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“This week, I resigned from my position at Duke University”

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Re: “This week, I resigned from my position at Duke University”

#11

Post by nextos »

plg wrote: post #2

"I found scientists to be more preoccupied by their own survival in a very competitive research environment than by the development of a true understanding of the world." I have found this as well. However it's important to remember that before one can do good work, one has to find funding for the good work. It's a complex problem.

People don't even understand how critical this problem is. I was previously working at a very good European medical lab. The environment was so weird most postdocs simply spent 95% of their time playing the ladder-climbing game. Some got incredible promotions, like getting all the way from postdoc -> assistant prof. -> asociate prof. in 3 years after ending their PhD with no decent publications at all.

It's not even publishing crap. It's that these places develop into odd little societies that end up resembling Orwell's Animal Farm.

Obviously, this very good lab is collapsing. I have moved to Oxbridge now and things are much better. Sad to see so many cancer research Euros wasted.

Re: “This week, I resigned from my position at Duke University”

#12

Post by alexholehouse »

Posts like this (and there are many of them) scare me.

I'm in the latter half of a PhD. I love it. I work insane hours entirely out of my own choice, because it is the most rewarding and enjoyable thing I've ever been a part of.

The idea that I've found something that I love, that is challenging, that (I hope) I'm relatively good at, and that has a definite net positive good for us as a species/society, yet I may not be able to pursue this long term because of the immense challenges facing academia as a whole (catalyzed, I would argue, by tragic lack of funding) is really concerning, on both a personal and a societal level.

Re: “This week, I resigned from my position at Duke University”

#13

Post by JoeAltmaier »

plg wrote: post #2

"I found scientists to be more preoccupied by their own survival in a very competitive research environment than by the development of a true understanding of the world." I have found this as well. However it's important to remember that before one can do good work, one has to find funding for the good work. It's a complex problem.

Its a simple problem; that three-sentence description was a pretty good start.

The problem is made harder by the near-extinction of tenure-track positions. Colleges are using adjuct-profressors exclusively now, because they are cheap, plentiful and hungry. The search for knowledge has turned into a mill to train people and get a paycheck.

Re: “This week, I resigned from my position at Duke University”

#14

Post by cinquemb »

JesperRavn wrote: post #10
cinquemb wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Of course, this does not mean that I will abandon all of my activities related to the search or dissemination of knowledge. I will still teach my courses in Biology and Artificial Intelligence at the University of the People, I will still publish my book, The Revolutionary Phenotype, which contains an important novel theory on the emergence of life. I will still publish the Season 2 of NEURO.tv, for which we have ga…

It's not fair to twist people's words like that. If the poster meant churning out papers by "good work" then the whole post would not make sense. A much more reasonable interpretation would be "in order to produce good papers, or things that are less rewarded (e.g. books), one needs to play the academic game in the meantime and churn out mediocre/bad papers". The main issue as I see it is not that good papers are not…

The focus on good papers vs bad papers as the problem seems silly to me in comparison to the multiple ways knowledge can be disseminated and built upon in ways that the author cites that proven for him to be more effective along the dimensions he and his audience values (satisfying intellectual curiosity, helping others learn who aren't involved with/or not interested [possibly because of the very low signal to noise] in the "good/bad papers system", lower social costs, etc…).

Re: “This week, I resigned from my position at Duke University”

#15

Post by w1ntermute »

Another possible (unspoken) reason why Gariépy is resigning is presumably that he's been a postdoc[0] for the last 3-4 years[1]. Unfortunately, the nature of modern biomedical research is such that you need an army of researchers to do the mechanical grunt work at the lab bench that leads to papers. This has led to a glut of postdocs, who are underpaid, overworked, and have little hope of ever obtaining a permanent academic position[2]. And even at top universities, industry positions are quite difficult to get without putting time and effort that you don't have to spare into extensive networking[3].

During his postdoc, Gariépy's had one second-author publication in Nature Neuroscience[4], which probably wasn't enough to get a tenure-track professorship. If, like the first author on that paper, he had gotten an assistant professorship at a prestigious university[5], he probably wouldn't be airing his dirty laundry. Also note that he is a YouTuber[6] and has a book coming out according to his Twitter profile[7], so he's probably trying to leverage any notoriety he gets from ragequitting his postdoc to jumpstart his career in science journalism.

0: http://today.duke.edu/node/132805

1: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanfrancoisgariepy

2: https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/10/04/glut-postdoc-re...

3: https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/09/02/cambridge-pl...

4: http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v16/n2/abs/nn.3287.html

5: https://medicine.yale.edu/neuroscience/people/steve_chang.pr...

6: http://neuro.tv/

7: https://twitter.com/JFGariepy

Re: “This week, I resigned from my position at Duke University”

#17

Post by javert »

alexholehouse wrote: post #12

Posts like this (and there are many of them) scare me. I'm in the latter half of a PhD. I love it. I work insane hours entirely out of my own choice, because it is the most rewarding and enjoyable thing I've ever been a part of. The idea that I've found something that I love, that is challenging, that (I hope) I'm relatively good at, and that has a definite net positive good for us as a species/society, yet I may not…

> catalyzed, I would argue, by tragic lack of funding

No, you don't get it. There is tons of funding. But academia is a corrupt old-boys network. Those petty, conniving people rise to the top and ultimately control the system.

- A grad student (who regrets going to grad school)

Re: “This week, I resigned from my position at Duke University”

#18

Post by javert »

w1ntermute wrote: post #15

Another possible (unspoken) reason why Gariépy is resigning is presumably that he's been a postdoc[0] for the last 3-4 years[1]. Unfortunately, the nature of modern biomedical research is such that you need an army of researchers to do the mechanical grunt work at the lab bench that leads to papers. This has led to a glut of postdocs, who are underpaid, overworked, and have little hope of ever obtaining a permanent a…

You can say that. But, he's still right.

Re: “This week, I resigned from my position at Duke University”

#20

Post by sanderjd »

w1ntermute wrote: post #15

Another possible (unspoken) reason why Gariépy is resigning is presumably that he's been a postdoc[0] for the last 3-4 years[1]. Unfortunately, the nature of modern biomedical research is such that you need an army of researchers to do the mechanical grunt work at the lab bench that leads to papers. This has led to a glut of postdocs, who are underpaid, overworked, and have little hope of ever obtaining a permanent a…

I downvoted this and I wanted to say why. It reads to me like a (perhaps well-researched) ad-hominem attack. Rather than speaking to the points raised by the post, you attempt to undermine the person who posted it.
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