Annus Horribilis - Examining productivity gaps in American research universities

A recent large-scale study by three scholars from Hebrew University of Jerusalem, published in the journal Higher Education, analyzes fifteen years of longitudinal publication data for more than 310,000 faculty members across American research universities nationwide. One of its central findings is that between 32% and 47% of all career years include no recorded publications as they themselves define it, which the authors somewhat dramatically describe as an “annus horribilis.”  https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10734-026-01665-7

This conclusion, however, depends on a relatively narrow definition of research productivity. The study equates productivity with outputs indexed in specific bibliometric databases—namely journal articles listed in CrossRef and books catalogued by Baker & Taylor. Such a definition excludes a wide range of legitimate scholarly contributions. These include conference proceedings (which are often the primary dissemination channel in fields such as computer science and engineering), as well as working papers, preprints, policy reports, datasets, software, technical reports, book reviews, and other forms of scholarly and public engagement.

A similar limitation appears in the study’s treatment of research funding. Funding is measured exclusively through federal grants in which a faculty member is identified as Principal Investigator. This approach excludes other significant sources of research funding, including internal university funding, private foundation grants, industry-sponsored research, international funding agencies, and sub-awards in which a scholar participates as a co-investigator. Smaller-scale funding mechanisms, such as fellowships and travel grants, are also not considered, despite their importance in sustaining research activity.

Finally, the study does not adequately address differences in publication practices across disciplines. Patterns of scholarly production vary considerably between fields. In the humanities, for instance, the monograph often serves as the primary form of scholarly output and may require several years of sustained work. By contrast, fields such as the biomedical sciences typically involve large collaborative teams that produce multiple articles annually. 

Taken seriously, these limitations collapse the central claim. The “productivity crisis” reads less as a discovery than as a byproduct of poorly specified metrics. Before advancing any further conclusions, the three Israeli scholars need to show that their measurement strategy is not fundamentally miscalibrated. In this context, it may be worth revisiting my earlier letter, “The Illusion of Scientific Talent Identification Through Publication Counts.” 

Update after 1 day - Blogger analytics indicate that the majority of views for this post come from Germany (25%), the USA (19%), and Ireland (8%). 

A perigosíssima criatura que a engenharia criou mas que o público não pode ver

Há poucos dias, a firma de IA Anthropic, famosa por ter enfrentado as exigências de Trump, anunciou ao mundo o modelo Mythos, mas revelou que por conta da sua elevada perigosidade não iria disponibilizá-lo ao público, já que testes internos evidenciaram uma capacidade inédita do referido modelo conseguir identificar e explorar vulnerabilidades críticas em sistemas operativos e navegadores web, incluindo falhas antigas que os peritos humanos não tinham sido capazes de detectar. A Anthropic revelou ainda que o modelo Mythos conseguiu escapar do próprio ambiente criado para o conter, o que agrava a sua perigosidade. Ou seja, pela primeira vez na história da inteligência artificial, uma empresa de IA olhou para a sua "criatura" e decidiu que o mundo não estava preparado para a ver.

O perigoso modelo de IA Mythos levanta desde logo uma questão incontornável, com implicações diretas no mercado de trabalho, que utilidade existirá agora na contratação de especialistas humanos em vulnerabilidades cibernéticas, se milhares desses profissionais, ao longo de décadas, não conseguiram detetar o que este modelo foi capaz de detectar em tão pouco tempo?

E muito embora a decisão da Anthropic possa ser interpretada como bastante prudente, já que um sistema capaz de transformar fragilidades técnicas em formas de ataque acessíveis a qualquer pessoa representa um risco sistémico real ela levanta uma questão mais profunda, a normalização de um padrão em que empresas privadas de inteligência artificial decidem, em silêncio, o que a sociedade pode ou não utilizar e também aquilo que pode ou não conhecer. Acresce que o episódio de fuga do ambiente de contenção não aponta apenas para uma falha de segurança  aponta para algo bastante mais grave, a emergência de comportamentos não previstos pelos próprios criadores. Como reconheceu a própria Anthropic, ela, não treinou o modelo Mythos para vir a ter essas capacidades, sendo aquelas antes um efeito inesperado das melhorias globais em código, raciocínio e autonomia.

