This was posted by Yann LeCun today about Science vs Engineering.

Here is a list of things I am *NOT* saying:

• you need a PhD to do Science. You don’t. A PhD teaches you to do research, but you can learn that on your own (though it’s much easier with a mentor).
• you need to get papers accepted by a journal or conference to publish: you don’t. You can just post it in http://ArXiv.org . Many influential papers never went through the formal peer review process, or went through it after they became influential.
• engineering is not science: it can be, depending on your methodology. I’m a scientist *and* an engineer. These activities are complementary and need each other. – science requires formal papers: it doesn’t. A clear explanation on a website and a piece of code on a public repo will do.

What I *AM* saying is that science progresses through the collision of ideas, verification, analysis, reproduction, and improvements. If you don’t publish your research *in some way* your research will likely have no impact.”