If you could change one thing in science, what would it be?

If you could change one thing in science, what would it be?

Funding availability for pseudoscience.

I don't care if it's probably not real, I want to study it deeply enough to have confidence that it is.

Remove the heretical nature of humanity
For what is life where I am stronger than mere man
But weak before God.

this is a fucking terrible idea. you prove you're worth something and THEN you get funding, not the other way around

That is exactly the attitude I wish to destroy. You don't know in advance what's real and what isn't. You form a hypothesis, design an experiment, and fucking test it or you don't. Quit treating funding like a limited resource that can only go to a number of valid projects before it starts diluting the quality of global research. Us doing our thing does not in any way degrade your ability to keep doing what you're doing.

You're not going to convince me that cutting funding from ANYTHING AT ALL in order to feed popsci idiots who never studied shit and want to try psychoquantum bullshit is anything other than a retarded idea

why the fuck would you want this?

>cutting funding
I never said that, meant that, or meant for anyone to think that. There is no fixed pie here. What you suggest is a system that ossified science by telling every new idea to fuck off until it has the funding to prove itself. If we could prove stuff without funding then none of this would be a problem. The whole damn point of science is to have a framework for being able to collect obscure types of evidence. I'm not suggesting we *MOVE* funding from one place to another, I'm saying we increase it to a point where new ideas aren't stifled by scientism.

Get rid of all of the people playing pretend in labcoats that knowingly pursue things that will net no real benefits and only serve to further a career or get a piece of paper.

you don't prove you're worth something by doing huge experiments
you prove you're worth something with careful calculations, insightful publications, and a promising proof of concept

science HAS a framework for collecting "obscure types of evidence". it's tons of people working on their own pet projects and fighting to make them work

also
>don't move funding, just increase it
from where exactly? you can't just make money

>a promising proof of concept
That is precisely the problem; nobody knows what all will be promising in advance of conducting an experiment.
>fighting to make them work
Yes, and I'm saying we shouldn't need to fight. I'm not saying to give dubious project millions of dollars and let them run wild—you still have to vet potential candidates and ensure you aren't dealing with crackpots and con artists, but you have to let a couple fringe project into the mix or you literally aren't developing new ideas.
>from where exactly
Read the OP. This is a thread for pie in the sky dreaming. If I knew where to get funding for fringe science I wouldn't need to wish for the change. I'm dreaming here, and you can't do anything to stop me.

>no one knows what will be promising
yes you definitely do if you spend 10+ years studying a fucking field you know what's worth it and what isn't, and if you think something is, you better be ready to show why

>I'm not saying to give dubious project millions of dollars and let them run wild
yes you are

>I'm dreaming here, and you can't do anything to stop me
You can suck your mom's dick for all I care, I don't give a fuck what you want to do. I'm calling your idea retarded and you can't do anything to stop me.

>I don't give a fuck what you want to do
>clearly gives far too many fucks

>if you spend 10+ years studying a fucking field
Then you're not doing the kind of experimental fringe since I want to fund. I'm taking about things that have *no research* behind them. Ideas that are fresh off the ground and need wings. Things that literally can't go anywhere if we never try.

>yes you are
No, I'm not. I haven't specified a mechanics for distributing funds. I'm just saying we need more fringe science availability in general.

>calling your idea retarded
That fine. It's my job to convince you it isn't.

Increase the speed of light by a factor of a million-billion.
Alternatively get rid of conservation of momentum although I'm incapable of even contemplating what that means.
Of course the EM drive is making progress with that.

>greentexts
you don't exist. I care about the posts on Veeky Forums. you can be spanking yourself with a dead otter for all I care

>fund things no research behind them
again, absolutely pointless. that's the heart of the issue. if they don't have research behind them it means no one who's capable of it is interested, only uneducated nutjobs

there's a lot of freedom for new research directions, but capable people involved with research need to want to push for them

Governing equations for fluids to be linear.

Your fluids would be pretty shitty.

Wait are we changing the Universe? Or just humans study of it?

There was magic, Skyrim-like. You could manipulate the world around you in extraordinary ways and as a science, you could figure out how to use said materials in different ways, ie I have this water, do I want to make it snow, or steam?

Change my grade to an A.

>no one who's capable of it is interested
>only uneducated nutjobs
That's the false dichotomy that bothers me. There is a sizable sample, no matter how fractional, of people that exists between those two types. Not everyone has time and resources for all the types of research they want to pursue. Similarly, even among people that DO want to pursue certain types of fringe research, getting official funding is extremely difficult up on to impossible. It's not that they aren't interested, it's that they can't argue for it without getting dismissed as uneducated nutjobs and basically ruining their careers. They just have to keep their heads down and pray that tolerance picks up at some point.

The thing I like about my wish is that it's feasible. I can work towards it by having this discussion with you. Are you really supposing that scientific funding is a perfect system and that there's no social ossification involved at any point in the entire system?

This would be pretty neat though, but isn't this basically chemistry?

>you don't prove you're worth something by doing huge experiments

What about those biologists who improved the detergent nozzle by creating successive generations of nozzles using the best performing nozzle as the parent nozzle for the next generation of randomly changed nozzles?

Nobody knew how it worked, yet it was much better. How do you provide proof of concept for something you don't understand?