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Dear Academia, I loved you, but I’m leaving you (2014)

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Re: Dear Academia, I loved you, but I’m leaving you (2014)

#11

Post by munin »

libeclipse wrote: post #8

The cause of the problems in academia is hinted at near the end: > the truth is I understand why they have to do things that way, if they don't get published, they don't get money to continue work that should theoretically be beneficial down the road! Scientists optimizing for what is likely to be published (read: what is likely to earn money), sacrificing elsewhere. Maybe if we payed them enough so that they don't h…

> Scientists optimizing for what is likely to be published (read: what is likely to earn money), sacrificing elsewhere. Maybe if we payed them enough so that they don't have to do this to survive, then we wouldn't have this issue.

How do you do this in a society with scarce resources? With scarcity, you need to have a measure of success, otherwise everyone could just say they were a scientist and get a six figure salary to do nothing. Any metric you choose will be gamed.

This worked hundreds of years ago because the only people that could get educated were the wealthy, so we didn't need to worry about supporting scientists with public funds, they supported themselves.

Re: Dear Academia, I loved you, but I’m leaving you (2014)

#13

Post by alpineidyll3 »

Quit my professorship about four months ago, and I've Never been happier. Academia works for some people, but is systemically twisted and has become terribly corrupt in most places.

There's a life outside people. Not just life but intellectual life. I'm so much happier not contributing to a system I hate.

Re: Dear Academia, I loved you, but I’m leaving you (2014)

#14

Post by shawn »

It's just how it goes in those fields...remove all of the negative results, don't actually report the ridiculous number of fishing expeditions you went on (especially in fMRI research), make it sound like you mostly knew what you were going to find in the first place, make it a nice clean story.

This has always bugged me about our implementation of the scientific method. There's no reason it has to be this way; it's just convention.

Re: Dear Academia, I loved you, but I’m leaving you (2014)

#16

Post by [deleted] »

aluren wrote: post #3

Regarding "literally everyone does it" (fishing for results, removing negative ones, and so on): it's very true, and much more prevalent than what people think. Even at top-level universities with big shots. Especially at top-level universities with big shots. I know someone, upon entering a lab to do electronic microscopy, who found out that the image data her lab had written multiple papers on very high-impact jour…

[deleted]

Re: Dear Academia, I loved you, but I’m leaving you (2014)

#17

Post by pasabagi »

lgessler wrote: post #7

Looks like this poster was in STEM. The situation's even more bleak in the humanities--see for instance this Reddit thread[1]: > The humanities PhD is still a vocational degree to prepare students for a career teaching in academia, and there are no jobs. Do not get a PhD in history. [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/96yf9h/monda...

Wow, that's hard to read. I thought people who went into Literature had it bad. It sometimes seems like the education sector is an experiment in how to create a society with almost unlimited power to do things, and almost total ignorance about what's a good idea.

Re: Dear Academia, I loved you, but I’m leaving you (2014)

#18

Post by anonymous5133 »

pasabagi wrote: post #17
lgessler wrote: post #7

Looks like this poster was in STEM. The situation's even more bleak in the humanities--see for instance this Reddit thread[1]: > The humanities PhD is still a vocational degree to prepare students for a career teaching in academia, and there are no jobs. Do not get a PhD in history. [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/96yf9h/monda...

Wow, that's hard to read. I thought people who went into Literature had it bad. It sometimes seems like the education sector is an experiment in how to create a society with almost unlimited power to do things, and almost total ignorance about what's a good idea.

Academia lives in a world where people are willing to spend hundreds of thousands to make themselves more knowledgeable in subjects which might have no economic value in the world. Just look at how much of our undergrad education consists "general education" type courses. While these courses are interesting, most of them are pretty useless. I took Chinese history, Asian american film, music history, art history and so on. All of these courses were pretty much usless to me from an economic stand point.

I think we need to create two tiers of higher-education: one where people focus purely on vocational/career skills while another where you can focus on non-vocational subjects. Let students decide what their general education will consist of instead of making it some top-down approach. People don't like authoritarianism.

Re: Dear Academia, I loved you, but I’m leaving you (2014)

#19

Post by v_lisivka »

stretchwithme wrote: post #12

Tracking what actually happens in scientific studies and how many don't get published would be a good idea. And a blockchain would be a way to do it. Knowing the whole truth could make science better.

Can you explain why it cannot be done with Web2.0 and Object Oriented Programming in ACID Cloud?

Re: Dear Academia, I loved you, but I’m leaving you (2014)

#20

Post by v_lisivka »

aluren wrote: post #3

Regarding "literally everyone does it" (fishing for results, removing negative ones, and so on): it's very true, and much more prevalent than what people think. Even at top-level universities with big shots. Especially at top-level universities with big shots. I know someone, upon entering a lab to do electronic microscopy, who found out that the image data her lab had written multiple papers on very high-impact jour…

Science is not when you publish something. Science is when at least two independent labs can reproduce your published result.
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