The Right Question Leads to the Right Answer

‘Publish or perish’, is the maxim of the scientific activities. Yet, most of the published work is never read or cited by other scientists. This has led to a crisis of intellect and information. It has led to a moral catastrophe and to a re-definition, self-justification and re-thinking of the goals of research. That is, the important questions are those that are likely to be published in the top-journals. But brave new questions are rarely successful in their first attempts. Only second or third generation ideas hit the jackpot. The need for publication has thus affected the scientific method itself, by directing the formulation of questions towards the goals of a publication system that is not always innocent or fully objective. But the choice is always in the researcher – or isn’t it?

Location: IST Austria, staircase