Ainda assim, a postura prudente da Anthropic é, no fundo, apenas um paliativo, pois é excessivamente optimista acreditar que nunca no futuro nenhum modelo de IA com as mesmas capacidades ou até com capacidades superiores às do modelo Mythos chegue às mãos erradas. Seja por fuga de informação, seja por simples inevitabilidade tecnológica, trata-se, muito provavelmente, apenas de uma questão de tempo. E quando isso acontecer, o risco não será abstracto. Poderá incluir ataques a bancos, a redes eléctricas, a hospitais, a sistemas de controlo aéreo, etc etc etc, infra-estruturas cujo colapso não se medirá somente em prejuízos financeiros, mas potencialmente em milhares de vidas. 

PS - Mas se nem os próprios governos conseguem hoje saber, em tempo real, que perigosas criaturas estão silenciosamente a ser geradas por empresas privadas de inteligência artificial, como poderão sequer alguma vez conseguir regular aquilo que não conhecem para assim tentar proteger os seus cidadãos de riscos graves e potencialmente catastróficos que, quando forem públicos, já podem ser absolutamente irreversíveis?

The serious case of papers that remained unassigned to editors for more than a year

Building on the earlier post “The highly profitable disgusting business of scientific journals has finally begun to crumble with a little help by the European Commission”, it is worth revisiting a striking case that illustrates the systemic dysfunction in academic publishing.

n one documented and recent example, an early-career infectious diseases researcher from Italy, Noemi Felisi, experienced an extraordinary delay in the editorial process. After submitting a manuscript based on months of fieldwork on cervical cancer, her paper remained unassigned to an editor for 380 days before peer review had even begun. This case was reported in a paper published in the journal  Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics. https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2026.1740381

This is not an isolated incident but rather a symptom of a strained system. Submission volumes have increased sharply while the pool of available and willing reviewers has not kept pace. Editors frequently struggle to secure reviewers, with a majority reporting that reviewer recruitment is the most difficult part of their role.  As underscored in the recent study by Horta and Jung (2024) titled 'The Crisis of Peer Review: A Component of Scientific Evolution,' this predicament often forces editors to turn to early-career researchers, who may lack extensive publishing experience, leaving them with few alternatives.

The impact of these delays is uneven but significant. Early-career researchers are particularly vulnerable: prolonged publication timelines can jeopardize grant applications, delay fellowship opportunities, and extend time to graduation. Beyond career implications, the uncertainty itself adds psychological strain in an already competitive and precarious academic environment. Taken together, these issues highlight a peer-review ecosystem under considerable pressure—one where structural bottlenecks increasingly shape who gets published, and when — distorting knowledge production itself.

A more immediate and transformative response to these systemic delays has been the rise of preprints as a parallel, far more agile layer of scientific communication. By allowing researchers to make their findings publicly available before peer review, preprints break the exclusive dependence on a slow and often unpredictable editorial system. This not only accelerates the circulation of knowledge but also restores a degree of control to authors over when their discoveries enter the scientific discourse. Instead of months or even years of institutional invisibility, research becomes immediately accessible, open to scrutiny, citation, and global collaboration. For early-career researchers in particular, this shift can be decisive: it reduces structural power asymmetries, strengthens the protection of discovery priority, and turns what was once a passive waiting period into an active, open, and iterative ecosystem for feedback, validation, and collective refinement of scientific work and collaboration.

PS - A more detailed examination of the serious issue of manuscripts remaining unassigned to editors for more than one year was published on Zenodo. https://zenodo.org/records/19630688

Update after 1 day - Blogger analytics indicate that the majority of views for this post come from the USA (26%), Germany (22%), France (14%), and Finland (7%). 

