Competition in Science

Daniel Lemire has an interesting blog post on competition in science. I will quote from this post and respond to each of the points that he makes.

Scientists are typically rather secretive about whatever they are working on right now. While in most universities, you can at least see where the researchers work, in some government laboratories, such as NRC, you would think that Russian spies are on every corner: how else can you explain the armed guards you find at the entrance of some buildings? I bet that some private laboratories are even better protected.

Many computers have been stolen from my institute at NRC. I’ve noticed that increased security is highly correlated with recent thefts. I believe that the guards are protecting hardware, not ideas. How can an armed guard protect an idea?

Initially, when I started this blog, I wanted to tell the world about what I was working on. Somehow, on paper, it sounded like a nice approach. By sharing my ideas, I could get some early feedbacks, some extra references, I could maybe even get some collaboration going.

This is one reason that I started my blog. I share my research ideas on my blog. As anybody can read, I am currently doing research on analogies and semantic relations, and I am currently investigating whether tensors are useful for this.

While it may work for some, opening up my research ideas simply does not work for me. Explaining, clearly, what I work on is hard. I could sketch my ideas, but only a handful of people would grasp even half of what I would write. Moreover, many ideas never make it outside my office. I abandon most of my ideas, eventually. Thus, taking the time to explain my current set of ideas would be very wasteful.

Whether explaining is hard depends on your intended audience and the level of detail you aim to cover. If you aim for a specialized audience and avoid small details, explaining is not so hard. Perhaps only a few people can understand what I’m trying to do, but that doesn’t bother me. If one reader finds something useful, that is enough.

I also abandon most of my ideas, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the ideas were wrong; it only means that I was unable to make them work. Another person might have a use for them. Also, the very act of writing down the ideas helps me to understand them.

So, you simply cannot tell what I am working on. I just won’t tell you. I will tell you to go read my papers.

There is some value in giving an informal, high-level view of what you are working on, in a blog, as opposed to a formal, low-level view, in a paper. This is one reason for going to a conference, where we can ask colleagues for the informal ideas and motivation behind a formal and intimidating paper.

Most researchers behave the same way. Interestingly, however, many researchers have another reason for behaving this way: they do not want to give their competition an edge. They do not divulge their ideas for the same reason they keep their data and their software secret: they want to make sure nobody can catch up to them.

There is a conflict between competition and cooperation in science. I feel that conflict myself, but I strive for cooperation. I have never regretted sharing my ideas.

There is a quote that has been attributed to many different people, “There is no limit to what [people] can achieve if [they don't] care who gets the credit.” [Removed gender bias.] I try to live by this quote. I ask myself what is more important to me, that I achieve a certain research goal, or that I get credit for achieving the goal? Ultimately, the goal is more important to me than the credit. It would be nice to both achieve the goal and get the credit, but I am willing to risk losing the credit if it increases the chance of achieving the goal.

Whenever several researchers are working toward the very same goal, this a sensible concern. After all, being the first to solve a given scientific problem, is important. Science is a winner-takes-all game, at least some of time. Other times, people are simply misguided: keeping yourself out of the information-sharing loop only makes you less useful to the community and, ultimately, less important.

This is a conflict between what is good for the individual and what is good for society. We need to create social structures, protocols, institutions, networks, and software, such that cooperation is naturally encouraged, by an alignment of interests. It does no good to cajole or coerce scientists to cooperate, to say that is the good and ethical thing to do; we need devices that encourage cooperation by working with human nature, rather than working against it.

Me? If I were able to read minds… if I were able to see what other researchers are thinking about… I would most certainly not bother. I am already overwhelmed with carefully crafted papers on Google Scholar, I would certainly not care for the early drafts of my competitors. It helps that I do not feel like I have competitors. This is no accident since I apply Dijkstra’s rule:

Never tackle a problem of which you can be pretty sure that (now or in the near future) it will be tackled by others who are, in relation to that problem, at least as competent and well-equipped as you.

I also follow a research strategy of looking for new problems, but I also look for new approaches to old problems. Researchers have been trying to understand analogical reasoning for years, but I think I’ve found a new approach. If we can see what other researchers are thinking about, then we may see solutions that they have overlooked. I would like to know what other researchers are thinking about (to the extent that my time and interest allows). I know that this involves a conflict of interests, but we should be looking for ways to address this conflict.