers are not even cited (in a positive way) by other researchers or what?

 

[Grands]

Apparently you do not understand Sturgeon's Law. It applies to EVERYTHING. Did you not read the article?

Yes but that rule do not have a scientific validation.
Anyway I find it interesting, and honestly if you start to see the world thinking that 90% of it is crap, you can be a different person, isn't it?
In this way I can say that 90% of the things that Elon says or do are crap.

 

[EngWiPy]

I don't know about the context of his conversation since the video is just 30 seconds long, but I think academia produces way more papers compared to what is actually implemented in real life. Maybe they are useless in this sense, but then these volumes lead from time to time to breakthroughs by accumulation of knowledge and building upon others' works. In that sense they are not completely useless, I think.

 

[BWV]

Most published scientific research is false

http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

 

[Dr.D]

I have to say that a lot of the papers that I find on the 'net are extremely low quality. This is going to get worse with "publication for a fee" in the on-line world. Those that have the funds will get their papers published, irrespective of quality. Those who do not have the money, will be unable to publish, no matter how valuable their work may be to the world at large. This is not a healthy environment for technical publications.

 

[mfb]

Most published scientific research is false

http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

That depends a lot on the field.

 

[Grands]

I don't know about the context of his conversation since the video is just 30 seconds long, but I think academia produces way more papers compared to what is actually implemented in real life. Maybe they are useless in this sense, but then these volumes lead from time to time to breakthroughs by accumulation of knowledge and building upon others' works. In that sense they are not completely useless, I think.

Here there is a more complete video.

 

[aheight]

Does he not understand, embrace or appreciate the butterfly effect? The smallest, seemingly insignificant effect can have the greatest of consequences: How does one stop an earth-bound asteroid with a glazed donut?

 

[Pythagorean]

Elon's looking at it from a production perspective. Most papers don't turn into something that you can implement or produce in society. Of course that ignores how those papers build on each other and eventually lead to the papers that industry might use.

 

[Stephen Tashi]

We could try the syllogism:
Most things of any sort are useless. Therefore most academic papers are useless.

Most google searches are useless, most internet forum discussions are useless, most music is useless. And what about all those football games?

Are most things of a given sort for the purpose of entertaining somebody in some way? - academic papers counting as intellectual entertainment.

 

[BillTre]

Most papers don't turn into something that you can implement or produce in society. Of course that ignores how those papers build on each other and eventually lead to the papers that industry might use.

I would count use by industry as use by society.
Similarly, I would count use the intellectual or scientific use of a paper as use by society.
So I would include all those papers which were cited, provided techniques or ideals that get reused or build further upon as being used and therefore useful.

 

[dipole]

Academic papers serve a very useful purpose. They fill out tenure track faculty's CVs and give them something to use to justify their existence to funding organizations. They also give grad students something to do when they're not contemplating why they went into science in the first place while their advisors are busy trying to convince other people how important their work is.

 

[Copernicuson]

The reason most of the time scientific papers are useless, is that life is much more complicated than a few variables.

 

[Choppy]

To be honest, I haven't read "most academic papers" so I can't really comment.

The ones I do read tend to be of use to me though.

 

[StatGuy2000]

After viewing the more complete video linked above, I don't think the takeaway is that Musk believes most academic work is useless (to me, I felt he said this in an off-hand, joking manner, so I don't think we should take that statement fully at face value). What I feel he is trying to say is the importance of being able to explain the importance and reason for learning particular lessons, and the importance of bringing passion into the classroom so that students can be inspired to learn the material, rather than simply rote learning (which he is specifically criticizing). And to a degree, I feel that he is making legitimate arguments in that sense.

I do think educators will be doing themselves so much more of a favour if they could be comfortable enough to give a compelling rationale of why they themselves are passionate in a given subject, and why those would be relevant. Note how I use the word "relevant", not necessarily "applied" or "practical" -- subject materials could be relevant to people's lives without necessarily being immediately applicable.

 

[Pythagorean]

Academic papers serve a very useful purpose. They fill out tenure track faculty's CVs and give them something to use to justify their existence to funding organizations. They also give grad students something to do when they're not contemplating why they went into science in the first place while their advisors are busy trying to convince other people how important their work is.

My graduate education has left me cynical, too.

 

[SVN]

In some sense people expressing this opinion (although I agree with opinion of @StatGuy2000 that the thread title does not accurately describe Musk's view on this, but I heard other people saying just that) are right. But it is not the whole picture.

I would suggest the following analogy: some developed country issues work permits and finally offers citizenship for a dozen of well-educated (important!) immigrants. One of those may soon die of a natural cause; another one, crushed by nostalgia, become a drinker; someone fails to integrate into the society properly and ends up working as a security guard (no offence, but not exactly a kind of job making people around envy you) of living on welfare and so on. But the last one, after some time, could start and run an interesting business creating workplaces or participate in an important discovery.

So yes, one might argue that most of such immigrants are useless for the country and this is right if the bigger picture is neglected. But the benefits of having the last one of my example justifies accepting all of them. I presume parallels with academic research and papers are obvious.