Proportions mod: So confusing!

[oleg]

Originally posted by DirectorTsaarx:
One final point - I have to agree with PvK about research centers not necessarily being linearly additive. Research institutions (at least the ones I've worked for) are notorious for competing with other labs (or even with other scientists in the same lab), thus reducing the additive effect (and negating some of the "parallel processing" benefits). There's some benefit in that each lab will work harder to get the result first, but I wouldn't say that two labs competing with each other will get a job done twice as fast. What's the old saying, "9 women can't have a baby in a month"? Now, research isn't exactly the same thing, but forcing 9 labs to work on a small piece of some large project isn't necessarily going to result in completion of that large project 9 times faster than if a single lab was working on it. In that case, there are two limiting factors:

• Coordination between the labs to ensure that each lab's result will interoperate with the other labs

That first point comes up in discussions of parallel processing on computers; no operation can be performed faster than the slowest task (or, more completely, than the longest chain of serial tasks, since some tasks depend on results from other tasks). The second point has bitten me in the... neck... repeatedly. Two separate Groups come up with elegant solutions to their respective pieces of a problem, and the solutions are completely incompatible. Now, if we assume absolute dictatorial management, that second point becomes less of a problem; but, in SE4 terms, unless your race description includes something like "fanatical devotion to the leader", I'd be hard-pressed to guarantee that the scientists will pay much attention to said dictator.
Anyway, that's my two cents on the current discussion. Feel free to disagree...

Actually, It is a good thing that several labs are working on similar projects - without peer review there would be no way to assure reliability and reproducability (sp.) of data. There would be no Science as we know it.