What do you guys think about "independent researchers"? People who pursue science without being formally a scientist or working with a research facility?

delete the social media screecap bait image and I'll give my actual opinion

There is no such thing as formally being a scientist, anon. There are only researchers that are part of a larger organization and researchers that are not.

>>16721208 (OP)
you don't have any idea wtf you're doing until you've worked in the field, around other people in the field, for like a decade at the very least. this means that in practice such a thing an "independent researcher" simply cannot exist, unless you've got millions to burn and somehow also know the people who matter in the field. the practical upshot is that the only real way to catch up to the state of the art is to leverage large institutions and public funding sources, or work for a large corporation that can burn tons of money and attract top talent.

the idea of an "independent researcher" is just peak dunning kruger. you don't know what you don't know and you don't have even 1/1000 of the resources required to find out.

>>16721212
I meant having a phd, professorship etc

>>16721218
you really shouldn't listen to schizo retards who live in their mother's basement.

>>16721219
If they male quality articles that actually get published why not?

>>16721208 (OP)
There is literally nothing wrong with being an independent researcher, the problem is that most people that call themselves independent researchers have no education in what they're researching. Which again could be fine (look at Oliver Heaviside or Michael Faraday; although I think both of them were self-taught to a degree), but these people are rare. In general an independent researcher is someone with no education, no background, and no understand of the existing literature; all of which means they just spew out literal nonsense. And then when you criticise that nonsense, they act like the "mainstream" or the "orthodoxy" is trying to shut them down.

Ultimately, you can't really have a rule that's like "all independent researchers are retarded schizos", since there's enough examples from the past of that not being true. But you also can't just accept their ideas because they're on the fringe, since there's plenty of examples of independent being nothing but retarded schizos. You have to take ideas at face value and evaluate them.

>>16721221
but they don't and they won't. all the low hanging fruit got picked centuries ago, in any empirical field.

the only field where you advance non-empirically is pure mathematics and even that realistically requires a formal education to meaningfully contribute.

>>16721222
>examples from the past of that not being true
now filter for post-1900 or thereabout. the reason "independent researchers" could exist in 1680 is that people in 1680 didn't know shit about fuck, you could make groundbreaking discoveries in your grandma's shed. that time is long past.

>>16721224
>you could make groundbreaking discoveries in your grandma's shed. that time is long past.
This is fair.

>>16721217
This depends greatly on the field you're working in. Certainly there are fields where making any meaningful contribution without a large lab setup and an army of staff is very difficult, but there are also plenty of fields like Mathematics where a loner with the key insight can be as useful as several entire research groups over the course of decades. Keeping up to date with the state of the art is not that difficult, a couple of journal subscriptions are quite affordable and knowing a guy that you discuss interesting developments with once a week on discord for half an hour can be perfectly sufficient. And even in lab-heavy fields you can always do an Einstein and make sense of a large body of contradictory data with a clever idea that you came up with in your spare time. It's rare, yes, but still entirely possible.

>>16721208 (OP)
Depends on their dedication to autodidacticism and the sources they choose to study.
You can study any field to a high level online and get just as knowledgeable as those with degrees but too many think watching youtube makes them an expert.

Sciencemadness is the best example I know where you can find people doing real cutting edge research at home with tiny self funded budgets as they focus on molecules ignored by industrial and military research because they are suboptimal for those uses.

>>16721208 (OP)
Cool if they are not grifters
every human soul should be free to do scientific research
elitism and tribalism in science can easily make it into a stupid ego cult.
keep it humble keep it real

It's a hard battle to be independent. All the researchers (academia or industry) are essentially a private club. So you stand no chance against them.
But still there are a few who grew away from academia to be independent and have a good status within the research community. For eg Robert C. Edgar, the guy behind MUSCLE, USEARCH etc publishes papers and tools independently now.

Undocumented farm assist

*Paywalls every science paper*
$1500 bucks little science man
Put those shekels in my hand
If you don't pay me for the right to learn
We will sue you, sue you, sue you

p.s. Be sure to check out the gold level scientific paper monthly subscription plan model, it has stolen science research from U.S. corporations by MOSSAD agents sold to Chinese agents and ran through bootleg knockoff Image Learning Language Models trained by knockoffs and the code is then used to farm likes on TikTok TM (sales pending) with Korean comfort women facial filters creating the impression of a 2-D Animated Disney PIXAR cartoon character with viral fetish undertones praising the success of the brightest most shining high wonderful star Emperor Xi and all of the glorious slave suicide net manufactured micro plastics that the once merit oriented, now bug directed Han so graciously injected into my anal cavity.

*Rubs scientific facts together greedily*

TRUST
THE
SCIENCE

>>16721347
is there a paying plan?

