A Novel Approach to New Types of Novel Novelty

[RedFox]

A Novel Approach to New Types of Novel Novelty
Blog post by Derek Lowe
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/novel-approach-new-types-novel-novelty

This news may well not surprise you, but the extent of it is interesting. A new study has looked at NIH grant applications from 1985 to 2017 and found that the use of hyped-up descriptions such as "novel", "critical", and "key" has increased strongly over this period. Particularly buzzy adjectives have shown paticularly huge rises: "sustainable", "actionable", and "scalable" are one to two hundred times more common than they used to be. These results are right in line with other such surveys of the scientific literature, which have shown an increase in both positive and negative wording over the years. The good stuff is better, and the bad stuff (done by those other guys, presumably) is worse.

The comments discuss limitations in the knowledge of grant application reviewers, and how scientists may hype up how new something is because the reviewer may not be familiar with whether something is novel or not.

As funding agencies have a significant influence on the direction of science, and thus ME research, the quality of grant decisions, and how the process influences the language scientists use, is a notable topic.

 

[Creekside]

Any system that offers benefits is going to have people trying to manipulate it for their advantage. The decision makers need to be aware of the latest methods of manipulation.

Personally, I think schools should have mandatory classes in manipulation techniques and how to notice when they're being used against you. Classes on rational--and irrational--thinking would be good too. Much more useful than memorizing trivia.