Poll: Should scientific research be competitive or collaborative?

[malestrithe]

Collaborative. I voted competitive, but thought about it and that's bad.

Science should be people working together to get things done for the greater good. Anyone in the same field who wants to work on the same problem should be working together, on the same team, because that'll get things done more. Competition is caused by scarcity, which we shouldn't have to deal with.

The nobel prize is offered becauuuuuuse?

It adds healthy competition. Its a fantastic place that honors and encourages advancement accross the field while also encouraging that prizes are earned by teams. The nobel prize is the ultimate example of how competition in science spawns genius ideas.

Considering that most prize winners get the award decades after coming up with their advancement, a scientist that does their work for any monetary gain is kind of stupid. Anyone that thinks such an incentive helps move science along is flatout wrong.

 

[BiscuitTrouser]

Collaborative. I voted competitive, but thought about it and that's bad.

Science should be people working together to get things done for the greater good. Anyone in the same field who wants to work on the same problem should be working together, on the same team, because that'll get things done more. Competition is caused by scarcity, which we shouldn't have to deal with.

The nobel prize is offered becauuuuuuse?

It adds healthy competition. Its a fantastic place that honors and encourages advancement accross the field while also encouraging that prizes are earned by teams. The nobel prize is the ultimate example of how competition in science spawns genius ideas.

Considering that most prize winners get the award decades after coming up with their advancement, a scientist that does their work for any monetary gain is kind of stupid. Anyone that thinks such an incentive helps move science along is flatout wrong.

"Ill expand a bit more and say imagine they are working the lab for a 15 hour period and they have reached a dead end, i imagine at some point one of these people probably said to the other "If we do this we change the world forever. We go down in the annuls of history. We get the nobal prize and are immortalised for making the world a better place forever. Its a goal worth reaching" or words to that effect. Having something to strive for doesnt need to be a primary motivator but its a good motivator all the same."

Its not that it moves science along. Its that its a clear goal. A motivator. A thing to strive for. To attain. We love achievement as a species. Adding some for science gives people stuff to dream for and motivates them to work harder. A motivator isnt the same as "doing it FOR money". Its something that keeps them going at night as well as the "for the greater good stuff". Any motivator is a good motivator by me. And a nobel prize is a worthy goal.

 

[Naeras]

Both. Competition sparks innovation, but collaboration can get a very well-set goal finished more efficiently.

Case of point for both: all kinds of technology tends to advance faster during war times. However, without the collaboration of researchers all around the world, the human genome project would probably not have been finished as early and as efficiently as it was.

 

[Vivi22]

Competitive.

Why do you think there's such a huge technology jump during war time?

I'd imagine massive increases in spending on research may have something to do with it. The added impetus to end a war and save lives/not be conquered likely plays some role as well.

As to the question, competition is always going to exist among researchers as multiple people pursue different paths with the same end goal and try to make their career by getting there first. But science is still largely collaborative because people are always building on and incorporating the research of others into their own. Not to mention being able to critique the work of others in the public domain once it's published so that it can be improved on. Without collaboration and the free sharing of ideas and information, science would stagnate.

 

[Moth_Monk]

Anyone who thinks that scientific research should be done competitively has completely misunderstood the scientific method. Science is not about glory, it's about making progress, improving and discovering new things.

 

[Yuno Gasai]

Competition as motivation is a flaw in humans, not a useful tool.

I agree with you, although in some cases it can be useful.

Competition has a tendency to blindside people and to encourage them to manipulate others in order to achieve their desired results (usually winning, not actually developing a solution to the problem).

 

[Aurgelmir]

Topic.

Doing spring break homework and this is a question. It's an opinion paper and I believe it would be vastly improved if I had a popular opinion, so helping a fellow Escapist would be nice. Also for discussion, not just to help me.

Well Research has shown that competitiveness in the workplace doesn't improve innovation or products etc.

So why should scientific research be any different?