>Chemistry
They exist (eg Nilered) and can have some massive personal labs

>Biology
Also exist, like thought emporium, and usually overlap with chemistry in terms of the experiments they do. I know Thought emporium has apparently done some real research.

>Physics
Overwhelmingly schizos like Eric Weinstein.

>Math
Overwhelmingly schizos. Occasionally there's someone who makes a minor contribution to some field nobody cares about.

>Engineering
Quite of these guys are on Youtube. Usually it's just rehashing usual product design methodology but it's just one guy.

>>16721208 (OP)
Academia doesn't deserve the monopoly.
With artificial intelligence there's hope that we can have truer peer-review outside of it.
Everything should be published not after peer-review but before it, and reviewers shouldn't be anonymous, so that stupidity of everybody to be for everyone to see.
It took Mendel 20 years to prove that he was onto something. And many scientists were trying to convince the community that there is periodicity in chemical elements for 20 years before Mendeleev managed to do it. That is not normal and should be dealt with.

New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment. (Max Planck)

>>16721208 (OP)
You mean like, flat earthers?
Yea those guys are gonna bust it all wide open. Uh huh, any day now, they'll get a picture of the ice wall and show the earth is just a big pizza pan shapexka8s4

>>16721530
Do you actually think he meant flatearthers?
You probably got your degree, but have you ever made a single meaningful scientific discovery?
It is a shocker that most of you faggots have not and never will, and it's considered normal and not an obstacle to a successful scientific career, just as scientific discoveries do not guarantee one (Oliver Heaviside is a bright example)

>>16721537
Flerfer detected

I am an independent researcher and it is common in my field (machine learning) but rare or impossible in many fields. I build models from research papers and successfully reproduce their results. I also carry out experiments with machine learning that are designed to be reproducible by other researchers with a uniquely generated seed.

A lot of AI researchers are self-taught and this is unique to this field as the only equipment you really need is a computer and an understanding of high level math. That is the barrier to entry. I think a lot of "independent researchers" could honestly just be crackpots. Publishing truly meaningful peer-reviewed research is the goal, and if you look at academia there are a lot of institutionally credentialed scientists carrying out fraud and publishing nonsense.

I really think what matters most of all is the quality of what you publish. You could have institutional backing and publish frauduelent AI generated papers and you could work independently and publish meaningful science. What matters is the actual substance of your work.

>>16721537
Heaviside made substantial discoveries and was actually qualified in his field. This is the difference between actual independent research and grifters who spin yarns for flat Earth and UFO "theories" and the like. Did you know Otis Ray of "Time Cube" fame was invited to speak at MIT? Kind of cruel honestly, man was seriously ill.

>>16721541
ywnbas

>>16721637
>Heaviside made substantial discoveries and was actually qualified in his field.
But was he recognized (paid) by the academia?
If you were a true scientist, you wouldn't resort to this shallow ad hominem, especially after my opener was indicating me otherwise.
Maybe I shouldn't have dropped that f-bomb, but then again was I wrong? I obviously was in the form, but was I in the substance?

I think independent researchers don't deserve shit. All of them turn out to be crackpots like Pons, Luc Montagnier, John H. Conway, or John Gabriel.

>>16721664 Yes, CONWAY IS A CRACKPOT. He did basically no real mathematics outside of his minor role in the classification theorem of groups, but that was it. Outside of that? Crackpottery, truck loads of it. He deserves to be included here.

>>16721664
> crackpots
Naturally. Yet did they make actual contributions to science? Have you?

>>16721208 (OP)
I do computational neuroscience research as a hobby but I have a degree and the hobby doesn't require any serious money

>>16721211
no bitch, fuck outta my thread you little tranny faggot

>>16721208 (OP)
>What do you guys think about "independent researchers"? People who pursue science without being formally a scientist or working with a research facility?
Why would I think of them at all? What kind of question is this?

If some guy wants to spend evenings looking through his telescope and discovers some random moon/planet/meteor heading straight for earth that's cool.
If some guy spends this time playing with syringes in his home lab and discovers a new kind of anabolic steroid that's 10% more efficient and 10% less damaging that's cool.
Why the fuck would I think anything of some other random guy that is trying to discover some random shit with his own private time and money? He is free to do so. He may succeed, he may fail but it's his own god damn business for trying to satisfy his own curiosity.

Now if you are talking about gifters who merely pretend to do research to scam idiots out of their money, then my opinion is the same as for the rest of the scammers. Scammers gonna scam, idiots gonna get scammed.

What is the fucking point of this thread?

>>16722629
i kneel

>>16721208 (OP)
If they shill their "product" or "big breaktrough" too much that it looks like they only want to make money instead of pursuing science for the folk who cares and being an alternative to goverment funded scientists, other than that I think positively