German researchers have drafted a position paper in which they demand science be decelerated in order to improve its quality. Their points are (Die Zeit article 4/14/2011):
worldwide reduction of publications to allow scientists to survey the field and ensure quality
research needs a basic funding, yet cannot be economically evaluated like a company
funding should be based on content, not projected success
authors should only appear on papers if they contributed to it
scientists have to write their own grant proposals, no agencies should do that or even correct the scientists
experiments need to be more transparent and reproducible
good science is only possible with long-term grants
While I agree with most of the ideas (I do think that a base funding would be a Very Good Thing for a couple of less flashy disciplines, and I do agree that science should be about substance first), I take issue with the latent notion that science is too fast, too competitive, and that presentation is overrated.
Science is all about ideas, even half-baked ideas, and, more importantly, sharing them. No major work was created by one person out of thin air, but resulted from building on what other people have done before, however small it was. If those other people had waited to publish it until they thought it was complete, it might have never seen the light of day. Or, more likely, it would have, but published by somebody else, who was not as hesitant. Of course you should wait until you are reasonably sure your results are sound, but there is a point where it turns into procrastination. If you do not publish, nobody knows you are brilliant (they also won’t know if you are clueless…)
Part of a scientist’s skill set is to navigate and assess the body of work in his or her field. There are increasingly more tools to help you achieve that. Scientists know which journals are hard to get into, and which ones will print anything as long as it has a title. Researchers will assess work also based on where it is published. Both quality and quantity matter. Someone who has had only one paper in 10 years, but in Nature or Science, is not much better than someone who has cranked out four papers a year in obscure journals over the same time span. Granted, the first guy has substance, but who tells me he could do it again? With the other one I know at least what he was up to, and that his ideas were bad. Luckily, most people will lie somewhere in the midlle. So the flood of publications is actually a boon rather than a bane.
By artificially restricting the number of publications, you do not necessarily improve quality (transparency and fairness of acceptance criteria is an issue to itself), but take away a lot of breadth and information.
And, yes, science is about presentation: if your idea is too complicated to explain it, chances are it is not worth explaining anyways. Some people maintain that you should be able to explain your whole research idea during an elevator ride. A lot of the great ideas are exceedingly simple, and a lot of good papers are good because they explain their point well. A brilliant mind that cannot communicate its brilliance is no use to the academic world, least themselves. The fact that the occasional showman gets a grant although his ideas are not very deep should not stop us from rewarding good presentations!
You might not like it, but I am sure that fast, competitive, and presentable science improves our general knowledge and understanding of the world. Artificial boundaries and regulations do not. The times when researchers could sit in their study and worry about one thing for years are gone. Now, you have to go out and present it, for money, for visibility, and ultimately also for the advancement of science.