Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Today in Academic Irony

New scientific study published arguing that there are too many scientific studies.

2 comments:

G. Verloren said...

Ehhh, I dunno. I mean, is it ironic that pollution studies ultimately contribute slightly to pollution?

John said...

No, it's just a medium vs. message conundrum, like going on television to protest the baleful impact of television, or launching a web site to protest the internet.

Incidentally I think these authors are right; the proliferation of scholarship of all sorts has become an obstacle to scholarship. Nobody can keep up with the deluge outside a tiny, narrow field, so scholarship gets more and more balkanized and scholars get narrower and narrower.