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5 votes
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I found an article that said "The microwave was invented to heat hamsters humanely in 1950s experiments." And I thought, no it wasn't. ...was it?
22 votes -
Using lasers to create the displays of science fiction, inspired by Star Wars and Star Trek
7 votes -
Whitest paint ever created could have air-con like cooling effects
10 votes -
Only two and a half billion tyrannosaurus rex inhabited the planet in total, researchers say
14 votes -
Our brain typically overlooks this brilliant problem-solving strategy
17 votes -
First clinical trial confirms HIV vaccine using Moderna inoculation
22 votes -
Rise of the 'robo-plants', as scientists fuse nature with tech
6 votes -
Scientists grow mouse embryos in a mechanical womb
5 votes -
Breakthrough male contraceptive pill derived from Chinese medicine
17 votes -
When scientists become allergic to their research
10 votes -
Powerpaste ‘goo’ stores ten times the energy density of lithium-ion batteries
19 votes -
Experimental compound revives memory in Alzheimer’s disease mice
11 votes -
Hurricanes and typhoons moving 30km closer to coasts every decade for the last forty years
6 votes -
Identical twins aren’t perfect clones, research shows
8 votes -
BOTI Science: Best of interval compilations, suggestions? Supporting trends identification
Discussions of progress or collapse often get mired in the question of significant discoveries and inventions. After wrestling with several organisational cencepts for various catalogues, and...
Discussions of progress or collapse often get mired in the question of significant discoveries and inventions. After wrestling with several organisational cencepts for various catalogues, and running into the Ever Growing List dilemma, I hit on what I call BOTI, or Best of the Interval (day, week, month, year, decade, century, etc.). It's similar to the tickler file 43 folder perpetual filing system of GTD. For technical types, a round-robin database or circular buffer.
(As with my bullet journal experiments, the effort is uneven but recoverable, which is its core strength.)
By setting up a cascade of buffers --- day of month, (optionally week or weekdays), month of year, year of decade, decade of century, century of millennium, millennium of 10kyr, a progressively larger scale record (roughly order-of-magnitude based), with a resolution of day but a maximum retention of (here) 10,000 years but only 83 record bins. How much you choose to put in each bin is up to you, but the idea is that only to most significant information is carried forward. Yes, some information is lost but total data storage requirements are known once the bin size and count are established.
Another problem BOTI addresses is finite attention. If you limit yourself to a finite set of items per year, say ten to one hundred (about what a moderately motivated individual could be aware of), BOTI is a form of noise-filtering. Items which seemed urgent or captivating in the moment often fade in significance with time, and often overlooked element rise in significance with time and context. 'Let it settle with time" is a good cure to FOMO.
There's the question of revisiting context. I'd argue that significance might be substantially revised years, decades, possibly centuries after a discovery or inventiion. So an end-of-period purge of all but the top items isn't what we're looking for. Gut a gradual forgetting / pruning seems the general idea.
Back to science and technology: It's hard to assess significance in the moment, and day-to-day reports of science and technology advances are noisy. I've been looking for possible sources to use and am finding little that's satisfactory. I'd like suggestions.
- Many newspapers and magazines run annual "best of" features. These typically include books, but not science (or at least not regularly). Some of the books are science- or technonolgy-related, though.
- There are the Nobel prizes, notably in physics, chemistry, and medicine, with lists at Wikipedia (linked). The Fields Medal in maths. Other fields have their awards, of which lists might prove useful...
- I'm having trouble finding something like a yearbook of science or technology, though some titles match, e.g., McGraw-Hill yearbook of science and technology. On closer look, this might answer my question, at least for yearbooks.
- Wikipedia has some promising but either inconsistent or untidily organised pages or collections, including the List of years in science, Timeline of historic inventions, Timeline of scientific discoveries, Timeline of scientific thought, among numerous other timelines. Compilations are useful but aren't themselves rankings. See also "never ending list" above.
There is a goal here: trends over time. I've a few senses of directions of research and progress, possibly also of biases in awards. Looking at, for example, Nobels in physics, chemistry, and medicine from, say, 1901--1960 vs. 1961--2020, there seems to be a marked shift, though categorising that might be difficult. The breakpoint isn't necessarily 1960 either --- 1950 or 1940 might be argued for.
There is the question of how to measure significance of scientific discoveries or technological inventions. I'm not going to get into that though several standard measures (e.g., counting patents issued) strike me as highly problematic, despite being common in research. Discussion might be interesting.
Mostly, though, I'm looking for data sources.
5 votes -
It’s time to restore scientific integrity
11 votes -
What sexual and gender minority people want researchers to know about sexual orientation and gender identity questions: A qualitative study
4 votes -
Lab mice have a chill, and that may be messing up study results
2 votes -
New techniques are helping medical researchers develop new anti-cancer drugs and gain a better understanding of how existing ones work
5 votes -
The rapid sharing of pandemic research shows there is a better way to filter good science from bad
7 votes -
Coronaviruses are extremely widespread in wild animals bred for food in Vietnam, with the wildlife supply chain quickly spreading those viruses to uninfected animals, preliminary research shows
6 votes -
Elisabeth Bik quit her job to spot errors in research papers — and has become the public face of image sleuthing
9 votes -
The Trump administration drove him back to China, where he invented a fast coronavirus test
4 votes -
Research identifies new route for tackling drug resistance in skin cancer cells
4 votes -
How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure
9 votes -
The top retractions of 2019
7 votes -
China’s CRISPR babies: Read exclusive excerpts from the unseen original research
16 votes -
Migrating Russian eagles run up huge data roaming charges
14 votes -
Google demonstrating quantum supremacy
11 votes -
Communicating science online increases interest, engagement and access to funds
7 votes -
Using "time outs" to discipline children is not going to harm them or your relationship with them, US research suggests
6 votes -
The problem with sugar-daddy science
11 votes -
Conspiracy theorists have chilled real fluoride research, researchers say
12 votes -
Why speaking to yourself in the third person makes you wiser
7 votes -
Virtual Characters Learn To Work Out… and Undergo Surgery (Scalable Muscle-actuated Human Simulation and Control)
6 votes -
From two bulls, nine million dairy cows
5 votes -
How information is like snacks, money, and drugs—to your brain
5 votes -
The war to free science: How librarians, pirates, and funders are liberating the world’s academic research from paywalls
17 votes -
A solution to psychology’s reproducibility problem just failed its first test
10 votes -
Coca-Cola's contracts with researchers reserved the right to kill studies
15 votes -
5-HTTLPR: A Pointed Review
6 votes -
Online activists are silencing us, scientists say
24 votes -
Cracking the mystery of egg shape
5 votes -
New window film reduces energy costs
4 votes -
UC terminates Elsevier subscription citing unstable fees and irreconcilable differences in approach to open research
12 votes -
What does any of this have to do with physics?
14 votes -
Some plants “hear” through flowers. A study found petals vibrated in response to recordings of a bee’s wingbeats, leading plants to sweeten their nectar.
10 votes -
Is science stagnant? Despite vast increases in the time and money spent on research, scientific progress is barely keeping pace with the past
12 votes -
Sociogenomics is opening a new door to eugenics
5 votes