The inevitable rise of the pathologists

The famous Russian theoretical physicist Lev Landau evaluated scientists and their research by their impact according to the "Landau categories". While this is well known and its description can be found on the internet I was told many years ago that he came up with a further extension of this idea into a colourful analogy, and unfortunately I can not find any reference to this, so as far as I know it may have been an invention of the person who told this to me whose identity I have long forgotten. In this picture scientists and their works can be divided into three categories, brick makers, house builders and pathologists. Brick makers, driven purely by curiosity, create new fundamental concepts, that form elements of structure, bricks, windows, window frames, door handles etc... They wander around making these, leaving them in random heaps. The house builders look through these piles left by the brick makers and figure out how to build houses from them. The pathologists then take over the houses and live in them and only contribute to the structure of the houses by occasionally damaging them. The pathologists take all credit for the building of the houses, as falsely convincing others of their merit is their skill. With time the power and influence and prevalence of the pathologists comes to dominate with thermodynamic inevitability. I was reminded of this reading a book I picked up in an airport "Talk like TED". I thought it could possible have some good public speaking tips, as the TED talk style seems to work. While there was some good advice, it was drowned in a sea of the most extreme, to the point of self parody, laugh out loud jingoistic nonsense and even obvious pseudoneuroscience. Ultimately I could see that the book, indirectly, described exactly what has gone wrong with the TED talk series, and how this has happened. As originally conceived the TED series (Technology Entertainment Design) was a great format for people who were real experts in something to give very entertaining short talks on a general level about the real something they knew about and these talks were disseminated over the Internet through a very well designed website. Up until about 2009 this worked well, with several very interesting talks full of real information by brilliant people. Then the pathologists started to seep in and take over and it started to decay to the point where by about 2012 they had become vacuous pseudoscience filled parodies of themselves delivered by mostly "motivational speakers". The book breathlessly described the speaking styles and the messages of the very most vacuous TED talks I remember seeing, and how riveting their, as was clear to me, non-messages were. It described as success what I saw as the ultimate failure of the TED talks. When success is measured purely by the extent to which excitement is triggered in the audience of rich celebrities and other powerful people who paid thousands of dollars to be in the audience, who have no knowledge of the subject, victory is assured to the pathologists. Amazing ignorant people without the constraint of conveying actual factual information is much easier; those hobbled by sticking to this constraint will be unable to compete. Sadly the TED talks are but a microcosm of what has occurred across science in the past 50 years. Originally the merits of the brick makers was understood and respected and the house builders led the scientific endeavour. From the 50s until the beginning of the 80s science institutes had many scientists and many technicians and secretaries to support them and very few administrators at the top, maybe 2 or 3 for an entire institute, and all they did was ensured that scientists had access to the resources that they needed. Then the pathologists started to move in, with strategic planning, tactical research thrusts, key areas to chase that they did not realize were only buzzwords and hired more like themselves. Now research institutes have fewer scientists, virtually no support staff and huge numbers of administrators involved in "strategic planning" "business incubation" "collaboration management". The scientific endeavour now revolves around grant application with staff hired to help write these. The demands of grant application increase with longer more intricate applications, and, to add insult to injury, a demand for sections of the grant applications to be focused around the meaningless buzzwords of the pathologists who now control the distribution of funding. The policy makers in turn no longer know the difference between buzzwords and real science and think the buzzwords are the actual science. Brick makers can not survive beyond the post doctoral fellowship in the current environment, while a few can be protected for a short time by some of the remaining house builders the dedication of being able to focus on a tiny area of research for decades needed to really come up with truly novel house components becomes impossible. The house builders thus fight a losing battle with an ever-depleting supply of new house parts as they watch the pathologists increase in power status and prestige and ultimately gain control over them. All that can be done is to try to remain a house builder, try to create a safe space for brick makers, while taking on the outer veneer of a pathologist creating a pocket of resistance. But is it possible to fight the pull of the dark side and not wake up one morning to realize that you have become a pathologist yourself? Are we fighting against inevitable thermodynamic decay? Chillingly what has happened in science, in turn, represents a microcosm of our current global society. The rise of populist political parties in Europe, the Brexit victory, and The rise of Donald Trump represent victory of the fact free politics of the pathologists. The best hope for science and, in turn, society (I think we can safely give up on the TED talks) maybe be to create small pockets of resistance where house builders protecting brick makers might survive the ultimate total implosion that the pathologists will inevitably bring about once they gain complete control. So realize the situation, stay true to reality, and use all your energy to create such pockets of resistance. Let's see what happens...