My experience in research comes from starting in very fundamental fluid mechanics (vortex dynamics and instabilities), moving into biomedical (fundamental and applied) and turbulence (fundamental) and now working in applied stuff.
I think part of the problem is that the field is stagnating partly because of the amazing work done in the last century ticked soooo many of the boxes. It was really the golden period ending with Prandtl and Karman - like the end of the ultimate share house. A lot of the tree has been stripped bare by the 70s and most of the advancements have been refinements and application specific. Obviously computational techniques have exploded and experimental methods have improved and there are still new discoveries, but in terms of impact, outside of microfluids and the never-ending grant gift of the turbulence closure model we are entering a dry season where grants are very much application specific and the fundamental physics is simply not rewarded. We used to have a bet what year the fluid mechanics chair will no longer be a thing at universities. It doesn't help that the fluids community is not super tight knit (lots of beef!)
I also 100% agree with you in terms of papers vs good job - but that is science in general nowadays - it will always be a tiny percentage that actually progress the field, a bunch that try and fail as research is want to do and a majority just try and stay relevant by pumping out rubbish.
My experience in research comes from starting in very fundamental fluid mechanics (vortex dynamics and instabilities), moving into biomedical (fundamental and applied) and turbulence (fundamental) and now working in applied stuff.
I think part of the problem is that the field is stagnating partly because of the amazing work done in the last century ticked soooo many of the boxes. It was really the golden period ending with Prandtl and Karman - like the end of the ultimate share house. A lot of the tree has been stripped bare by the 70s and most of the advancements have been refinements and application specific. Obviously computational techniques have exploded and experimental methods have improved and there are still new discoveries, but in terms of impact, outside of microfluids and the never-ending grant gift of the turbulence closure model we are entering a dry season where grants are very much application specific and the fundamental physics is simply not rewarded. We used to have a bet what year the fluid mechanics chair will no longer be a thing at universities. It doesn't help that the fluids community is not super tight knit (lots of beef!)
I also 100% agree with you in terms of papers vs good job - but that is science in general nowadays - it will always be a tiny percentage that actually progress the field, a bunch that try and fail as research is want to do and a majority just try and stay relevant by pumping out rubbish.