I actually agree generally with the idea that credentials aren’t necessary, but that perhaps makes me all the more suspicious of evidence like the kind you present because I think it strongly risks suffering from unnoticed selection bias.
For example, maybe all the stuff that could be invented without having done the work to obtain a terminal degree was invented in the past, and newer stuff just couldn’t be done without the degree. Sure, this is a noisy phenomenon and sometimes you’ll either find some low hanging fruit we previously missed that someone without a degree can grab, or you’ll find someone smart enough that a degree doesn’t make a difference, but largely I think the data also fits a story where the present is different from the past in a way that implies degrees are needed now even if they were less necessary in the past.
I don’t think the data you present does much to contradict this possibility, so it reasonably remains possible that you are both right (about the past) and wrong (about the present) at the same time.
You and I are in perfect agreement. The whole motivation for my investigation is that I think that in modern times, a degree is ~necessary for groundbreaking work, even though it clearly wasn’t in the 1800s and early 1900s.
I actually agree generally with the idea that credentials aren’t necessary, but that perhaps makes me all the more suspicious of evidence like the kind you present because I think it strongly risks suffering from unnoticed selection bias.
For example, maybe all the stuff that could be invented without having done the work to obtain a terminal degree was invented in the past, and newer stuff just couldn’t be done without the degree. Sure, this is a noisy phenomenon and sometimes you’ll either find some low hanging fruit we previously missed that someone without a degree can grab, or you’ll find someone smart enough that a degree doesn’t make a difference, but largely I think the data also fits a story where the present is different from the past in a way that implies degrees are needed now even if they were less necessary in the past.
I don’t think the data you present does much to contradict this possibility, so it reasonably remains possible that you are both right (about the past) and wrong (about the present) at the same time.
You and I are in perfect agreement. The whole motivation for my investigation is that I think that in modern times, a degree is ~necessary for groundbreaking work, even though it clearly wasn’t in the 1800s and early 1900s.
Oh, I may have misunderstood the conclusion you were drawing.