It’s not every day that I can say that I agree with Bertrand Meyer, but today is an exception. Meyer has written an opinion piece in the current issue of C.ACM about science funding that I think is worth amplifying. His main point is that funding agencies, principally the NSF and the ERC, are constantly pushing for “revolutionary” research, at the expense of “evolutionary” research. Yet we all (including the funding agencies) know full well that, in almost every case, real progress is made by making seemingly small advances on what is already known, and that whether a body of research is revolutionary or not can only be assessed with considerable hindsight. Meyer cites the example of Hoare’s formulation of his logic of programs, which was at the time a relatively small increment on Floyd’s method for proving properties of programs. For all his brilliance, Hoare didn’t just invent this stuff out of thin air, he built on and improved upon the work that had gone before, as of course have hundreds of others built on his in turn. This all goes without saying, or ought to, but as Meyer points out, we computer scientists are constantly bombarded with direct and indirect exhortations to abandon all that has gone before, and to make promises that no one can honestly keep.

Meyer’s rallying cry is for incrementalism. It’s a tough row to hoe. Who could possibly argue against fostering earth-shattering research that breaks new ground and summarily refutes all that has gone before? And who could possibly defend work that is obviously just another slice of the same salami, perhaps with a bit of mustard this time? And yet what he says is obviously true. Funding agencies routinely beg the very question under consideration by stipulating a priori that there is something wrong with a field, and that an entirely new approach is required. With all due respect to the people involved, I would say that calls such as these are both ill-informed and outrageously arrogant.

But where does this attitude come from? Meyer cites “market envy” as one particularly powerful influence. Funding agencies wish to see themselves as analogous to venture capitalists investing in the next big thing, losing track of the fundamental differences between basic research and product development. (We see this sort of nonsense all the time in national politics; there is always a constituency for the absurd proposition that a government should be run like a business, as if there were any similarity at all between the two. What they really mean is, turn the government’s money over to business, but that can’t be said too loudly for fear that people will catch on.)

Another influence, which Meyer doesn’t mention, seems to be a long-standing problem in computer science. It seems to me that many researchers who move into political and administrative roles are either bored with, or do not believe in, computer science as an academic discipline. Their own research area is, or maybe always was, boring, or has been obviated by technological developments or scientific advances. So they move into politics, perhaps carrying a sense that there is something wrong with the field that can only be corrected by radical surgery. They then demand that researchers do what they themselves never did in their own careers, kicking the ladder out from behind them.

From this somewhat contentious premise, much follows. The constant implication, stated and unstated, that CS research is not worth doing for its own sake. The emphasis on interdisciplinarity as an end in itself, rather than a means to an end. The emphasis on applications to other disciplines being more important than CS itself. The sense that “broader impacts” are far more important than the “innovative claims” (the actual work) in a research proposal.

Seen from this perspective, Meyer’s position is much more easily defensible. When funding agencies are talking about “breakthroughs” and “paradigm shifts”, what they really mean is “anything but computer science”. When Meyer talks about incrementalism, what he really means is “computer science is worth doing for its own sake”.

And I, for once, agree with him.

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