 

[Phisi]

I would say collaborative. Even in war the scientists in opposing nations are collaborating, usually, to a common goal. Scientific advancement is set back when scientists keep all of their knowledge to themselves. Science is very iterative.

EDIT: When it comes to science some hybrid of the two would work quite well. Compete to produce knowledge and then share that knowledge with the rest of the scientific community though I would still count this as ultimately collaborative.

 

[dietpeachsnapple]

What it SHOULD be is collaborative. Give a scientific team a beneficial goal, and give them the resources to accomplish the task. Not complicated.

Current norms and motivations are derived from competitive, even when it hampers our ability to accomplish our goals, out of spite in many cases.

 

[zefiris]

A lot of people posting here are pretty clearly rather clueless about how science really works. Competitive environments are not healthy for science, unless the competition is with on a larger level.

Nearly all important breakthroughs in science were either done by fringe people competing with nobody, or by large, collaborative teams on a multinational level. In some cases, these teams worked against a big enemy (Americans vs Soviets, for example), but...that wasn't what pushed science forward.
All this did was give Science the funding that supported the collaboration. What pushed science forward here was cooperation between people from different backgrounds.


Let's face it: In the real world, once the competition is between smaller groups of scientists, it breaks down quickly. Fraud becomes a big factor, and proper science gets pushed back in favor of rehashing things that someone else already worked. MAny examples in this thread of "competitive" science being successful are actually examples where someone ELSE made the actual discovery, and the "winner" just was either lucky, fraudulent, or appeared on the scene 20 years later and used the old idea.


Competitive environments allow individual scientists to reap great rewards if they are lucky or ruthless enough (or are frauds), but humanity as a whole is served much, much worse than it would be in a cooperative environment, which offers lower rewards for the individual scientists, but allows actually important breakthroughs.

 

[King of Asgaard]

Both.

It should be competitive, so that technology doesn't stagnate and there can continue to be advancements.

and it should be collaborative so that researchers can compare notes and create better medical technology, medicines and cures for diseases.

Pretty much this. One does not necessarily preclude the other.
Quite the contrary, in fact. Science advances more rapidly and efficiently when a degree of competition and collaboration work in unison.
In other words, your poll requires a third listing, i.e. 'Both'.

 

[Khada]

I share the opinion of the great scientist Mr Carl Sagan: collaborative.

 

[zxvcasdfqwerzxcv]

Bit of both, but really its all about collaboration.
Really, we need to combine resources and put the best thinkers from around the world together. In particular in areas like nuclear fusion and other power generation areas, as these are normally quite protective. Only in more theoretical areas do we see better collaboration, such as in CERN. They work they have done has been amazing and shows what science can do when people of varying education and cultures can come together to work!

 

[RJ 17]

Collaborations working in competition. Various teams of brilliant people doing research to find the best way to solve a problem. This way we get multiple working solutions to pick the best possible choice out of.

 

[Vegosiux]

Collaborative with a healthy degree of competitiveness. And if you consider scientific advance to be about "winning" or "losing", you've left the 'healthy' region far, far behind.

 

[Souplex]

Why not both?

 

[SEXTON HALE]

Colaberation can easily lead to work being stolen and used for purposes that it should never have been used for.Besides that i dont see a problem with a bit of healthy competition though i have heard of times when compotition does get a bit out of control.

 

[NightHawk21]

I don't understand, why can't it be both. Science as it is right now is both. Right now you have scientists each competing with each other to discover/explain something and have it published to be the first to do it and receive recognition. At the same time all the information is essentially freely available to the public (all universities should have a subscription and access to essentially every journal), allowing other scientists to use that information.

We're (a couple students and teachers from my university) participating in iGEM this year which is a competition in synthetic biology. It works much like regular research does. You pick a problem and try to solve it. Everyone competes to win the competition, and at the end you submit and biobricks you isolated (segments of DNA that code for specific things) so that they may be used in future projects.