So is this just MIT being MIT (overhyping everything) or did this guy and his team somehow miss all of this? Is our scientific knowledge really that scattered?
I'm not sure that the guy who patented this is considered a "serious" scientist. After all, he did patent a technology from the 60's.
Otherwise, this just seems to be MIT being MIT: creating a trivial improvement on an old technology (in this case, moving the boost converter onto the airplane to avoid a tether wire), and publicizing the hell out of it because it's cool.
Keep in mind that the MIT Press office != the professors at MIT. It's actually quite common for any University's press office to be clueless about the research being done at the university, and it is their job to make as big of a splash as possible.
This is much like the oft-cited issue that the reporters aren't responsible for the headlines --- that is picked by the editors to make as big of a splash as possible.
As far as "patenting a technology from the 60's", even an incremental improvement on an old idea is still patentable. The real test is whether the patent cited the prior art, and you can bet that MIT Press Office didn't read the patent application before breathlessly sending out the press release.
That is a good point. MIT professors are usually very aware of the context of their work and the actual contributions they are making. Nevertheless, the MIT press office is a particularly egregious organization in terms of its tendency to exaggerate - my dad's lab cured cancer about 10 times in the early 2000's if you believe the press releases.
In this case, I'm not sure the MIT professor was aware of the "crackpot" invention that effectively pre-empted him. Many professors don't read patents (and there are lots of reasons why they shouldn't), and I'm not sure there was a paper.
One thing about patents is that if an invention is obvious in light of other inventions, it might not be patentable. In this case, I'm pretty sure that this combination of a technology from the 60's, a boost converter, and a LiPo battery may be "obvious" given the prevalence of other drones: it is a combination of two past inventions that fit together naturally (a drone + a propulsion technology). Of course, it will take millions of dollars worth of arguing for someone to say either way.
> a trivial improvement on an old technology (in this case, moving the boost converter onto the airplane to avoid a tether wire)
I wouldn’t call building an airplane that doesn’t need to be connected to the ground by wires a minor improvement. This makes a fun gimmick into something potentially useful.
I'm baffled that MIT's PR is so cringeworthy. They had a priceless, universally recognized and irreplaceable brand and they are just trashing it with a sustained campaign of cheap clickbait seemingly aimed at a technologically ignorant audience. WTF? WHY? The Fools!
I very much doubt whether the MIT Press Office cares about what Hacker News thinks of their brand. What they do care about is what Sarah J. Student's parents think when they are trying to encourage their progency to attend Harvard vs Yale vs Stanford. And positive press is good towards achieving that mission, even if it is a bit click-baity. And since all universities are playing this game to one degree or another, it's asking quite a lot for one univesity to unilaterally agree to disarm.
The other "brand" that universities care about is the their reputation by their professor's peers when it comes to hiring the best talent for their departments, and with the granting agencies who are deciding which research proposals they should fund. And here, what matters is the peer-reviewed publications at various academic journals and conferences. Whether a university's press office puts out a press release, which then gets mangled by various newspapers, doesn't really have negative or positive effect when it comes to how a university's research work is measured by the People Who Really Matter --- namely, other professors and the people who dispense the cash. Hacker News falls into neither of these two categories.
University reputations have a few decades lag. MIT did it's greatest work in the 20th century. It's since brought in people attracted to fame, power, fortune, and, again, fame.
Harvard and MIT have a lot of clout, and it's partly because of how incredibly massive they are. The Harvard network has more professors than some universities have pupils, (above two-thousand). Consequently just the amount of output due to a large number of people working there gets it placed high up in rating indices and such.
It's tough to say if it can keep up with its reputation. In some ways this phenomenon is comparable to gentrification: the beauty and soul of a place sometimes dies when the people who made that place what it is are displaced, like how Somerville and Berlin changed/are changing. It makes no sense for someone to remain committed in an academic career track when they're paying the kind of rent they do when around MIT/Harvard area with the income they make, so I agree with you that it's no longer attracting the kind of people that made MIT what it once was.
There are some institutions, that not many know about yet, that I'm confident in a couple of decades everyone will know about like U of Copenhagen and KIT & U of Stuttgart in Germany, and I think some in the midwest (Purdue, UMich, etc.) will one day have their day to shine too.
MIT was established 161 years ago and Harvard was established 386 years ago, both young relative to Cambridge established 813 years ago and Oxford established 926 years ago. The clout of universities will ebb and flow, but I wouldn’t bet on 100+ year institutions losing their ability to attract talent anytime soon.
MIT lost its ability to attract talent about two decades ago. Talent wants to work their. The endowment is obscene, and they won't lose their ability to afford talent.
What they cant do is screen talent.
For faculty positions, the competition is extreme; around 1000:1. That lends itself to people who cheat the system. In this case, it means, at the very least, overselling results, baking data, and giving TED-style talks. In many cases, it results in much worse.
The extreme competition also drives off many people who just want to nerd.
MIT isn't going away anytime soon, but that's why I think the problems may be hard to fix. The culture is broken.
I agree - network effects predate the internet after all. As long as good universities keep producing talented graduates it will be hard to undermine their reputation. And I don't think ambitious people being driven towards certain universities for clout is a negative. I say this as someone who went to an increasingly recognized yet still underdog state school. Maybe instead of discarding MIT's reputation a nudge in the direction of increasing editorial oversight can suffice. Though sensationalism seems to be a prerequisite for visibility these days
I liked MIT when it was "increasingly recognized yet still underdog" a lot.
With ambitions, there are different levels:
- An ambitious scientist should be driven to make ambitious discoveries
- An ambitious scientist should not be driven to steal credit, fake results, hype, oversell, and defraud
MIT's culture changed over the past 20 years. High competition (e.g. 4:1) leads to the type of people who do good work. With insane competition (e.g. 1000:1), the only way to "win" is to cheat.
In Germany a lot of research is not done at the universities but at various institutes such as Max-Planck, Fraunhofer, Helmholtz, Leibniz and a lot more.
> University reputations have a few decades lag. MIT did it's greatest work in the 20th century. It's since brought in people attracted to fame, power, fortune, and, again, fame.
> I don't think it will dig itself out again.
Well the headline i believe is technically accurate. Given that lifter type devices are aircraft but not aeroplanes.
It's certainly an iteration rather than a complete revolution but seems like an important step. Certainly something like this would have more practical application, a basically silent drone that could fly over a battlefield would be a huge win.
I'd absolutely expect the guy and his team to know about prior work, but the article comes from the university "news office". In my experience university PR releases are always extremely overhyped, particularly from the elite universities.
Or perhaps, as is becoming pretty ubiquitous in tech: the people who communicate things don't have nearly as much understanding as the people who do them. It was not always this way, but it seems the communication department in an organization is becoming the dumping ground for people who flunked out of doing the hands-on hard work but for one reason or another, have some support to retain them.
Note: I'm not criticizing tech writing. Just what tech writing has become.
I dunno about the findings from the 60s, but non-moving rotors would not keep a helicopter in the air... so at least some progress.
It's not clear whether this thing can steer (by changing ion balance?), if this prototype can't but the concept might, or if it's forward only. If they can steer (change direction at will) without moving parts, that definitely sounds innovative.
