Great! Except that if you stop chasing those kudos, you will promptly find yourself unemployed and thus unable to do any research at all.
Exactly, while imperfect, these kudos are one of the only measures of academic ability.
A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos
171–180 of 220 posts
Re: A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos
#172When 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…
Of course this quote also suggests that maybe people who go in to PhD programs have higher rates of mental health issues. I would definitely argue that PhD programs are both bad for mental health and also attract people with poor mental health in the first place. I have known plenty of people who didn't feel like they had the skills (both technical and/or social) to go in to industry so they applied to grad school.
This is the _exact_ reason I went to grad school. I didn't believe I was a "good enough" chemical engineer so I went to grad school. About 2-3 years I was miserable but stuck with it to get the letters after my name. Thankfully my program pushes us to get out in under 5 years.
I also struggled with mental health during my PhD, but there were a lot of compounding factors. The PhD was fuel on the fire, but not the spark.
Now I've transitioned successfully into the "data science" field, so I'm much happier!
Re: A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos
#173The two aren’t mutex. And publish or perish. The suggestion is that academia should be utilitarian and short-term focused. This will never happen. It’s tantamount to saying “we should get rid of archeologists because they aren’t a profit-center department.”
^ this guy. exactly.
Measuring the utility of academia is futile. If anything should be said about utility it is that empirically, the average ROI on academia from the point of view of The State is always net positive: economically, culturally, socially, etc.
Re: A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos
#174A corporation should be about improving society, not chasing shareholder value.
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Re: A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
I work in a large academic research lab and I'm with you on the lack of creativity and conformism. Most people here don't have ambitious ideas. They always think in terms of basic improvements to ideas that were recently published about. They seem to automatically think that progress can only be made in the direction of the latest cool papers from well-established authors in the field. Me, I'm with Peter Thiel... Don…
Because of the way that STEM is taught, free thinking is often discouraged, and the 'freaks' leave academia as soon as possible or become conformist. This is not a new thing, Einstein was mocked for his free thinking ideas.
If that's the case, what is a non STEM bachelors degree that you would recommend for 'freaks'?
Re: A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos
#176You 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.
Apply straight to a PhD program. Don't pay for a graduate degree.
I disagree. A Masters with thesis is more directed, a good way to learn how to do research, and not hinged on a novel contribution for a successful defense. My PhD went much faster and smoother because I had learnt the ropes and decided it was something worth doing.
I think part of the problem is people jumping straight into PhD without any research experience. I watched quite a few students struggle when taking this road.
I do agree that it's a problem if grad school costs money, but a large stipend is only really available in STEM or medicine.
Re: A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course this quote also suggests that maybe people who go in to PhD programs have higher rates of mental health issues. I would definitely argue that PhD programs are both bad for mental health and also attract people with poor mental health in the first place. I have known plenty of people who didn't feel like they had the skills (both technical and/or social) to go in to industry so they applied to grad school.
This is the _exact_ reason I went to grad school. I didn't believe I was a "good enough" chemical engineer so I went to grad school. About 2-3 years I was miserable but stuck with it to get the letters after my name. Thankfully my program pushes us to get out in under 5 years. I also struggled with mental health during my PhD, but there were a lot of compounding factors. The PhD was fuel on the fire, but not the spar…
This is scarily close to me.
Re: A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos
#178I don't understand this system at all. Only 1 in 200 Phd student ends up becoming a professor, yet in college we have classes of 200-250 students per professor. And some of the older professors have been teaching the same class for many many years, without attempting to change the material.
They are just repeating the stuff the already know, over and over again. It seems for me a waste of human resources, for me, to put some of the smartest people in to such repetitive task. Instead, I think the hiring bar for academia positions should be lower, the classes should be smaller, and the student should receive more customize experience.
Re: A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 fr…
> The one upside of someone else giving the direction is that you can be sure that there will be some concrete benefit from it. Wiener argues that this often is not true, because the people with the money often have a poor understanding of what's actually important. To give an example, in my own area of research, my impression is that most industrial folks hate math. They consistently deny the benefit of it. As a the…
I won't claim to understand the topic better than this author but one thing I know: important is an incredible subjective concept. So I will quote the perspective of another writer. In Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind there's a chapter dedicated to research (the Sugar Daddy of Science). The short version is you have limited resources. You can't invest in every research project. You are more likely to invest in the ones that increase those resources or to try to solve a pressing issue at that time.
There is no scientific answer to the questions "Which project to fund? What is good? What is important?", only political, economic, or religious reasons. Science studies for the sake of expanding human knowledge and satisfying curiosity.
What's important for you, the scientist? Finding a cure for Alzheimer or developing a new semiconductor? What's more important for the person funding it?
So I will argue that "having a poor understanding of what's important" in a generally valid conclusion about anyone. And unfortunately I am acutely aware that a scientist might just be curious enough to spend money on studies that will bring no palpable benefit to anyone but his own curiosity sometimes. While this is an admirable academic exercise, is it better than any other study that produces in the end a more palpable result, like money?
I might be to cynical or pragmatic but sometimes there's no going around it. Just recently I read about a new archaeological dig that uncovered a viking toilet and could finally describe their approach to human waste over the centuries. While this definitely increased the total human knowledge, can you imagine a more practical way of spending that money? I can assure you someone a poor understanding of what's actually important could :). Or at the very least you can expect that they will be able to identify the "importance" based on the financial and profitability aspects.
Re: A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos
#180When 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…
Of course this quote also suggests that maybe people who go in to PhD programs have higher rates of mental health issues. I would definitely argue that PhD programs are both bad for mental health and also attract people with poor mental health in the first place. I have known plenty of people who didn't feel like they had the skills (both technical and/or social) to go in to industry so they applied to grad school.
I find this funny since I had the opposite experience: at the time I left undergrad I didn't think I had the chops to do a Ph.d., so I went into industry instead.