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Put the “Ph” Back in PhD

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Re: Put the “Ph” Back in PhD

#61

Post by ThomPete »

Fylwind wrote: post #56
ThomPete wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter what they are classified as what matters is what they do. It's the difference between the disciplin of philosophy and the act of philosophizing. Without philosophizing there wouldn't be any big bang theory, or string theory etc. Philosophy is a slippery slope the same way that improvising in music is. It's value is not in the results but in the process.

Ideas and breakthroughs in physics don't usually just appear out of vacuum. More often, they occur through a series of mathematical analogies, heuristics, and trial and error. String theory, for example, was motivated by the fact that the equations that govern gluons resemble equations of a vibrating string. There are a few folks who do care about things like multiverses and quantum foundations, which certainly overl…

Sure. There are also plenty of philosophers who don't philosophize. Instead they know everything about other philosophers.

The example of string theory is actually proving my point. The resemble part is a philosophical observation not a scientific one. It's that ability to see new context ask different questions that's at the core of philosophy.

The point I am trying to make is that in the very act of conducting science is a philosophical pursuit. The scientific model is just another way of asking philosophical questions. And so you can't decouple them from each other. They are just different perspectives on the same phenomena. Keep in mind that for a long time QM had no application, no value it was seen as a curiosity. Yet it lived on long enough through the philosophical implications that it seemed to present.

Without a philosophical framework there is no meaning to the results of our experiments. They are just anecdotal isolated tests. Thats what Popper and later Kuhn was trying to deal with.

Re: Put the “Ph” Back in PhD

#62

Post by ThomPete »

cbd1984 wrote: post #47
ThomPete wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are both right and wrong. Philosophy (asking questions) and science (testing questions) are depending on each other.

> Philosophy (asking questions) and science (testing questions) are depending on each other. Only in the instances where philosophy asks questions science can test. Questions like "What is The Good?" and "Is it morally right to do this thing?" are not those kinds of questions.

Sure but thats not the point. Science ask plenty of questions it cannot test.

It's important to distinguish between the act of philosophizing and then the disciplin and it's historical context.

Re: Put the “Ph” Back in PhD

#63

Post by sampo »

jamesrcole wrote: post #54
lmm wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. "I'm trying to figure out a more consistent way of applying the Lorentz contraction" or something on those lines.

What chances would a person claiming that have had for getting funding? I guess what I'm trying to say is that the incentives are strongly biased to what can be easily seen as a increment on what has been done before, and that this is biased against work that may draw on what has been done before but is presenting a fairly different view to what is currently accepted. Could Darwin have presented his view as an increm…

> What chances would a person claiming that have had for getting funding?

Einstein didn't get funding, i.e. an academic position. He did his initial groundbreaking work while having a day job in a patent office. He published his four groundbreaking papers in 1905 and was offered a lecturer position only on 1908.

Re: Put the “Ph” Back in PhD

#64

Post by mattkrause »

lmm wrote: post #21
emanuelev wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I quite agree that the post PhD job market is kind of challenging as there are few companies tackling big questions. However, if you forget the job market, the argument the guy is making is absolutely spot on. There's a solid trend in academia that is "publish early, publish fast". Although one might argue that it actually makes sense (career-wise or whatever), it is intrinsic in such a system to penalise pursuing bi…

> There's a solid trend in academia that is "publish early, publish fast". With an increasing number of researchers isn't that a great thing? If you publish your little incremental innovations then everyone can build on them. If you try to build your giant all-encompassing framework before you publish any of it, you'll have to do it all yourself (if it even amounts to anything).

This implicitly "punishes" subfields that move more slowly. It can take over a year to train a monkey to perform complicated behavioral tasks. In the same time period, you could breed 50+ generations of fruit flies, or ~25,000 generations of bacteria. Furthermore, the monkey researcher will have fairly little interim data, whereas the bacteria or fruit fly work may have something interesting within a few weeks.

This could be normalized within fields, but in practice it's not. For example, the NIH K-awards have a fixed eligibility period, which seems to keep shrinking.

Re: Put the “Ph” Back in PhD

#65

Post by nmrm2 »

cryoshon wrote: post #57
rquantz wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need big thinkers We need some, but there aren't anywhere near enough big-thinking jobs for all these PhDs. Yeah, man, jobs! It's all about jobs! Jobs jobs jobs! Steve Jobs! Jobs jobs! How about this? The world needs big thinkers in ways other than their capacity as economic actors. Einstein worked at a patent office. The work he did there (for the patent office) was not his primary contribution to the world at…

Yeah, I think the author forgot that: 1. Being smart isn't a product, and most people won't consider it a skill 2. Thinking big isn't a product, and most people won't consider it a skill 3. Thinking big is usually reserved for top level people, of which there are less than five You know what they call the big thinker who is looking for a job with his shiny new PhD? Unemployed.

> You know what they call the big thinker who is looking for a job with his shiny new PhD?

In technical fields (which is what this article is about)?

The ones who choose to stay in academia and are lucky enought to find a position are called "Professor".

The unlucky or disillusioned ones -- as well as the (majority) of PhDs who never even intended to go into academia at any point during thier studies -- are called, variously, "Engineer", "Analyst", "Consultant", etc. and typically start in the low six figures (and not even in the bay area / NYC). They take a marginal hit to their lifetime earnings, but in most cases make decent salaries and get to work on more interesting problems (obv. interesting is subjective).

> Unemployed.

