Communities evolve around shared methodology because of the surprisingly detail rich nature of reality. Methodology has a lot of degrees of freedom. This then creates correlated blind spots/echo chambers.
One way I like to think about this is common data formats. Hard research problems create new data formats suited to the problem. But if the researchers aren’t also doing the extra work to maintain backwards compatibility then they won’t notice when they start rejecting things for not already being in their preferred format. And for reasonable reasons! Research time can be precious. Especially in the environment of artificial scarcity that donors en masse believe is healthy.
Communities evolve around shared methodology because of the surprisingly detail rich nature of reality. Methodology has a lot of degrees of freedom. This then creates correlated blind spots/echo chambers. One way I like to think about this is common data formats. Hard research problems create new data formats suited to the problem. But if the researchers aren’t also doing the extra work to maintain backwards compatibility then they won’t notice when they start rejecting things for not already being in their preferred format. And for reasonable reasons! Research time can be precious. Especially in the environment of artificial scarcity that donors en masse believe is healthy.