I think part of the quantitative push comes from a shift in society.
Nowadays we have a meritocratic expectations and want to give equal opportunity to all, our cultural ideal of governance is democracy etc. It this framework a big thing to avoid and a big source of angst is that people will take these tax paid jobs and do jack shit and just sit around having fun. We want to avoid that, and replace any lazy non working people with people who will do it better.
For this we need some accountability. To see that papers get written and not only that, but they are also having an impact on other research (citations). What else can you do? You can have time sheets of working hours or computer software that tracks usage to see if someone just watches YouTube or reads the news at work... I mean, sure you could base it on common sense and talking with the researchers, but that's almost like asking them to write a report, but then why not publish the underlying work as well if it was good work?
Earlier however, science was more like a hobby and the background system was various forms of feudalism. Many scientists were rich noblemen who had the wealth to pursue their interests. If nothing came of it, they were still well fed and had nobody to report to. Or it was enough to have a patron who liked work enough that he fed the scientist. Or the it happened within the church with some theological justification/disguise, but that wasn't democratic either.
Since we now conceptualize power bottom up, from the masses to the intellectuals and not top down from the monarch/God to noblemen/intellectuals to the masses, we need a system to justify funding decisions to the people. And the easiest way is to point to papers and awards and experiments and machines etc.
In a way the old aristocratic system perhaps gave more freedom to a small number of scientists, today we have tons of scientists who all need to follow quite a rigid path.
I guess there was a time in-between, till the seventies or eighties maybe, when things were pseudo aristocratic with relatively few scientists with lots of freedom to do whatever the hell they please, including just reading newspapers or books all day long if they so decided.
I think our collective conscience is catching up and demands objective accountability to things are working in a just manner.
> For this we need some accountability. To see that papers get written and not only that, but they are also having an impact on other research (citations).
But papers and citations are the wrong metric for accountability. What we want from government funded science is models that make good predictions. That's what we need if the knowledge gained from government funded science is going to be useful to the government and the taxpayers. So that's the metric we should use to judge it. Number of papers written and number of citations are, at best, irrelevant to that metric, and at worst, actively opposed to it; it's much easier to generate papers and citations if they don't have to be based on models that actually make good predictions.
Nowadays we have a meritocratic expectations and want to give equal opportunity to all, our cultural ideal of governance is democracy etc. It this framework a big thing to avoid and a big source of angst is that people will take these tax paid jobs and do jack shit and just sit around having fun. We want to avoid that, and replace any lazy non working people with people who will do it better.
For this we need some accountability. To see that papers get written and not only that, but they are also having an impact on other research (citations). What else can you do? You can have time sheets of working hours or computer software that tracks usage to see if someone just watches YouTube or reads the news at work... I mean, sure you could base it on common sense and talking with the researchers, but that's almost like asking them to write a report, but then why not publish the underlying work as well if it was good work?
Earlier however, science was more like a hobby and the background system was various forms of feudalism. Many scientists were rich noblemen who had the wealth to pursue their interests. If nothing came of it, they were still well fed and had nobody to report to. Or it was enough to have a patron who liked work enough that he fed the scientist. Or the it happened within the church with some theological justification/disguise, but that wasn't democratic either.
Since we now conceptualize power bottom up, from the masses to the intellectuals and not top down from the monarch/God to noblemen/intellectuals to the masses, we need a system to justify funding decisions to the people. And the easiest way is to point to papers and awards and experiments and machines etc.
In a way the old aristocratic system perhaps gave more freedom to a small number of scientists, today we have tons of scientists who all need to follow quite a rigid path.
I guess there was a time in-between, till the seventies or eighties maybe, when things were pseudo aristocratic with relatively few scientists with lots of freedom to do whatever the hell they please, including just reading newspapers or books all day long if they so decided.
I think our collective conscience is catching up and demands objective accountability to things are working in a just manner.