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171 sats \ 4 replies \ @SimpleStacker 17 Sep \ on: The growth of western bureaucracy charts_and_numbers
There's an interesting in phenomenon in academia---for economics definitely, and likely for other fields---where the length and quantity of papers has grown substantially to the point that no one really reads them carefully anymore, except maybe just the referees and editors (if that).
It's usually blamed on the ease of word processing and statistical programming technology. It's just way easier to spam more stuff into the text than before.
I wonder if the same is going on with respect to legislation.
Producing words has become cheaper than reading and interpreting them. We need some sort of mechanism to bring the two back into balance.
@Undisciplined
Producing words has become cheaper than reading and interpreting them.
This seems like a case of you get what you incentivize: I can see that authors may benefit from qualifying statements, acknowledging edge case exceptions, including marginal sources, and generally adding a bit more to the paper, whereas I doubt there is as Mich pressure to be concise (journal word count limits?).
Also, nobody built a career just being quiet and reading what all the other people write. You have to add your voice to the cacophony.
I'm ready for academia to abandon the paper idea altogether; make a website publish your findings that way, keep them up to date. Peer review seems pretty broken any way, but surely we can build a system that achieves something similar sans publishers.
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I'm ready for academia to abandon the paper idea altogether; make a website publish your findings that way, keep them up to date. Peer review seems pretty broken any way, but surely we can build a system that achieves something similar sans publishers.
100%. I would be totally on board with this. The old peer review and journal-gated system is for a previous era and is hindering academic development.
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There’s been a bit of a move back towards shorter articles, with journals spinning up new series just for short pieces.
I attribute it to the sheer quantity of tests and checks we feel are necessary, before the reviewers ever express concerns. The analogue is something like new regulations needing to reference existing regulations, which are growing in quantity.
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Yes, I do think people recognize it. And even in my field (urban econ), there's a growing acknowledgment that regulations are getting out of control and are largely to blame for lack of housing production.
It's quite plausible to say that the West's sclerotic economic performance is because it's drowning in words
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