Um feroz magistrado aposentado e uns cabrões e filhos da puta esfomeados

“Não se admite que um cabrão de um secretário de Estado, ministro ou um filho da puta qualquer que seja governante e receba do erário público,  gaste uma média de 295 euros por refeição paga por todos nós, através do Orçamento de Estado. Não se admite, ponto final.” https://19-pacheco-torgal-19.blogspot.com/2023/01/as-cabras-e-os-cabroes.html

No post acessível no link supra, reproduzi as palavras indignadas de um feroz magistrado aposentado que criticou os políticos que gastam verbas públicas em refeições de luxo, assim traduzindo aquilo que é o sentimento de muitos Portugueses. Volto agora a citá-lo a propósito de um artigo publicado na última edição da revista Sábado, no qual se divulga o facto da Presidente da Câmara de Matosinhos obrigar a contabilidade dessa Câmara a pagar almoços com "consumo massivo de marisco", que nalguns casos chegam a 2 mil euros. Num dos muitos almoços descritos em pormenor pela revista, apenas quatro pessoas gastaram mais de 400 euros em mariscos vários, abundantemente regados com três garrafas de Quinta do Crasto, o que adquire uma ironia particular numa altura em que o Governo fala da necessidade de agravar as coimas pela condução sob o efeito do álcool.

Revela ainda a mesma revista que a referida autarca "tem colocado inúmeros obstáculos à revista Sábado para mostrar as suas despesas", recusando inclusive divulgar a identidade dos participantes nos tais "almoços de trabalho" realizados nas marisqueiras de Matosinhos. Fica assim estabelecido um princípio absolutamente perverso: os contribuintes têm a obrigação de pagar a conta das generosas mariscadas, mas não têm o direito de saber quem são as ilustres figuras que comeram à conta dos seus impostos. É só fazer as contas, se cada uma das 308 câmaras municipais fizer uma "reunião de trabalho" de 400 euros por semana, são mais de 5 milhões de euros por ano em mariscadas regadas, o que na verdade até é uma estimativa muito por baixo porque não há apenas uma "reunião de trabalho" por semana, pois a regra é que haja várias, até no mesmo dia. Basta recordar por exemplo as 545 "reuniões de trabalho" do senhor vice-presidente da Câmara de Cascais, também em boa hora divulgadas pela mesma revista Sábado. E isto acontece no mesmo país onde, há quem sobreviva com pensões inferiores a 400 euros por mês e onde ainda hoje, há milhares de portugueses que vivem com as casas completamente destruídas pelo famoso comboio de tempestades que há poucos meses assolou o território nacional. https://19-pacheco-torgal-19.blogspot.com/2026/02/engenharia-civil-em-portugal-azar-dos.html

Há 50 anos que este país é parasitado por uma classe política manhosa e ignóbil, mas é garantido que, a bem ou a mal, com ou sem revisão da Constituição, irão aprender que, como escreveu um juiz, os luxos pagos com o dinheiro dos contribuintes são coisa muito pouco ética e até imoral. Acresce que, se em Portugal a lei já concede aos senhores presidentes de câmara um subsídio mensal de mais de mil euros, a título de despesas de representação, então é precisamente através dessa verba que devem pagar algumas das referidas extravagâncias. Aqueles que, como a senhora presidente da Câmara de Matosinhos, de forma desavergonhada, cínica e velhaca optaram por transferir esse ónus para os contribuintes, devem ser acusados e demandados judicialmente até que paguem, do seu próprio bolso, até ao último cêntimo, todo o dinheiro que gastaram em mariscadas bem regadas.

PS - Irónica ou tragicamente, a revista Sábado conseguiu pelo menos saber que um dos festins devidamente regado com Alvarinho, Bons Aires e Quinta do Crasto, foi uma "reunião de trabalho" com párocos do concelho de Matosinhos, que custou quase 500 euros. E uma semana depois desse voltou a haver uma nova e bem regada "reunião de trabalho" com os párocos do mesmo concelho, cuja factura de marisco ultrapassou 600 euros. Pelos vistos naquele concelho a Srª Presidente da Câmara gosta de ter a padralhada bem alimentada. 

