Academics, we need to talk • Hacker News Board

Re: Academics, we need to talk

#51

Post by knughit » Thu, Jan 07, 2016, 6:09 PM UTC

mdwelsh wrote: post #17

skywhopper wrote: post #3

> I know this sounds like a waste of time because you probably won't get a paper out of it It's unfortunate that a "lessons learned" paper summarizing a sabbatical in industry doing customer-facing work would not be publishable. Surely it's far more useful to other academics than most papers. It'd definitely be more broadly relevant. My wife is a professor in a practical field and I'm always sad to hear what counts a…

The issue is that when doing a sabbatical/internship at a company, it's often not possible to write a paper - either because there's not time, or the company may not want to publish the work (which could be confidential). I wouldn't go to a company expecting to be able to publish about the project.

Confidentiality is overrated, outside of narrow areas of core tech. A few years ago, Facebook hired a massive fleet of Google experts, and replicated a lot of the tech and open sourced it. But the reason they cause Google competitive trouble is because Google didn't understand the social product and have a culture to build it, not trade secret tech problems.

Re: Academics, we need to talk

#52

Post by pklausler » Thu, Jan 07, 2016, 6:12 PM UTC

js8 wrote: post #37

mdwelsh wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so worried about duplication by academics -- that does not happen often -- but rather about academic research that's just wrong: makes bad assumptions, uses a flawed methodology, fails to address the general case.

I think I agree with samth - it's not the academia, but the industry who needs to open up. Especially Google has a reputation of being very secretive.

Google patents a lot of cool stuff, actually. But the ideas tend to not get noticed in academia; when was the last time you saw a patent in a bibliography?

Re: Academics, we need to talk

#53

Post by mdwelsh » Thu, Jan 07, 2016, 6:14 PM UTC

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…

That's a fair point. I'm trying to draw a distinction between "speculative" research (which might pan out long term) and "industry-focused" research (which tries to solve problems we have today). My concern is not with speculative research -- that's great -- but rather flawed industry-focused research: making incorrect assumptions, failing to deal with the general case, not considering real-world constraints.

Re: Academics, we need to talk

#54

Post by woah » Thu, Jan 07, 2016, 6:15 PM UTC

Matt, I was intrigued by your throwaway "not another multi hop routing protocol" comment. As far as I can tell, the field is very slow-moving. The state of the art, Babel, is at least 5 years old and is an incremental improvement on protocols that are at least 20 years old. Some very promising research was done into DHT-based routing with Scalable Source Routing, but this work is now from more than 10 years ago, and interest seems to have dropped off completely.

Are there a bunch of protocols that I don't know about?

Are you maybe referring also to centralized path finding algorithms? This would explain the comment.

Re: Academics, we need to talk

#55

Post by PaulHoule » Thu, Jan 07, 2016, 6:15 PM UTC

boxy310 wrote: post #6

skywhopper wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having trouble figuring out how this relates to the article.

Agricultural engineering has a significantly better interrelationship between academia and industry. Or in other words, ag engineering closes the loop on the R-to-D stage of R&D. As a result, developing practical solutions leads to more research questions, and it forms a tighter virtuous cycle. As a result, it provides a better example than what the initial article implies between tech academia and industry.

It's a model for emulation.

Re: Academics, we need to talk

#56

Post by ibuildthings » Thu, Jan 07, 2016, 6:17 PM UTC

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 agree with you completely about "bad industry-focused research". It serves no end. My question is that, is it just a reflection of mediocracy and gaming/dishonesty being everywhere, including academica ?

In this case, please trying to take shortcuts towards their goal of improving the amount of publications and grant approvals. There is reward in the system for this kind of behaviour. You being a reviewer/jury position unfortunately do not have the luxury of a filter.

Is there a way to early catch this , by looking at past trends ?

Slight detour is that this is one of my rationale for spending time reviewing papers for journals/conferences. In average, only 10 to 20% of papers I review really stands out or appeal to me, which is correlated to acceptance rate of a top journal/conference.

Re: Academics, we need to talk

#57

Post by adrusi » Thu, Jan 07, 2016, 6:19 PM UTC

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 don't think it's a fake concession. There is academic value in far-out research that isn't relevent to industry, just like there's value in math research and in metaphysics.

The point the article tries to make is that if you're trying to research something relevent to industry, it's probably not nearly as valuable academically as something more exotic would be, so you'd better make a good effort to make it practically valuable to compensate.

Nobody is that much of a condescending prick to the person they're trying to persuade.

In context the line didn't appear condescending at all as I read it. A little sarcastic, that's all. The author made it clear that he doesn't think academics need to produce something that's actually used by consumers. And the author was/is an academic. If you'll allow me to speculate, it seems that you don't have the highest opinion of academics and so it seems possible that you might further think that in order to be valuable they need to produce a product that is economically valuable. If you read the "I know, crazy, right?" line with that attitude, I can see how it might appear much more condescending than it actually is.

This is not a "we need to talk" conversation this is a "I need to talk at you, so I can show off to other people."

This is a non sequitur. "This article isn't trying to persuade academics, therefore it is trying to promote the author's social standing at academics' expense". The author identified a problem and offered a potential solution, does that mean he also has to persuade? Your statement presents a false dichotomy, that he has to either persuade academics or shame academics to promote himself. I say that he doesn't make an attempt to persuade beyond identifying problem and solution because he doesn't want to bore the reader with rhetoric, nothing more nefarious.

Re: Academics, we need to talk

#58

Post by mdwelsh » Thu, Jan 07, 2016, 6:20 PM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #31

mdwelsh wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so worried about duplication by academics -- that does not happen often -- but rather about academic research that's just wrong: makes bad assumptions, uses a flawed methodology, fails to address the general case.

If industry could provide better platforms (up to date, not hand me downs or neutered versions of their real product) then I think you might see better forms of this research. For example, I'd love to improve search relevance, but w/o having access to Google's search engine to build on, it's pretty hard. That's my suggestion. :-)

While I agree in general that opening up opportunities for academic-industry collaboration is good, I don't think it's practical for academics to work on problems at true industry scale. Academics don't have access to the resources, personnel, or funding required to do that kind of work. An academic lab can do many things of relevance to industry -- but not everything.

Google recently open sourced its TensorFlow plstform specifically to enable researchers (and others) to build upon and improve it -- trying to avoid the problem with MapReduce (where a bunch of clones came out that were, at least initially, inferior to the original).

Re: Academics, we need to talk

#59

Post by mdwelsh » Thu, Jan 07, 2016, 6:22 PM UTC

js8 wrote: post #37

mdwelsh wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so worried about duplication by academics -- that does not happen often -- but rather about academic research that's just wrong: makes bad assumptions, uses a flawed methodology, fails to address the general case.

I think I agree with samth - it's not the academia, but the industry who needs to open up. Especially Google has a reputation of being very secretive.

See my reply above - I'm all for industry opening up where possible, and a lot of stuff gets open sourced these days (hell, didn't Facebook even open source its data center designs?). Opening up technology doesn't necessarily mean academics will focus on the right problems, though.

Re: Academics, we need to talk

#60

Post by mdwelsh » Thu, Jan 07, 2016, 6:25 PM UTC

wfo wrote: post #45

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…

I don't agree with this at all. The partnership between industry and academia is long-standing and has proven to be extremely valuable -- much of the Internet came about because of it.