@NicoleCRust very interesting read, thanks for sharing.

I'm not a psychologist so can't relate directly, but it does remind me of an aspect of neuroscience that has bugged more the longer I've been here: that much of what we do and get rewarded for is transient and performative: giving talks make a few people feel something for a half a day, papers make a splash that peters out after a few months, grants which are nothing more than money for salaries and finite consumables.

@cian
These are great points. My sense is that there are three ways we might think about how to make this better.

The first way focuses on how to better reward individuals for their substantial individual contributions and we focus on what "substantial" really means. The difficulty I see with this is that it feeds into the genius narrative, which I find problematic: let's inspire genius individuals to make science happen. I really don't believe that science happens this way - progress happens much more via the collective than via individuals (and failing to acknowledge that strikes me as misguided).

The second way focuses on the idea that scientists operate more like a flock, where individuals move forward somewhat independently but also together (and the direction we head is continually revised and revisited). I believe that this is really how science works and I don't think we talk enough about how to make such a system move forward effectively. Yes, we need to reward individuals for their independent movements. But we also need much more thought about collective progress - and I think we've been paying much too little attention to this (and herein lies the problem).

The third way is the perspective taken by philosophers like Michael Strevens, who argue that while scientists know how to make science work, they really can't explain how it works (nor can historians or philosophers).
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/665795/the-knowledge-machine-by-michael-strevens/
In this case, attempts to optimize progress for something that no one understands would be pretty misguided. Insofar as it's been working, don't mess with it; it will sort itself out eventually.