What principal investigators taught me about my failure to land tenure • Hacker News Board

Re: What principal investigators taught me about my failure to land tenure

#71

Post by rsfern » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 2:43 PM UTC

taneq wrote: post #70

dnautics wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's still pretty low. In the us at a top tier, which you'll need for most tenure track positions you're expected to have about 5 first authors in five years as a trainee and moving forward into a postdoc a pace of about 1.5 to 2 would be good. Strategic timing by having a really high profile paper come out from grad school around when you're finishing your postdoc probably also helps. But as I indicate in a direct…

Everyone's talking about publication count. Is the quality (influence, number of citations, any other relevant metric) of those publications really so irrelevant?

No, and yes in a way. The quality of the venue matters a lot, and many people seem to obsess over h-index values, which quantify the citation count and journal impact factor. But in my opinion these things are useful but flawed heuristics for the actual importance or impact of research work.

Re: What principal investigators taught me about my failure to land tenure

#72

Post by hitekker » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 6:44 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #17

jurassic wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know the norm of the author’s specific field but I had the same reaction: His publication record is not even in the ballpark of where it probably should be for tenure. I feel so sad that the scientific industry is set up such that guys like this can plod on two decades or more past the point they should have realized they weren’t on a tenure trajectory. Now he’s 40-something and has to start over in something…

> Every PI in every lab he touched should have seen this coming. People are surprisingly willing to let you accidentally pour your life in to something that only marginally benefits them, that's why you have to be ever-vigilant against the many opportunities you'll have to do that. Some people are prone to slipping into the mentality of the ideal feudal peasant: "life is bad here, but the lord of the estate isn't goi…

There is wisdom in this comment, thank you for putting the sentiment into words.

Re: What principal investigators taught me about my failure to land tenure

#73

Post by graybored » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 7:42 PM UTC

radus wrote: post #61

musicale wrote: post #52

Wow, lots of harsh comments on this page. Academia is kind of a pyramid scheme and there is a huge mismatch between the number of graduates and academic jobs. Moreover, universities are turning increasingly to adjunct faculty rather than adding tenure track positions. Fortunately in the sciences and engineering you can work in industry or government labs; it's a lot harder for people in the humanities and social scie…

I was also surprised by how harsh the comments are, but I suppose it mirrors the harshness of the academic world.

yeah,,, there's something about some comments on here that seems... emotionally unhealthy....

Re: What principal investigators taught me about my failure to land tenure

#74

Post by dnautics » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 9:03 PM UTC

taneq wrote: post #70

dnautics wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's still pretty low. In the us at a top tier, which you'll need for most tenure track positions you're expected to have about 5 first authors in five years as a trainee and moving forward into a postdoc a pace of about 1.5 to 2 would be good. Strategic timing by having a really high profile paper come out from grad school around when you're finishing your postdoc probably also helps. But as I indicate in a direct…

Everyone's talking about publication count. Is the quality (influence, number of citations, any other relevant metric) of those publications really so irrelevant?

Imagine you are on the professor search committee. You get inundated with 500 applications, many from jokers with no chance from a diploma mill who just spam every search committee. How do you filter so many applications?

Re: What principal investigators taught me about my failure to land tenure

#75

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Feb 17, 2019, 12:18 PM UTC

musicale wrote: post #52

Wow, lots of harsh comments on this page. Academia is kind of a pyramid scheme and there is a huge mismatch between the number of graduates and academic jobs. Moreover, universities are turning increasingly to adjunct faculty rather than adding tenure track positions. Fortunately in the sciences and engineering you can work in industry or government labs; it's a lot harder for people in the humanities and social scie…

[deleted]

Re: What principal investigators taught me about my failure to land tenure

#76

Post by prestonh » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 1:10 AM UTC

radford-neal wrote: post #8

prestonh wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's good for the field (we've decided) is when we only allow a 5% Type I error rate (95% of published positive results are correct). What's good for the individual is to drive their Type I error rate up just enough so that they can publish as much as possible without getting caught.

Umm... That's not actually what only publishing a result when the p-value is less than 0.05 accomplishes. Such a publishing policy instead guarantees (or would if there were no other problems) that __only 5% of the FALSE ideas that researchers test get published as being "confirmed"__ (i.e., when the null hypothesis is true, only 5% of the time does it get "rejected" at the 0.05 level). It guarantees nothing about wh…

You're right, I was trying to dumb down p-values to make a point about perverse incentives in academic publishing. What's worse is that other factors that increase the Type I error rate (only positive results are published) only compound the effect.

Re: What principal investigators taught me about my failure to land tenure

#77

Post by rconti » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 8:42 PM UTC

freewilly1040 wrote: post #35

jurassic wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dating takes time, weddings cost money, and its hard to drag partner/spouse/family around the globe for each new short-term position. I once worked in a lab that joked about a “celibate for science” lifestyle. I think the PI really actually wanted that for his grad students.

I had a coworker in a lab who was married to another scientist. They had been married more than 5 years but had never lived in the same city.

My sister and BIL are both academics, and didn't "live together" for probably around 10 years, 6+ of which were after marriage. They bought a house together in the city my sister taught in, and my BIL commuted on the weekends sometimes, and they spent summers together, but it took the better part of a decade for them to both land jobs in the same city. It's incredibly common.