What kind of research problems do professors supervising 20 students assign vs. professors supervising just 2 or 3? How does the style of supervision

Jakob Schwichtenberg’s Newsletter

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2025-01-27 13:00:09

What kind of research problems do professors supervising 20 students assign vs. professors supervising just 2 or 3? How does the style of supervision change and what’s the impact of that?

Can we really expect that more researchers always equals more progress? Or is there a point at which you’re becoming like the guy thinking “If two guys need two weeks to get the job done, I’ll just hire 2000 guys, and the job will be done in about 20 minutes!”

For example, as I and others have argued, there is some evidence that scientific progress is slowing down and that “ papers and patents are increasingly less likely to break with the past in ways that push science and technology in new directions”.

Or is it possibly a shift from a pursuit of truth towards measurable scientific prestige that’s causing the slowdown? When exactly did scientists become obsessed with citations? And how is that lining up against measures of progress?

How does the observed explosion in the number of authors per paper fit into the picture? Is it because more and more specialization is needed? Or is it because co-authoring is the best way to pad your publication list? And is there any evidence that “ individuals search for truth, groups search for consensus”?