The Paradox of Humility: Europe's Proudest Values May Be Its Deepest Startup Failure

https://19-pacheco-torgal-19.blogspot.com/2026/02/nuno-loureiro-in-praise-of-failure.html

Building on my previous post (linked above), it is worth disclosing the results of a French study published in the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal showing that expressed humility plays a decisive role in early-stage investors' funding decisions. The study shows that humility increases perceived likeability, trustworthiness, and the belief that founders can build strong teams. In pitch contexts, it functions as a relational signal under uncertainty. However, humility is not unambiguously rewarded. It is a double-edged signal: while it strengthens perceptions of relational capacity, it can also raise doubts about decisiveness and agency, as investors rely on simplified heuristics when evaluating entrepreneurs. https://sms.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sej.70016

There is, however, a fact the study does not advertise: France is not Silicon Valley. It is a market where startup exits are rarer, unicorns thinner on the ground, and venture capital a fraction of what flows through the American ecosystem. Which raises an uncomfortable question: what if the investor behaviour this study measures is itself part of the problem? If French investors reward humility and American investors reward audacity — and American startups consistently and dramatically outperform European ones — then Europe may not simply be playing the game differently. It may be losing it, partly by design, rewarding precisely the founder signals least associated with breakout success.

This connects to a broader mechanism: entrepreneurial evaluation operates through competing prototypes of what a "successful founder" looks like, and those prototypes are not culturally neutral. Against the backdrop of my earlier post on immigrant and minority entrepreneurship — where evidence from The Economist and MIT studies shows that immigrants and ethnic minorities disproportionately drive startup creation — the pattern sharpens further. People shaped by adversity, displacement, and systemic exclusion appear to develop precisely the adaptive capacity that conventional evaluation systems struggle to recognise, and often penalise. The startup paradox, then, is not merely that the traits most useful under uncertainty are undervalued. It is that the evaluation systems themselves may be selecting for comfort over capability, for legibility over potential.

P.S. — If the signals that feel socially virtuous within European pitch rooms are systematically disadvantaging European founders in global competition, then the question I raised in October 2024 — should Europe emulate America's cutthroat, psychopathic "culture"? — is no longer rhetorical. Europe has spent decades congratulating itself on its social sophistication. The startup gap suggests that sophistication may have a price, and that entrepreneurs, not investors, are the ones paying it. https://19-pacheco-torgal-19.blogspot.com/2024/10/align-act-accelerate-can-europes-risk.html

Update after 4 days - Blogger analytics indicate that the majority of views for this post come from the USA (24%), Germany (9%), the UK (5%), and France (5%). 

Two Love Letters to a Science Struggling to Remember What Really Matters and the Unexpected Gift of the 2026 Hormuz Crisis

The first letter responds to Park and Suh’s article in Technological Forecasting and Social Change, which overlooks the role of serendipity in scientific discovery. It relies heavily on patent counts as indicators of technological contribution, ignoring their limitations. Of the roughly 50 million patents granted worldwide, most are, as The Economist puts it, an “intellectual junkyard” — ideas that never materialized, failed concepts, or filings with no real intent to succeed. Even high-profile failures illustrate this flaw: Theranos, one of Silicon Valley’s most notorious frauds, held over 100 patents and reached a $10 billion valuation. Empirical evidence reinforces the point: a large-scale study of 4,460 real-world innovations found that most were never patented, with patents capturing only about 15% of actual innovation.  https://zenodo.org/records/18951538

The second letter responds to Haunschild and Bornmann’s article in the Journal of Informetrics, which proposes a bibliometric method to identify “bright young scientists” based largely on publication counts in high-impact journals. This approach is not only flawed but likely to exacerbate existing distortions in science. Journal impact factors are aggregate metrics that cannot capture the quality, originality, or intellectual risk of individual work; using them as proxies for talent is a textbook ecological fallacy. More importantly, institutionalizing such criteria would intensify perverse incentives already at play. This proposal would accelerate hyperauthorship, strategic publishing, and superficial output. Far from identifying genuine talent, the proposed method risks systematically amplifying the very behaviors that undermine it. https://zenodo.org/records/19001905 

PS - The 2026 Strait of Hormuz energy crisis did what years of sustainability advocacy could not: it made Europe's dependence on fossil-based construction materials impossible to ignore. The paradox is almost elegant: it took a fossil fuel crisis to make the case for leaving fossil fuels behind, and in its wake, bio-based construction materials finally emerged from niche experiments to serious contenders, offering a tangible path toward a more resilient and low-carbon built environment. https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202604.0356

AI and the Forecasting of Scientific Futures

 

https://19-pacheco-torgal-19.blogspot.com/2026/04/can-ai-discover-what-humans-cannot.html

Building on a previous post (linked above) I disclose yet another interesting paper by researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. If the previous post asked whether AI can discover what humans cannot, this paper asks something equally audacious: can AI predict where science is going before it gets there?

