Paper on scientometrics

[David Wojick]

Dear Loet,

My impression is that the policy people think that they can buy revolutions without regard to the state of the science, or the ripeness of the science as it were. This is a fallacy.

David

On Jul 28, 2013, at 9:03 AM, Loet Leydesdorff <loet at LEYDESDORFF.NET> wrote:

> Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe): http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
> In fact I am disturbed by all the policy rhetoric about funding more breakthroughs, especially in the field of energy. That is not how science works. Revolutions are rare events because it takes a long time to work through a paradigm. There are normally no short cuts to revolution. 
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> 
> Dear David,
> 
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> 
> I agree: Kuhnian revolutions involve incommensurabilities and are thus by definition unexpected. Perhaps, one can find indicators of the crises that precede the revolutions, but these crises will not be a good bet for funding because they can last for long periods of time.
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> I assume that policy makers mean to fund the upscaling of revolutionary developments.
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> Best,
> 
> Loet
> 
>  
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