The unemployment rate for STEM PhDs is ludicrously low (FYI: if you google this, be aware that the Slate article by Jordan Weissmann is IMO purposefully misleading. See Table 1 of http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf14310/ and compare to his graphs. E.g., his graph seems to indicate that the unemployment rate for CS PhDs was over around 15% in 2001, but the NSF tables makes it clear that the rate was 0.9%, which is even more than what most economists refer to as full employment. In fact, in CS, the increase for 0.9% to 2% is almost entirely attributable to there being a lot more retired CS phds now than 10 years ago (for rather obvious reasons). So the stats he's using to tell his story are, at very best, unintentionally but absurdly non-representative of the actual state of affairs. It's like asking someone the day after they quit their job if they've started their new job yet and, when they say "hell no, taking some time off to recharge", assuming they're unemployable and/or don't have something lined up.)

Re: Put the “Ph” Back in PhD

#66

Post by Retra »

rquantz wrote: post #32
jmmcd wrote: post #7

> We need big thinkers We need some, but there aren't anywhere near enough big-thinking jobs for all these PhDs. > The success of science and technology will always lead to new ethical dilemmas. How do you spot them and try to work with society before they become problems? A better appreciation of ethics is likely to address what has become an epidemic of retractions in the scientific literature. All the recent retra…

> We need big thinkers We need some, but there aren't anywhere near enough big-thinking jobs for all these PhDs. Yeah, man, jobs! It's all about jobs! Jobs jobs jobs! Steve Jobs! Jobs jobs! How about this? The world needs big thinkers in ways other than their capacity as economic actors. Einstein worked at a patent office. The work he did there (for the patent office) was not his primary contribution to the world at…

Without being employed to do this kind of work, your opportunities for networking and partnership are vastly diminished, which translates to less success. And that's ignoring the fact that competition demands ever-increasing capability. There's a huge difference in capability between amateurs and professionals in almost every field, and there are relevant reasons for that difference.

Re: Put the “Ph” Back in PhD

#67

Post by thaumasiotes »

Keyframe wrote: post #58
maus42 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And 'science' as we know it today used to be called 'natural philosophy'.

OP asked wikipedia in the wrong place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_science#History As one can remember from high school, natural science fields spawned from natural philosophy from 17th through 19th century. Culminating maybe with psychology in the early 20th century (end of 19th). No mystery there.

I was perfectly aware of this, and checked https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy . The link and quote I provided are much more directly relevant. Ph.D.s aren't just for natural science; they're for everything that isn't covered by a J.D. or an M.D. Funny coincidence, that, given the historical factoid "All fields other than theology, law, and medicine were traditionally known as philosophy".

Ph.D.s in literature, history, or classics have nothing to do with natural philosophy, and never did.

Re: Put the “Ph” Back in PhD

#68

Post by emanuelev »

rhaps0dy wrote: post #15
emanuelev wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I quite agree that the post PhD job market is kind of challenging as there are few companies tackling big questions. However, if you forget the job market, the argument the guy is making is absolutely spot on. There's a solid trend in academia that is "publish early, publish fast". Although one might argue that it actually makes sense (career-wise or whatever), it is intrinsic in such a system to penalise pursuing bi…

>the PhD (and the few years after) are the most productive in a researcher's life Source? I'm curious.

I'm sorry, I don't really have a source. My observation is based on the fact that during PhD/PostDoc years you have more time to spend on actual research. As you climb the academic ladder it is very probable that administrative/supervising/teaching duties become central to your job (unless you really don't want to).

Incidentally I remember also reading [1] that in certain fields, in this case mathematics, most of the groundbreaking research comes from younger mathematicians. Great contributions to the field from people over 40 are extremely rare.

[1] Simon Singh, Fermat's Last theorem. Ok, not great source but still!

Re: Put the “Ph” Back in PhD

#69

Post by jmmcd »

jamesrcole wrote: post #51
jmmcd wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diverting resources sounds good, but obviously should come first. The research itself could and should have value. But a PhD must go all the way to the bottom, in terms of detail. It's not a pop science book or a funding programme, which can delegate the details to someone else. Therefore, asking the PhD student to be a big thinker as well as taking care of the experimental details is just raising the bar -- it's not…

I think you're conflating "ordinary research" and "applied research". "Big thinking" is often pure research, and pure research is just as valid a topic for a PhD as applied research is. There's not a lot of other opportunities to spend a significant amount of time working on the one thing. > Maybe the big thinking should be done -- as it is currently -- by people who have already demonstrated that they can do all tha…

No, I think pure research can be and usually is ordinary research.

I agree with your points about the young and non-established being good bets for big thinking. But I think the PhD is an unsuitable vehicle, partly because it's not well-designed to handle failure (your analogy with startups is great and instructive on this point).

Re: Put the “Ph” Back in PhD

#70

Post by jmmcd »

jamesrcole wrote: post #33
lmm wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all clear to me. Examples?

Incremental innovations of the sort you are talking about means extending some pre-existing framework. There are obvious examples of important developments that involved developing different frameworks, which took many years to fully justify with evidence. The heliocentric view of the solar system, Newtonian physics, natural selection, relativity... EDIT: I would also argue that developments like the printing press a…

If the printing press or web were proposed as research topics by a new PhD student today, they'd probably be laughed out of the room. But if they were proposed by someone with credibility, who knows what research is like from top to bottom, in a EUR2M grant proposal with a good demonstration of how the new ideas relate to existing work, featuring an appropriate-sized team and a detailed risk management plan up-front -- they'd be funded.
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