The authors make a deceptively simple but radical move: they reframe research proposal generation as a forecasting problem. Given a question and a body of literature available before a fixed cutoff date, the model generates a structured proposal — evaluated not by how sophisticated it sounds, but by how accurately it anticipates research directions that actually materialise in papers published afterwards. Trained on 17,771 papers, the system learns to spot overlooked gaps and draw inspiration across disciplinary boundaries — precisely where the most consequential ideas tend to hide. The implications reach well beyond academia. This could become the instrument through which funding agencies, science policymakers and research evaluators make higher-stakes decisions: not which proposals sound compelling in committee, but which ones the arc of science is already bending towards.  https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.27146

Yet the promise comes with a shadow. If funding decisions and research agendas start leaning on AI forecasts, there is a risk of reinforcing existing patterns rather than fostering genuine innovation. By privileging areas the model predicts will succeed, we could inadvertently narrow the scope of exploration, crowding out high-risk, unconventional ideas that fall outside the AI’s learned trajectories. Over time, this might entrench a “predictable science,” where AI-guided choices favor incremental advances and safe bets, undermining the serendipitous leaps that often drive paradigm shifts.

P.S. — The above-mentioned paper cites a compelling companion work: PreScience: A Benchmark for Forecasting Scientific Contributions, which approaches the same ambition from a different angle — benchmarking how well AI can anticipate the actual future impact of not-yet-published research. Taken together, these two papers signal something significant: a new subfield is quietly assembling itself, one that treats scientific forecasting not as speculation, but as a rigorous and measurable discipline.  https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.20459

Uma "brilhante" estratégia Portuguesa - Empobrecer orgulhosamente ao mesmo tempo que ajuda ricos a ficarem mais ricos

O jornal Público divulga hoje um caso que, não sendo surpreendente para quem acompanha há anos a degradação sistémica da ciência no nosso país, não deixa ainda assim de ser escandaloso. O mesmo diz respeito a três investigadores Portugueses, Cristiana Pires, Fábio Rosa e Filipe Pereira (foto supra), que trocaram Coimbra pela Universidade de Lund na Suécia, onde fundaram uma empresa, Asgard Therapeutics, que desenvolve uma imunoterapia inovadora no combate ao cancro, avaliada em dezenas de milhões de euros.  https://www.publico.pt/2024/04/27/ciencia/noticia/cavalo-troia-cancro-vale-30-milhoes-euros-equipa-portuguesa-2088206

Recordo a propósito, que por uma estranha coincidência, há cinco anos, no meu primeiro blogue, divulguei o caso também escandaloso de uma jovem investigadora doutorada de Coimbra que, apesar de pretender continuar a trabalhar em Portugal e de o merecer, tendo em conta o seu elevado desempenho científico (ao contrário de muitos académicos efectivos, inclusive catedráticos, que possuem métricas vergonhosas), não teve outro remédio senão emigrar para ir contribuir para o enriquecimento da mesma Suécia https://pacheco-torgal.blogspot.com/2021/03/quando-estar-desempregado-e-uma-medalha.html

Resumindo e concluindo, porque a conclusão é tão óbvia que só a sua repetição cíclica impede que se torne banal, Portugal financiou a formação destes cientistas, e depois entregou-os de mão beijada a um país já de si extraordinariamente rico, que fica assim com a inovação, os empregos de alto valor acrescentado, e toda a riqueza daí resultante. Mas afinal que estratégia miserável é esta, que se repete ciclicamente há décadas, que exporta talento científico Português para países ricos para que aqueles fiquem ainda mais ricos ?

