Dresden 2009 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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AGSOE: Arbeitsgruppe Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme

AGSOE 5: Social Systems, Opinion and Group Dynamics

AGSOE 5.5: Vortrag

Montag, 23. März 2009, 17:30–17:45, BAR 205

The Academic System and The Marketplace of Ideas — •Sabine Hossenfelder — Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Canada

The scientific community makes for an interesting case study for the emergence of social phenomena from individual interests. As a community of practice with only peripheral external interactions, researchers in academic institutions form an almost closed system, with over-averagely intelligent agents, whose activities are well documented.

In this talk, I want to examine the incentive structure in the academic system and the macro-trends that follows from the micro-behaviours of researchers. Most importantly, one can identify four pressures that result in the adaptation of strategies suitable to the environment: peer pressure, financial pressure, time pressure, and public pressure. I will further examine the question under which circumstances incentives for simplified secondary criteria can work against the primary goals of the community, and will argue that institutionalizing measures for scientific success hinders the system's performance.