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An Aspiring Scientist’s Frustration with Modern-Day Academia

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Re: An Aspiring Scientist’s Frustration with Modern-Day Academia

#11

Post by dnautics »

gajomi wrote: post #8

Can someone please change `wity' to `with' in the title? This critique is well written and was interesting for me to read, having just finished my PhD a few months ago. I can relate to a number of the issues he raised. However, I must take issue with his point (8). While I think it certainly is important to make sure that academics contribute back to larger society in some capacity, I think it is a bit premature to c…

the difficulty with 'basic research with seemingly no value' (a good example is the fourier transform, which at the time was seen as a mathematical curiosity) - is that it lacks accountability. How do you make sure that the academe that is selling their project as 'basic research' isn't just pulling a fast one on you and sucking your funds to tickle their intellectual jollies?

This problem is even worse when you take taxpayer funds, because transparency and accountability are fundamental attributes of good governance, and the claim that 'it will be useful someday' potentially pushes the accountability aspect out to t=infinity.

Re: An Aspiring Scientist’s Frustration with Modern-Day Academia

#13

Post by dnautics »

rhythmvs wrote: post #10
vampirechicken wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A marxist critique of community college.

Or someone speaking out of experience? I can testify[1] on the nefarious influence of MBA-like groupthink in academia: gigantic counterproductive bureaucratic overhead, obsession with pseudo-measurability of everything, from impact factors over “quality assessment” to “standardization” of examination and “competence matrices”. Top-down bogus coming from people who failed in the corporate world and met their Peter’s p…

while your characterization rings true for academia, I hardly believe that those attributes are the provenance of MBAs. The irony is that we are in an age of scientism (as Feynman would say) and it's precisely the popularization of science itself that has led to 'pseudo-measurability' that you speak of. I remember chuckling that my humanities classes were grading essays via mathematical rubric at a time when the math classes (which were proof-based) would just mark errors and give an 'overall grade'. Maybe they were just CYA in case someone would claim unfairness - which would not be the fault of the Business school.... Rather the fault of the law school litigious mentality.

Re: An Aspiring Scientist’s Frustration with Modern-Day Academia

#15

Post by gioele »

dnautics wrote: post #7

I’m also going to suppose that in order to find truth, the basic prerequisite is that you, as a researcher, have to be brutally honest – first and foremost, with yourself and about the quality of your own work. Here one immediately encounters a contradiction, as such honesty appears to have a very minor role in many people’s agendas. Very quickly after your initiation in the academic world, you learn that being “too…

The problem with being "too honest" about your work is that you would be the only one doing it.

When you read a "scientific" paper, you read it expecting it to be a sweetened account of the reality. The test have obviously been performed using only few samples; out of the the ten described features of a system, only the two described in depth are currently implemented; the source is not available because it does not work on the famous really hard cases of the class of problems it should solve.

The system is so polluted that if you start being as honest as you should be, the reviewers will think that you have done even less.

Re: An Aspiring Scientist’s Frustration with Modern-Day Academia

#16

Post by WalterSear »

rayiner wrote: post #3

I wonder why we impart onto young people such an idealism about science only to have to crush it when they get older and must be informed that science, like everything else, is a business.

Same reasons we ignore how capitalism messes with everything else.

Re: An Aspiring Scientist’s Frustration with Modern-Day Academia

#17

Post by WalterSear »

rayiner wrote: post #3

I wonder why we impart onto young people such an idealism about science only to have to crush it when they get older and must be informed that science, like everything else, is a business.

Same reasons we ignore how capitalism messes with everything else.

Re: An Aspiring Scientist’s Frustration with Modern-Day Academia

#18

Post by munin »

dnautics wrote: post #11
gajomi wrote: post #8

Can someone please change `wity' to `with' in the title? This critique is well written and was interesting for me to read, having just finished my PhD a few months ago. I can relate to a number of the issues he raised. However, I must take issue with his point (8). While I think it certainly is important to make sure that academics contribute back to larger society in some capacity, I think it is a bit premature to c…

the difficulty with 'basic research with seemingly no value' (a good example is the fourier transform, which at the time was seen as a mathematical curiosity) - is that it lacks accountability. How do you make sure that the academe that is selling their project as 'basic research' isn't just pulling a fast one on you and sucking your funds to tickle their intellectual jollies? This problem is even worse when you take…

> How do you make sure that the academe that is selling their project as 'basic research' isn't just pulling a fast one on you and sucking your funds to tickle their intellectual jollies?

what's the difference? would you want to fund a Feynman to tickle his intellectual jollies?

Re: An Aspiring Scientist’s Frustration with Modern-Day Academia

#19

Post by dnautics »

I think that the critiques of academic science are spot-on, although I am not sure that I agree with some of his causes, for example that "science is a business". A lot of the raw pettiness that happens in science would totally sink all but the largest businesses. I am not sure what the solution to the problem is, but of course, I'm launching a science nonprofit startup to try and do things without having to deal with as much of this silliness as I can get away with. I fully expect that if it should live past 30 years, my nonprofit will begin to succumb to the very things I established it to address.

Re: An Aspiring Scientist’s Frustration with Modern-Day Academia

#20

Post by auggierose »

I have worked at EPFL for a short time as as post-doc, and it really is a great school. Its Ph.D. students are excellent, and so what he says has to be taken seriously.

Personally, I have come to the conclusion that much of how Academia works today is inevitable. How many people are truly excellent in any job? Always only a small percentage. Let's say that in Academia the percentage is especially high, as high as 20%. What are the other 80% supposed to do? They have to represent something that they are not, because people outside of Academia must believe that 100% of Academia are excellent (otherwise they would revolt where all their tax money goes). Everything bad in Academia follows from this.

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