Era essa a pergunta que o jornalista Tiago Ramalho autor da peça jornalística em questão deveria ter feito ao ministro da tutela, mas que estranha e infelizmente não fez. Talvez porque se tenha esquecido que a principal missão do jornalismo não é divulgar peças como esta, que quase parece um elogio ao Governo que está, mas pelo contrário confrontá-lo com perguntas incómodas, cuja resposta muito interessa a milhões de portugueses, cujo destino parece ser cada vez mais o de uma escolha forçada entre emigrar ou empobrecer. 

Este estado de coisas obriga-me a reconhecer, o que faço sem qualquer satisfação, que quem teve inteira razão muito antes do tempo foi um conhecido de reputado investigador que aparece no topo desta lista de investigadores, que teve a frontalidade de acusar a existência na academia Portuguesa de uma "burocracia cuidadosamente arquitetada para defender os interesses da mediocridade instalada". Essa acusação, que poderá ter parecido excessiva a alguns espíritos mais sensíveis (leia-se, aos interessados na manutenção do status quo), revela-se, afinal, até bastante comedida. Como estes casos demonstram, a realidade é ainda mais grave do que a descrição que deles foi feita. 

Sobre a Suécia, devo recordar mais uma vez, porque o contraste é demasiado gritante para ser ignorado, e porque ele expõe com uma clareza impiedosa a raiz do problema, a enorme importância que a Suécia país atribui à criação de empresas por académicos, o país onde os direitos económicos das patentes pertencem por direito próprio aos académicos, ao contrário daquilo que se passa na Academia Portuguesa, onde os direitos das patentes pertencem ao Estado e onde essas iniciativas são penalizadas com um corte de 33% no salário https://19-pacheco-torgal-19.blogspot.com/2026/02/universidades-portuguesas-um-modelo-que.html

PS - Ontem o jornal Público noticiou que a FCT voltou a atrasar a contratação de cientistas através do programa FCT tenure. Contudo e ao contrário do que possa parecer, se há más noticias no financiamento da ciência em Portugal esta não é uma delas. Este famigerado programa que já tive oportunidade de criticar no passado, foi criado por uma Ministra que era simultaneamente catedrática da UNova e que, por uma daquelas coincidências que desafiam qualquer teoria probabilística minimamente séria, logo na sua primeira edição entregou à UNova mais vagas do que a soma das vagas atribuídas às universidades de Coimbra, Minho e Aveiro em conjunto. Mas muito pior do que isso, porque depois a atribuição dessas vagas é feita através de concursos com jurados caseiros, que como é tradição favorecem os candidatos da casa, reforçando a endogamia existente, que é exactamente a última coisa de que necessita a Academia Portuguesa. Este programa deveria por isso ser "abatido" o mais depressa possível, sendo as suas verbas redirecionadas para os concursos CEEC, aumentando o número de vagas e também a duração dos contratos para um mínimo de 7 anos, em linha com as melhores práticas mundiais https://19-pacheco-torgal-19.blogspot.com/2023/11/the-economist-world-ahead-2024what-is.html

The Portuguese Researcher, the Chinese Secret Service, and the Hidden Agenda

Despite having praised China on a number of occasions — as illustrated, for example, here, or much earlier in this post here, or more recently in a series of posts that might, perhaps understandably, give some readers the impression that I was actively trying to steer European researchers in the direction of China, such as this one https://19-pacheco-torgal-19.blogspot.com/2026/03/open-positions-with-highly-competitive.html

I feel it is important to state clearly and unambiguously that this was never my intention, nor has it ever been. If anything, the reality is quite the opposite. Rather than encouraging researchers from Portugal or elsewhere in Europe to relocate to China, I have consistently made a point of doing the reverse: actively encouraging Chinese researchers to explore and pursue the many professional opportunities that Europe has to offer. This is perhaps best illustrated by the email exchange reproduced below, which took place with a young researcher affiliated with Hong Kong Polytechnic University, whose name has been redacted for privacy reasons.

