“This week, I resigned from my position at Duke University” • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by JupiterMoon » Sun, Sep 06, 2015, 6:59 PM UTC

javert wrote: post #31

alexholehouse wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that mean a lack of funding can't catalyze the issue? Edit: Just for transparency (topical!) I did not downvote you, and totally agree that cronyism is a major (and yeah maybe causative) issue, but I also think the decision on how to fund is basically an entirely separate problem which really doesn't have an obviously good solution (in my mind).

Make the companies that profit from the research do the research themselves, in house, and pay for it and direct it themselves. That's the only way. You can't set up academia as a soviet-style bureaucracy and expect it to perform any differently from a soviet-style bureaucracy.

But not all scientific research will benefit companies. Some will even be detrimental to large companies (disruptive technologies). Therefore blueskies pure science needs funding from some source other than industry.

What I do find disturbing is the trend to push University research towards immediately commercially viable stuff. Industry would/should do this stuff anyway.

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

#72

Post by jessaustin » Sun, Sep 06, 2015, 7:01 PM UTC

stefantalpalaru wrote: post #36

> The editor later proceeded to explain to us why he was inquiring about the reputation of these scientists: "I'm asking to make sure that I accept articles from reputable people. Because you see, at , we want to do real science, not Richard-Dawkins-type science." I remember discreetly crying for an hour that night at the conference's bar, not because that man was unjustifiably mean to one of the most intelligent sci…

It does seem unlikely that any random group of scientists (or people in general, for that matter) are going to be of one mind with respect to Dawkins.

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

#73

Post by giaour » Sun, Sep 06, 2015, 7:04 PM UTC

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…

The system was sufficiently functional to nurture enough knowledge and enthusiasm in you that you were equipped to attend and thrive in a PhD program. On a societal level, I don't think academia's sorry state is much to worry about.

On a personal level, it's pretty terrible. If you do decide to leave academia, there are plenty of opportunities for smart, committed people. I bailed on a PhD program shortly after starting my dissertation, and having Ivy-league graduate work on my resume has opened a lot of doors.

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

#74

Post by nkurz » Sun, Sep 06, 2015, 7:09 PM UTC

adminprof wrote: post #64

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The misinformation about adjuncts is pretty widespread. Adjuncts have indeed been hired way more at teaching colleges and for-profit colleges. But research universities haven't really changed their hiring tendencies much, if at all. It's just that there are a lot more non-R1 universities now that statistically, a higher % of new instructors are adjuncts. Nearly everyone I know that graduated with a PhD from an R1 uni…

Nearly everyone I know that graduated with a PhD from an R1 universities

Would these people perhaps be clustered in a particular field? I'd guess that things are very different depending on the percentage of PhD's in a field who go into academia versus industry. For example, the academic job market for Astronomy is very different than CS, because there are many more non-academic options for CS graduates.

I think even an outstanding Astronomy PhD from a top tier university may find it difficult to get a tenure track position in their field. The same would probably be true for CS if all the graduates were to pursue academic positions, but since many go into industry, there is less competition for tenure track positions among those who want to teach.

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

#75

Post by ching_wow_ka » Sun, Sep 06, 2015, 7:27 PM UTC

I am somewhat ignorant. What significant achievements does Dawkins hold in his field? All I know is that he's known for trying to convince others of his beliefs.

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

#76

Post by CSDude » Sun, Sep 06, 2015, 7:35 PM UTC

I will give an example how the system is broken. I am a masters student, and my advisor assigns me full reviews without even asking, in the fields that I do not even understand anything a little bit, not even in my area. I review them for him. Some dude's approval to a conference is at my hands. I do not feel in any position to review most of the papers I have been given and talking to my advisor does not help. So, I just accept them all if they do not have major style issues, and that's it.

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

#77

Post by patkai » Sun, Sep 06, 2015, 7:47 PM UTC

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…

"...it is the most rewarding and enjoyable thing I've ever been a part of."

That's your Achilles heel. Beware!

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

#78

Post by fit2rule » Sun, Sep 06, 2015, 7:52 PM UTC

This article speaks to me of the most destructive force in our human world: the social collective. It seems that the majority of his ills are sourced directly from the dire circumstances of the mass collective operating on itself in a negative way - that there is something broken in the peer-acceptance process; perhaps it is indeed impossible to advance science without disassociation from the collective reality of all scientists, who - psycho-socially - desire to attain a social goal as an imperative before any kind of natural observation or 'progress' otherwise; i.e. the complaints of the author would be best addressed to nobody in particular; it is the fact of the anonymous-crowd-mass which produces the conditions degrading science, today. There are simply too many social machinations in play. The desire for acceptance at a banal level (grant money), the desire for acclaim at a banal level (peer review), the desire to be heard above the din of the masses, at a most banal level (publication requirements) - all of these banal instincts have accrued much caché in the zeitgeist as reasons for doing things.

tl;dr sometimes you have to shake the sheets if you want to get a good sail on. No great explorer, adventurer, discoverer, scientist, engineer .. ever .. got that way because they followed the processes of the status quo. The fact that many of us must discover, and learn to stomach: life is not special for a majority of people. That includes scientists. It includes people who think they deserve otherwise. If you want to exceed and excel, propel the species forward: beware the collective. It will eat you.

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

#79

Post by lmeyerov » Sun, Sep 06, 2015, 7:55 PM UTC

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #22

The CS field gets a lot of bashing for gravitating a lot around conferences rather than journals. Because, you know, journals are supposed to be the serious venue for the grown-ups. But actually, CS conferences (at least the ones I've published in) have a double-blind review system that feels much fairer than the single-blind in the top journals. Of course it's far from perfect (more often than not the reviewers can…

Double blind is a farce in practice in most CS specialties (maybe not bloated fields like AI/HCI/graphics?). Once you get to the top tier, everyone knows everyone, including the industrial labs, including what they're working on. Most good work is too differentiated to anonymize to well-versed readers: less Neural Networks for X, more Sub-Theory of a Sub-Theory or Version 2 of This Weird Thing.

This may not be obvious to the normal grad student, but after a decade in a community of 1K-10K people, most of them working in groups, it becomes clear. The end result is that the last several top-tier conferences I reviewed for, I basically guessed the authors of all the papers I reviewed, and knew at least one of them personally on each paper. All of that, despite being a "young" member of the community.

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

#80

Post by zo1 » Sun, Sep 06, 2015, 7:59 PM UTC

chubot wrote: post #9

I feel the same thing in huge companies in which the employees are insulated from market forces. Aren't we supposed to be, like, building stuff that users want? Rather than just trying to get promoted and game the system? IQ and motivation are independent variables... it's a shame when people with high IQs exert tons of effort in small-minded directions, or just toward fighting each other.

>"Aren't we supposed to be, like, building stuff that users want? Rather than just trying to get promoted and game the system?"

That's the company's job, not yours.

In fact, you are actually already doing it if you twist definitions a bit. The "user" is the company you work for, and you are the product. And you "gaming" the corporate-ladder system is you simply marketing the product (yourself) to your user/client so that they pay you more for it.

The beauty of it is that the emergent behavior of those combined two agents yields a net positive for society. Do not be fooled into thinking that only "noble" academia is the way to advance humankind.