A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos • Hacker News Board

Re: A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos

#131

Post by close04 » Thu, Aug 09, 2018, 5:54 PM UTC

btrettel wrote: post #78

extralego wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oof. Funny you mention that. I just bought it, but haven’t read it yet; only flipped through a little. It’s clearly a dangerous topic for me and if I can find the discipline in myself, I’ll return it before it’s too late. Thanks for the thoughts, and the other comments here are all very lucid. These points aren’t lost on me, and I expect plenty of truth to them.

Norbert Wiener's book "Invention" is another on a similar topic. He argues that research should be driven more by the interests of individual researchers rather than managers and bureaucrats.

Research will always be driven by the interests of whoever is financing it. It just happens that it's almost never the researchers themselves.

And one thing to consider: a researcher's mind is an inquisitive mind that will "dig" even in directions nobody really cares about, don't help humanity, etc.

The one upside of someone else giving the direction is that you can be sure that there will be some concrete benefit from it. The downside is that it's mostly about money and power...

Re: A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos

#132

Post by abnry » Thu, Aug 09, 2018, 5:54 PM UTC

CJefferson wrote: post #7

abnry wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be in a math PhD program. Probably would still be if not for some life circumstance. I think it is worth taking a hard look at the value all of this mathematical research actually produces. I understand how number theory has been useful to cryptography. I understand how branches of pure math can have a surprising influence. But when these examples are given by pure mathematicians, it often strikes me as ane…

Your claim we could reduce mathematics research misses one big step -- that we can tell, in advance, which mathematicians (and researchers in general) are doing the "useful" research. In my experience that is very hard to predict. Also often researchers are "standing on the shoulders of giants", so the people who look most real world useful are extending earlier, "not useful" research.

I think we have 50 years worth of data, at the very, in the modern era to give at least some sort of evaluation of the usefulness of the money we are spending on math research.

Yeah, it's hard to quantify the value of research. I want research to be funded too. But I prefer some quantification over none at all.

Re: A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos

#133

Post by MrEfficiency » Thu, Aug 09, 2018, 6:00 PM UTC

jderick wrote: post #75

knappa wrote: post #61

A lot of this seems ridiculous: > Mental health issues are rife: approximately one-third of PhD students are at risk of having or developing a psychiatric disorder like depression. The baseline percentage of the population which experience depression (and other mental illness) each year is known to be pretty high -- and highest in for people in their 20's. One third sounds fairly normal; at any rate, there is a burde…

According to this website, the baseline for depression in America is 6.7%. http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/conditions/depression 1/3 is not normal at all.

Ive theorized the people getting a PhD are not your average american. Most college grads finish school and go into industry.

My peers who went onto get PhDs without going to industry were... different. Not necessarily super smart, but not the best socially or in leadership positions.

I can think of 3 people that were getting their PhDs in engineering, but I thought they were average students at best. One was an average to below average working with me on labs. Another was just a goofy weirdo, I couldnt be friends with him because he'd shoo me away. Another was somewhat a brainiac, but to a fault, He'd get As, but didnt really have friends from what I could tell.

I imagine lots of this is correlation not causation, and that things are different at big names schools.

Re: A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos

#134

Post by fastaguy88 » Thu, Aug 09, 2018, 6:02 PM UTC

A PhD should also be about being honest in ones arguments in the popular press. PhD's in Education may take 13 years (is that the median?) because most students are part time. In good graduate programs that provide guaranteed funding for students, 4-6 years is customary (and funding sometimes runs out at year 5). It's hard for me, as an academic, to trust an author who twists statistics to make his case.

And what does it mean to improve society? Basic biomedical science rarely promises improvements, but has given us revolutionary technologies (the structure of DNA, the genetic code, cloning, transgenic animals, etc, etc). The essence of basic science is that you do not know what you are going to learn, or whether it will be useful. You cannot plan unimagined discoveries.

Should graduate students start doing "research" sooner? That is certainly the standard in biomedical research, where very few courses are required. But the consequence is that students know a lot about what they have done, and very little about other disciplines. How does a graduate student in biology become a computational biologist without learning programming and algorithms?

The comments about having research experience are spot-on. And many of the frustrations people describe could be reduced by learning more about one's advisor before joining the group.

Re: A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos

#135

Post by bradhoffman » Thu, Aug 09, 2018, 6:02 PM UTC

doctorsher wrote: post #125

bradhoffman wrote: post #84

You all are kind of scaring me a bit... I just finished my Bachelor's and am starting my Master's this month. I have no formal research experience, but I planned to dive in during my Master's. For anyone who has done/is doing there PhD, if there is any advice you all could give me in order to get the most out of this next year before I apply for PhD programs, that would be great.

What type of masters degree is it? Course-based or thesis-based? If you are interested in continuing on to a PhD, a thesis-based masters would give you a much better insight. Even better if you try to publish while you are getting your degree. If it is a course-based masters, it will take you a lot of extra work outside of classes to get a taste of research. Do you already know your area of interest? This would be tr…

I choose to take the thesis route, but I still have 27 hours of coursework to complete as well. My goal was to have 2-3 publications over the next year, but I am not sure how feasible it is. I am in the middle of determining a route for my research right now. Leaning towards AI, but also enjoy Operating Systems, Networking, and Security.

Re: A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos

#136

Post by bradhoffman » Thu, Aug 09, 2018, 6:03 PM UTC

andreyk wrote: post #109

bradhoffman wrote: post #84

You all are kind of scaring me a bit... I just finished my Bachelor's and am starting my Master's this month. I have no formal research experience, but I planned to dive in during my Master's. For anyone who has done/is doing there PhD, if there is any advice you all could give me in order to get the most out of this next year before I apply for PhD programs, that would be great.