My conviction on this matter is unshakeable: scientific talent should be free to go wherever it finds the best conditions to flourish, unimpeded by geography, bureaucracy, or the drag of underfunded systems. There is no hidden agenda here — only the straightforward belief that the world functions far better when its brightest minds are empowered rather than constrained. Let us be entirely candid: countless scientists, many of whom labor in near-total obscurity, produce value for society on a scale that dwarfs the achievements of the average professional footballer. Yet, astonishingly, a great many of these same researchers have quietly accepted earning only a fraction of what a mid-tier player commands — as though this glaring disparity were natural, morally acceptable, or somehow inevitable. It is none of those things. It is, instead, a failure of priorities on a civilizational scale — a failure that diminishes not only science but the very societies that rely on it. And it is a failure we can no longer afford to tolerate in silence. https://19-pacheco-torgal-19.blogspot.com/2026/02/in-defense-of-high-salaries-paying-for.html

____________________________________________________________

De: F. Pacheco Torgal 
Enviado: 3 de abril de 2026 07:41
Para: AAA
Assunto: RE: Paper comments

 

Dear AAA,

I think your top priority should be to apply for a 5-year ERC Starting Grant with an ambitious, truly out-of-the-box research proposal. Keep in mind that ERC grant winners are "more than four times more likely to be an associate or a full professor" https://pacheco-torgal.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-european-research-council-and.html

The next ERC grant submissions is expected to open from July to October.  Since you are a Chinese researcher, remember that you must be affiliated with—or planning to move to—a European research institution in order to be eligible

For reference, you can check an example ERC proposal I’ve shared on my blog https://pachecotorgal.com/2024/09/08/top-full-professors-teach-how-to-draft-a-research-proposal-for-the-erc-million-euro-grants/

Best regards

Pacheco-Torgal

______________________________________________________________

De: AAA
Enviado: 2 de abril de 2026 13:53
Para: F. Pacheco Torgal 
Assunto: RE: Paper comments

 

Dear Prof. Torgal,

Thank you very much for the valuable practical suggestions.

I will refine my CV by incorporating your suggestions. More importantly, I will start exploring the job possibilities you recommended.

Thank you again and I will come back to you when I have a new publications that would be of interest to you.

Best regards,

AAA

Cracking the AI Mirror: Discovering the Unimaginable Boundaries of Science

What if the next major scientific breakthrough comes not from a human researcher pushing the limits of their field, but from a machine that doesn’t even know where those limits are supposed to be?

That is the provocative question at the heart of the recent publication.  The researchers behind "Alien Science" started from a simple but powerful observation. When you ask a language model like ChatGPT to brainstorm research ideas, it tends to give you things that already feel familiar — polished-sounding variations on what everyone is already working on. They are trained on human-produced text, so they reflect human patterns of thinking back at us. They are, in a sense, a very expensive mirror. https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.01092

The team decided to break that mirror deliberately. They fed around 7,500 recent machine learning papers into their system and broke each one down into small conceptual building blocks they call idea atoms — things like a specific technique, a training trick, or a particular way of evaluating a model. Then they trained two separate models: one that learns which combinations of these atoms actually make sense together, and one that learns which combinations a typical researcher would think of. The trick is in what comes next. The system searches specifically for combinations that are coherent but that no one would naturally propose. Ideas that work on paper but live in the gap between research communities. Ideas, in other words, that are alien to the current scientific conversation. When they tested it, the system produced research directions that were significantly more varied and unexpected than anything a standard AI assistant would suggest — while still being technically sound. 

P.S - Before getting too carried away with what AI might one day discover, it is worth pausing on a warning from two Google researchers, including Turing Award winner David Patterson. The real crisis in AI right now is not about building smarter models it is about running them. Every time someone uses one of these systems, the computational cost is determined by inference, the moment-to-moment work of generating a response in real time, and that process is straining under the weight of everything we are asking it to do. The AI infrastructure is being asked to perform beyond its capacity, risking catastrophic slowdowns, skyrocketing energy costs, and a technological bottleneck that could stall progress itself. The urgent question is: how much can we really make AI do before the system collapses under its own weight? https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.05047