I worked for CFAR full-time from 2014 until mid to late 2016, and have worked for CFAR part-time or as a frequent contractor ever since. My sense is that dynamics like those you describe were mostly not present at CFAR, or insofar as they were present weren’t really the main thing. I do think CFAR has not made as much research progress as I would like, but I think the reasoning for that is much more mundane and less esoteric than the pattern you describe here.
The fact of the matter is that for almost all the time I’ve been involved with CFAR, there just plain hasn’t been a research team. Much of CFAR’s focus has been on running workshops and other programs rather than on dedicated work towards extending the art; while there have occasionally been people allocated to research, in practice even these would often end up getting involved in workshop preparation and the like.
To put things another way, I would say it’s much less “the full-time researchers are off unproductively experimenting on their own brains in secret” and more “there are no full-time researchers”. To the best of my knowledge CFAR has not ever had what I would consider a systematic research and development program—instead, the organization has largely been focused on delivering existing content and programs, and insofar as the curriculum advances it does so via iteration and testing at workshops rather than a more structured or systematic development process.
I have historically found this state of affairs pretty frustrating (and am working to change it), but I think that it’s a pretty different dynamic than the one you describe above.
(I suppose it’s possible that the systematic and productive full-time CFAR research team was so secretive that I didn’t even know it existed, but this seems unlikely...)
I worked for CFAR full-time from 2014 until mid to late 2016, and have worked for CFAR part-time or as a frequent contractor ever since. My sense is that dynamics like those you describe were mostly not present at CFAR, or insofar as they were present weren’t really the main thing. I do think CFAR has not made as much research progress as I would like, but I think the reasoning for that is much more mundane and less esoteric than the pattern you describe here.
The fact of the matter is that for almost all the time I’ve been involved with CFAR, there just plain hasn’t been a research team. Much of CFAR’s focus has been on running workshops and other programs rather than on dedicated work towards extending the art; while there have occasionally been people allocated to research, in practice even these would often end up getting involved in workshop preparation and the like.
To put things another way, I would say it’s much less “the full-time researchers are off unproductively experimenting on their own brains in secret” and more “there are no full-time researchers”. To the best of my knowledge CFAR has not ever had what I would consider a systematic research and development program—instead, the organization has largely been focused on delivering existing content and programs, and insofar as the curriculum advances it does so via iteration and testing at workshops rather than a more structured or systematic development process.
I have historically found this state of affairs pretty frustrating (and am working to change it), but I think that it’s a pretty different dynamic than the one you describe above.
(I suppose it’spossiblethat the systematic and productive full-time CFAR research team was so secretive that I didn’t even know it existed, but this seems unlikely...)