'Not of faculty quality': How Penn mistreated Katalin Karikó • Hacker News Board

Re: 'Not of faculty quality': How Penn mistreated Katalin Karikó

#181

Post by dctoedt » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 8:35 PM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #101

exmadscientist wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the university since they take a very hefty cut (50-100%! btw this doubles the "cost" of the grant, it doesn't lessen the amount the professor gets) Don't forget that this is actually money laundering. Our NIH grants had major strings attached, like "you may not buy non-instrumentation computers" (at least, that's what I was told, I did not actually get to read the grants). So the University helpfully launders the…

Our NIH grants had major strings attached, like "you may not buy non-instrumentation computers" (at least, that's what I was told, I did not actually get to read the grants) Sadly, that bit of goofiness goes back a long way. It's why the early HP desktops were sold as "calculators." Many important customers told them that buying a computer required approval from the board of directors, but anybody could buy a "calcul…

Aboard the USS Enterprise (the aircraft carrier) in the late 1970s, I automated some of my division's reports by writing BASIC programs on a "programmable calculator" — a desktop in all but name — that was owned by the air wing (IIRC) and used for setting up missions.

(It was a day of celebration when the 8K of RAM was upgraded to 16K.)

Re: 'Not of faculty quality': How Penn mistreated Katalin Karikó

#182

Post by rawgabbit » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 8:48 PM UTC

seanr88 wrote: post #144

rawgabbit wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that may be true today, in the research sciences — there should be some kind of middle ground. Thomas Edison may have been a giant of self promotion. But I would argue Nikola Tesla invented as much or more foundationally important technology we use today. I would argue Tesla like Kariko will never be a wiz at self promotion. But a domain expert should have spotted them early on. I mean isn’t that the job of peo…

but the people you have to convince are the people who are doling out tax payer money for research. By definition they don't know your fabulous discovery only you know that. So you need to convince someone else that the idea you have is worth investigating and they should give you money to do it. So the people who are best at convincing other people are the people who get the grants and who get to do the research. Ev…

I don't disagree this is the reality. What I am trying to say, is that I hope the people who dole out taxpayer funds can spot people like Dr. Karikó and support them.

Let me try a sports analogy. In American football, each team takes turns (rounds) to draft new players. There are college players who are already famous, had fantastic careers at the college level, and all the scouting agencies said they are can't miss. Then there are college players who played for unknown schools and the scouts don't even have a grade for them. As a result, teams dedicate the first three rounds drafting the players everyone says are can't miss (the good fundraiser in the Academic world). However, the great teams are the ones who can find the hidden gems and draft unknowns in later rounds because they can see the talent (the hypothetical talent scout who spotted the potential of messenger RNA research 20 years ago).

Re: 'Not of faculty quality': How Penn mistreated Katalin Karikó

#183

Post by renewiltord » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 8:49 PM UTC

bachmeier wrote: post #110

thelittlenag wrote: post #32

My wife was hired last year as a full time professor and leads her own lab. By far the largest pressure on new faculty is the ability to get money into her lab, and by extension the university since they take a very hefty cut (50-100%! btw this doubles the "cost" of the grant, it doesn't lessen the amount the professor gets). Getting approved for the money via the grant process means having published "interesting" re…

> they take a very hefty cut (50-100%! btw this doubles the "cost" of the grant, it doesn't lessen the amount the professor gets This leads to some very interesting conversations at universities. "Your department doesn't bring in many grants, so we can't grant your budget request." "But grants aren't revenue. They're money used to cover the expense of doing research." "Yes, but they bring in overhead." Then when the…

American universities are a fantastic scheme. I'm working on a project right now to see if I can bring this to high schools. They're a massive machine to move money from taxpayers into certain organizations very effectively. That's why you'll see that the loudest voices for student loan forgiveness go to these universities. Come on, you have a Divinities degree from Harvard? That's a fictional thing. Of course you're advocating for student loan debt discharge by the taxpayers. Ideally, if you're running the university, everyone gets $1 m to spend on university, and you charge $1 m.

