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

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

#21

Post by Djle »

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…

This is more of a Thomas Kuhn moment than anything else, where the mainstream doesn't accept new theories that will upend their own work.

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

#23

Post by wrycoder »

bell-cot wrote: post #8

Well...yes. Treating the actual high-value workers like sh*t has been American Academia's SOP for how many years now?

I read yesterday that there are now more administrators than students at Harvard, but ‘only’ one third as many teachers as students.

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

#25

Post by ahoka »

kogus wrote: post #11
myth_drannon wrote: post #5

UPenn is in the news again. Something tells me the fish stinks from the head.

Your comment made me curious to look up their leadership page. As of this post, Katalin Karikó is featured very prominently on the president's page, above even the president herself. That's a pretty big mea culpa. https://president.upenn.edu/

Pharisees.

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

#26

Post by wavemode »

hodgesrm wrote: post #2

> “I do hope that it causes Penn and a bunch of other institutions that fund science this way to reflect a little bit on what the chances are that some scientists who do not get funding, and wind up leaving, end up being like Katalin Karikó,” Scales said. A brilliant woman scientist researching an uncool topic hits the trifecta of resistance to her work. It's wonderful to see her persistence vindicated but it sounds…

woman, uncool topic... is the third factor of the trifecta "scientist"? or "brilliant"?

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

#27

Post by test77777 »

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…

I think the opposite, we need more raw labor aimed at replicating scientific results. Today our institutions are so tiny they can hardly afford what few projects are funded to completion.

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

#28

Post by throw_pm23 »

m_a_g wrote: post #3

This article makes me wonder how many groundbreaking discoveries are buried under academia's bureaucracy and ego battles.

But how would you solve this issue though? Once you decide that you will value and promote people who fit the characteristics of Kariko, a thousand impostors immediately pop up who will match all the outward appearances of that you wanted to promote.

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

#29

Post by michaelrpeskin »

ska wrote: post #19
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…

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 up with a ground breaking theory or do you want to turn the crank and measure some value a little more precise? There is value in both, but the universities really bias towards the latter because it's more expensive and needs more and bigger grants to get done.

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

#30

Post by bell-cot »

hodgesrm wrote: post #2

> “I do hope that it causes Penn and a bunch of other institutions that fund science this way to reflect a little bit on what the chances are that some scientists who do not get funding, and wind up leaving, end up being like Katalin Karikó,” Scales said. A brilliant woman scientist researching an uncool topic hits the trifecta of resistance to her work. It's wonderful to see her persistence vindicated but it sounds…

> ...but it sounds like time for a revolution in how university research is managed.

Agreed...but it was probably time for a revolution 50 years ago. Suffice to say that those actively causing the problems are very widely, deeply, and skillfully entrenched. And willing to fight to the (metaphorical) death in defense of the current system.

Vs...could you tell me how numerous, skilled, and well-armed your hoped-for revolutionary army might be?

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