(this is the second copy of this comment, the first was regrettably lost in a browser crash. Use systems that back up your comments automatically)
This advice seems to fly in the face of Richard Hamming’s advice to keep an open door. However perhaps the difference is subtle: Hamming suggested to have an open door but not necessarily to share your secrets, so perhaps there is room for a big science mystery cult to retain its own mysteries at every level of initiation. Perhaps there is a middle ground[1] to be found between this and current ‘open science’ wherein secrets and ritual are more emphasized, but where the public has the ability to always query deep into the bureaucracy of the science temple/university.
More likely, however the best approach is all of the above, some kinds of thinking are enhanced by a certain size of a team, and there may be some problems that require an open-science sized ‘ingroup’, and some problems that are more tractable with an ingroup the size of a mystery cult.
(this is the second copy of this comment, the first was regrettably lost in a browser crash. Use systems that back up your comments automatically)
This advice seems to fly in the face of Richard Hamming’s advice to keep an open door. However perhaps the difference is subtle: Hamming suggested to have an open door but not necessarily to share your secrets, so perhaps there is room for a big science mystery cult to retain its own mysteries at every level of initiation. Perhaps there is a middle ground[1] to be found between this and current ‘open science’ wherein secrets and ritual are more emphasized, but where the public has the ability to always query deep into the bureaucracy of the science temple/university.
More likely, however the best approach is all of the above, some kinds of thinking are enhanced by a certain size of a team, and there may be some problems that require an open-science sized ‘ingroup’, and some problems that are more tractable with an ingroup the size of a mystery cult.
1 (keep in mind the middle ground is not necessarily the best path—it’s just a path)