Once we get school vouchers going we can do that for high school too. It's going to be a revolution, man. Pure money printing.

And what's anyone going to try to say? You can't touch US universities or schools. Education is important! I think I could probably give one or two poor kids a scholarship and trot them out every now and then.

Re: 'Not of faculty quality': How Penn mistreated Katalin Karikó

#184

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 8:54 PM UTC

johnvaluk wrote: post #168

HansHamster wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The grant has restrictions on how the money can be used and the university takes a sizeable chunk of this (because they can). Then out of generosity and the pure kindness of their heart they might give you back a small chunk of that sum without the same restrictions.

This isn't fair. Researchers put an extraordinary burden on administration in an academic institution. Research by its very nature is cutting edge and is always testing limits. "I want it now!" ignores existing streamlined processes and administration often provides value by enforcing compliance. This kind of oversight also minimizes a lot of abuse.

[deleted]

Re: 'Not of faculty quality': How Penn mistreated Katalin Karikó

#185

Post by cycomanic » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 8:55 PM UTC

michaelrpeskin wrote: post #29

ska wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really quality vs quantity. The root problem is that (particularly in R1's) the job of raising money to perform the science has devolved somewhat to the level of individual labs and PI's, which creates an incentive that rewards good fundraisers in a much more predictable way than good researchers. In theory this could be addressed by more rigor in the funding agencies review processes, but they aren't resour…

But it's even worse than that. Since universities are funded by the grant overhead (30-40% of the grant goes directly to the university, sometimes higher), there's an incentive for "expensive" research. Why fund a theorist who needs a pencil and paper and maybe a fancy computer when you can fund an expensive lab full of state of the art lasers and optics or any other type of expensive technology. Do you want to come…

It's more likely the other way around. For most grants I'm aware off universities can't charge overheads on equipment so a theoretician with lots of phd students brings in more overhead than an experimentalist that needs lots of equipment. Obviously the reality is much more complex, depending on country it's easier or more difficult to get funding as a theoretician (in the US it's supposedly much more difficult), theory groups are typically smaller, experimental research often results in more publicity... And all this really depends on the field.

I think pitting theory against experiments does not address the issues. The big problem IMO is that the funding systems are so competitive and at the same time (initially) have a large luck component, that it incentives short term, low risk research.

Re: 'Not of faculty quality': How Penn mistreated Katalin Karikó

#186

Post by bluGill » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 9:01 PM UTC

rmah wrote: post #176

jltsiren wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Academic hiring processes are ridiculous. Not because anyone wants it that way but because citizens like to complain. They complain when they think tax/tuition money is being used for inapproriate or frivolous purposes. They complain when they see nepotism and corruption. They complain about perceived political biases and discrimination. And so on. Every time something goes wrong badly enough to cause a scandal, new…

Universities could afford to pay more if they redirect funds from paying for "administrator" to paying for instructors and researchers. Or diverting funds from beautification projects. Or from the mass of consulting firms they hire for various things. There is now an average of only 2.5 faculty per administrator at universities and many of the better research universities have ratios closer to 1:1. Really, it's a que…

They can't do that though. All those administrators are preventing the faculty from abusing their position. Most of the abuse are the type of thing that someone has done in the past. What you really seem to be claiming is that the loss from faculty abuse is in general less than the costs of those administrators. I'm not sure if this is true or not - this is the real debate that we are not having. (I'm sure in some cases it is true, but in others it is not)

As for beautification projects: that projects often bring in big donars. It is hard to say if they are worth the costs or not, but we need to start by being clear. A ugly brutalist building would be a lot cheaper but probably is too far the other way.

Re: 'Not of faculty quality': How Penn mistreated Katalin Karikó

#187

Post by jacquesm » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 9:03 PM UTC

godelski wrote: post #175

jacquesm wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really painful to read. That whole system seems to be so ripe for disruption.

