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Academics, we need to talk

matt-welsh.blogspot.com

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Re: Academics, we need to talk

#41

Post by wfo »

draw_down wrote: post #15

Translation: Universities should continue on the path to becoming the research arm of industry. Academics should alter what they do and how they think, in order to better suit industry. Academic research does not have value or merit of its own, outside of its usefulness to industry. Impact on the world happens only in an industrial context.

It's already happened with CS education for undergrads, why not have industry dominate the research arm of CS departments as well? If we don't bend over backwards pandering to industry and completely restructure academic thought to pander to profit-driven corporations then how will our bright grad students get jobs at Google? God forbid if we don't obey every command of the software industry one day someone might say they're a CS major at a party and have someone ask "CS? Why? What are you going to do with that?"

Re: Academics, we need to talk

#42

Post by knughit »

cushychicken wrote: post #36
mdwelsh wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I'm the author of the original blog post.) Ad hominem attacks aside, I do think it's a big deal if a bunch of academics are spending time working on the wrong things, if for no better reason than maximizing efficiency: Don't forget that most academic research is funded by the government. Since I also happen to help decide which research proposals Google funds, I also care that academics are well-aligned with the pro…

>it's a big deal if a bunch of academics are spending time working on the wrong things At the risk of sounding a little prickly with my comment - isn't it a little presumptuous to write off a certain amount of research as "wrong"? There are plenty of examples of research that didn't have a clear purpose leading to breakthroughs - safety glass, microwave ovens, and Teflon all spring to mind. Also, focusing on efficien…

Matt is talking about academic who publish papers showing that System X is Y% better than System Z, under completely nonsensical conditions. They aren't advancing the state of the art, they are mapping the terrain of the compost heap, but don't realize it.

Re: Academics, we need to talk

#43

Post by kevan »

cushychicken wrote: post #36
mdwelsh wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I'm the author of the original blog post.) Ad hominem attacks aside, I do think it's a big deal if a bunch of academics are spending time working on the wrong things, if for no better reason than maximizing efficiency: Don't forget that most academic research is funded by the government. Since I also happen to help decide which research proposals Google funds, I also care that academics are well-aligned with the pro…

>it's a big deal if a bunch of academics are spending time working on the wrong things At the risk of sounding a little prickly with my comment - isn't it a little presumptuous to write off a certain amount of research as "wrong"? There are plenty of examples of research that didn't have a clear purpose leading to breakthroughs - safety glass, microwave ovens, and Teflon all spring to mind. Also, focusing on efficien…

I understood that as more of a lament that a lot of work is being duplicated because academics aren't aware of prior work in the industry. But then again, how are you supposed to know that someone has a solution unless they tell the world about it in a publication?

> It drives me insane to see papers that claim that some problem is "unsolved" when most of the industry players have already solved it, but they didn't happen to write an NSDI or SIGCOMM paper about it.

Re: Academics, we need to talk

#44

Post by zouhair »

mdwelsh wrote: post #12
forgottenpass wrote: post #9

Now, I don't think all academic research has to be relevant to industry. I'm getting kind of sick of this tactic, where this fake concession is made before going on about how academia isn't designed well enough to deliver to industry. If authors of articles like this didn't care about the efficiency of academia to deliver them research, what's the big deal if there are a bunch of people somewhere running around in ci…

(I'm the author of the original blog post.) Ad hominem attacks aside, I do think it's a big deal if a bunch of academics are spending time working on the wrong things, if for no better reason than maximizing efficiency: Don't forget that most academic research is funded by the government. Since I also happen to help decide which research proposals Google funds, I also care that academics are well-aligned with the pro…

I think you are focusing on the wrong problem. The real problem of academics is not what people research, the huge elephant in the room is the "publish or die" dogma.

This dogma is one of worst thing happening to research.

Re: Academics, we need to talk

#45

Post by wfo »

If you're doing industry-relevant research and you're in academia, leave. Your work can be supported by corporate profits because it is in essence for corporate profit. Get a job in industry, make more money, and make room for academics who want to do honest-to-god academics and work on theory or fundamental research. Or who want to do research relevant to improving society, not improving profit margins.

There aren't that many professor jobs out there. It's unbelievably greedy to be taking one up to do industry's dirty work.

You can always take an afternoon off a semester here and there to be an adjunct and teach a SE class or give a guest lecture.

Re: Academics, we need to talk

#46

Post by selimthegrim »

swehner wrote: post #39
jsolson wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really what the article is doing, though... Instead it's saying roughly: much of the work coming out of academia attempts solve problems applicable to industry, but in actuality industry is not actually suffering from the problems solved (either because underlying assumptions are wrong and industry is plagued by a different problem or because the problem has already be adequately solved by existing work).

Some quotes from the article: "My first piece of advice: do a sabbatical or internship in industry." "you have to work on a real product team" "hold yourself to a higher standard" "keep an open mind" Kind of painful to reread it, actually.

With all due respect, munin's point upstream about commoditized research areas doesn't apply to quantum information yet, Prof. Wehner, but if I were you I'd be afraid about Google poaching talent, even from Singapore.

Re: Academics, we need to talk

#47

Post by pklausler »

Program committees and the conferences they serve may be part of the problem, and hence part of the solution as well. Instead of picking the best N papers so as to fill out a conference schedule, pick the good papers and shorten the conference schedule if the number of good papers is <N. And then raise the standards to meet your expectations of reproducibility, code reviews, unit tests, etc. If a big conference like ISCA were to be shortened by one day by omitting the least worthy papers, you'd see much better work arriving the next year.

Re: Academics, we need to talk

#49

Post by wink »

mdwelsh wrote: post #38
NotOscarWilde wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if a company wanted to make sabbaticals or science-focused internships more interesting for people on the academic career tracks, it probably could ease their confidential policies and design such internships so that said academics can publish, right? You have mentioned elsewhere that you are looking into how Google can help the academic world focus more on the right industrial questions, and you personally recom…

It's a good idea but fairly challenging in practice. The amount of information you need to reveal in a scientific publication may make many companies uncomfortable. My view is that academics should not just be focused on getting another paper on their CV -- there is value in having the industry experience even if no papers come out of it.

I'm not in academia per se, but (in Germany) just getting to do my (equivalent of a) Master's thesis at a company (still with a supervisor at university) was hard enough - because sometimes they just seem to search for people to do work based on their topic suggestions and if you want to do something that's a little off the tracks... Let's just say there were no real arguments, mostly just "we don't like companies that are not university spin-offs and oh shock that company might reuse that thesis to advertise their exploits instead of granting the kudos to the university.

But maybe that's not the general case, but as someone coming from the tech sector to get a degree (and not the other way round) this sounds all too similar :)

Re: Academics, we need to talk

#50

Post by knughit »

mdwelsh wrote: post #34
irremediable wrote: post #24

I agree with some of this, but I wonder... > It drives me insane to see papers that claim that some problem is "unsolved" when most of the industry players have already solved it, but they didn't happen to write an NSDI or SIGCOMM paper about it. I've seen many examples of industry "solutions" that aren't documented, aren't published, and aren't even validated. There's a place for papers like these. I'm not quite you…

That's a fair point. The issue is that many of these papers don't seem to acknowledge that industry has (unpublished) solutions, and are somewhat naive as a result.

Another way to look at it: avoid the open/academic community stop doing xrypto research because NSA mathematicians are (secretly) way ahead of them?

"Open" is a different league from proprietary. It doesn't matter that they are behind proprietary. but it matters when they are working on the wrong problems.

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