I did the same route as you (Master's first, then starting on my PhD right now). It's a great route! In general, the best route is to try and join an ongoing project where you can be guided/mentored by a Post doc or senior PhD. This is easiest is larger labs, though in a smaller lab the professor might interact with you more (unlikely you will meet with prof much in larger lab). For your application two things matter…

What if the research options available are not something you're too interested in? I had a professor tell me I could work with him, but he said I had to work on what he has decided. That doesn't seem very attractive to me.

Re: A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos

#137

Post by amyjess » Thu, Aug 09, 2018, 6:07 PM UTC

extralego wrote: post #40

apo wrote: post #14

When you look at the stats, it’s hard not to conclude that the current PhD system is fundamentally broken. Mental health issues are rife: approximately one-third of PhD students are at risk of having or developing a psychiatric disorder like depression. The high level of dropouts is similarly worrying – and possibly another symptom of the same problem. Research suggests that on average 50% of PhD students leave gradu…

These phenomenons are interesting to witness for someone like myself who loves doing research but followed a very different academic path because I felt demonized by formal school systems in high school and at a state uni. Speaking purely from observation of many peers, there were definitely some who navigated the social and academic realms well, and garnered respect from socially-encourageable and conformist mentors…

> All my friends with PhDs are unhappy, and do not enjoy doing research. They are all intelligent, some a little bit creative, and only curious when forced. They are experts of citations (a tease that never gets old to me, sorry) and I’m afraid are most concerned with not being left behind or achieving prestige.

> Having had countless long late-night chats with them in empty bars about this, I gather their habits of conformity got them that far and let them down once they were on their own. They consistently think what I’m doing in my life is more interesting than theirs. I think the opposite and would die to be in their shoes.

Huh. You'd think they'd just leave academia and go into industry after getting their Bachelors or maybe their Masters.

I mean, I'm fairly uncreative and conformist, but I noped out of college after getting my Bachelors and went right into industry. I'm currently more than happy working at an enterprise telecom in a conservative suburb, and I'm glad I didn't stick around in academia.

Re: A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos

#138

Post by wsy » Thu, Aug 09, 2018, 6:10 PM UTC

This article has some true observations, but the conclusions seem to go in a totally wrong direction.

Writing a PhD is a very ambitious endeavor. You will inevitably have your downs and crises, because research is hard. This is independent of the research topic. Now asking that the PhD thesis should not only advance research, but also 'improve society' will only increase the pressure.

The author also has the purpose of a PhD wrong: this is your research journeyman time, and delivering the PhD thesis is like creating your masterpiece as craftsman (in the original meaning where you create a fine piece of work which earns you the right to call yourself master of a craft). The real, unsupervised research career starts after PhD. This also means that it would be a very bad idea to start with high-risk research. Do this as PostDoc, when you have acquired all the necessary skills.

Not focusing on publications is the worst advice one can give aspiring academics. Research is about advancing shared knowledge, and the only way to do this is to share your results. If you don't manage to publish, either your results are not relevant, or your work is not considered sound by your peer researchers. Successful publishing in reputable venues validates your research, and is the most effective way to disseminate new insights. I agree that the publishing system is broken. You have to work around that by choosing the right venues. This is another academic skill you need to learn.

If you really want to improve society and feel insufficient if you 'only' improve your research field, then don't pursue a research career. Better go work for some non-profit organization, or found one.

Re: A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos

#139

Post by abnry » Thu, Aug 09, 2018, 6:11 PM UTC

JadeNB wrote: post #126

abnry wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meritocracy. The mathematicians at Princeton University are going to be producing potentially more valuable pure math research than a professor at name state university 145. I don't know what the exact figure is, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was less than 25% of math PhDs who go on to get a research job in math. How much are we funding these students here? I was on the receiving end of some NSF money for a semes…

> Meritocracy. The mathematicians at Princeton University are going to be producing potentially more valuable pure math research than a professor at name state university 145. On average, maybe … but, if we just axe those at NSU 145, then we're definitely not going to be funding the proof of the bounded-gaps conjecture. Now, Zhang managed to prove it anyway ( https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2013/05/bounded_gaps_…

Zhang is an outlier. From what I followed when his proof came out, there were actually very similar ideas being developed by Terry Tao at UCLA and by a PhD student at Oxford. The sort of places you'd expect. And IIRC, Zhang actually come from the top math department in China. He just had trouble getting a good job in the U.S.

It is also fair to wonder just where this twin prime conjecture is leading us in terms of usefulness. I know it's hard, but we should be able to draw direct comparisons to how something like RSA panned out. Though RSA is pretty easy to understand. Maybe a better example is elliptic curve cryptography, though I know nothing about that. Can we at least provide a road map for how understanding the twin prime conjecture will lead to useful, practical techniques?

(And yeah, I accidentally added a "not" there. Will edit.)

Re: A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos

#140

Post by warkdarrior » Thu, Aug 09, 2018, 6:17 PM UTC

extralego wrote: post #54

NegativeLatency wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They consistently think what I’m doing in my life is more interesting than theirs. I think the opposite The grass is always greener

Sure. Fair. But reason can resolve a bit more detail here if we try. Particularly, I am struck that there is such little complaint over the status quo of citation dependence. Popularly speaking, of course there is, but researching PhDs just make their days of it with barely a fuss. Shouldn’t that be particularly concerning? In recognition of the congruency this has with what the authorities demanded of me when I argu…

By "citation dependence" I assume you mean that researchers are judged by how many citations their own work has received. This is an time-efficient, yet imperfect mechanism to measure the importance of a research work.

Are there more accurate ways to measure the importance/impact/relevance of research work?