Well just know you're not alone. I hope you got out without killing your passions. Fwiw, I intend to lead by example. I love researching. I have a long term internship where I even do research (unfortunately not closely tied to my PhD work lol). But since I read math books and research as a hobby, I intend to simply do what I call for (in other comments) and just post to GitHub + Openreview + Arxiv and call it a fuck…

I got lucky: I never went in. My family more or less imploded in the middle of my highschool track and I went to work instead and that put me on a faster road to a lot of interaction with the computers of the day than school would have given me and that led to an interesting career. If that hadn't happened I may well have ended up in academia and I somehow feel I dodged a bullet there because my ideas of what university was like at the time seem to have very much been informed by pink glasses and meeting the occasional very interesting person who was part of the academic world.

Re: 'Not of faculty quality': How Penn mistreated Katalin Karikó

#188

Post by cycomanic » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 9:09 PM UTC

Etheryte wrote: post #33

queuebert wrote: post #12

Academia does not value quality, but quantity. It selects for scientists who are the best at marketing and networking, not necessarily doing quality science, though they can also be. I have no idea how to fix this, but competition needs to be reduced, probably by more guaranteed funding for positions, not just projects, as grants are. This latest military aid package is 2x the entire NIH budget, so surely there is mo…

While I see where you're coming from, I'm very conflicted on your approach to address this. I don't think throwing more money at the problem fixes the underlying issues, if anything, I would expect them to deepen. There was an article making the rounds some time ago on HN how something like three quarters of medical studies had either strong data analysis errors in them or had complete bogus data, to the point where…

I think this attitude is actually a big part of the problem. Because research is largely government funded there is big political pressure to show that the research leads to measurable outcomes and that there is zero misuse or waste of funding. This is what has lead to the current system of big administrative bodies just focused on tracking how funding is used (and we can't really blame universities for the situation, reporting requirements on everything they do have increased dramatically).

On the other hand nobody cares about the waste in private industry, we are perfectly fine with paying a certain amount for e.g. a Facebook ad even though they just wasted a huge amount of money on a big VR bet.. Maybe we should just admit that there will be wastage and we can't easily measure scientific outcomes and just say we are happy with the overall benefit we get from science/academia for the price we pay for it (which in the broad picture is quite small).

Re: 'Not of faculty quality': How Penn mistreated Katalin Karikó

#189

Post by fritzo » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 9:10 PM UTC

tombert wrote: post #150

thelittlenag wrote: post #32

My wife was hired last year as a full time professor and leads her own lab. By far the largest pressure on new faculty is the ability to get money into her lab, and by extension the university since they take a very hefty cut (50-100%! btw this doubles the "cost" of the grant, it doesn't lessen the amount the professor gets). Getting approved for the money via the grant process means having published "interesting" re…

My dad used to be a full time professor of aerospace engineering. He liked the research, and he didn't mind teaching, but he quit after a few years because he absolutely hated having to play "salesman" all the time. He found himself seeing everyone as "potential funding", and he personally found it kind of hard to turn that mentality off. He went back to industry after that, which has its share of legitimate problems…

Is that true that aerospace engineers are not expected to act as sales people? I've certainly found that in software, engineers who don't sell their work get reassigned or laid off.

Re: 'Not of faculty quality': How Penn mistreated Katalin Karikó

#190

Post by zaptheimpaler » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 9:13 PM UTC

Her book Breaking Through [1] also goes into more detail about this. Basically academia is now ruled by the same rotten economic lenses as the rest of the economy. Everything is about profits, labs are evaluated in "grant $/sqft." and people are evaluated on a "resume" or dumb metrics like papers published. It's really hopeless how this economic virus infects every little corner of our world and turns it to shit.

This isn't just one story, there are countless other researchers and even life-saving drugs that are not developed purely because of this mindset. For a brief moment in time during the COVID pandemic we saw that it is possible to have a better system but it's been forgotten just as quickly.

[1] https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/breaking-through-34