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Academia Is Eating Its Young

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Re: Academia Is Eating Its Young

#91

Post by vwinsyee »

bokonist wrote: post #82
simonster wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never participated in the grant process, so I don't have the full information here, but I do know that grants are scored by other professors in the field. Part of the problem is that the grants are numerically scored, and this scoring is primarily based on the merit of the proposal and the publication record of the lab. The lab budget isn't taken into account, and no one actually checks to make sure the project…

Interesting, thank you for sharing. I think it's a major problem that there is no external accountability. The grants are scored by peer professors, based on publications (which again requires approval by peers). This creates a bunch of problems 1) it's very easy for entire field or subfield to go down the wrong track, and have no way of getting out of that track because the professors controlling grants and publicat…

Addressing #1: Most academic research the government funds is in basic science in expert domains, e.g. intercellular communication, neural firing patterns, etc, and much of this basic science is exploratory. For most projects, it would be difficult for everyone to agree on the goal and metrics of a competition. Sure, this might work for high-profile projects, e.g. establish a map of some organism's genome or connectome, or applied projects like your examples, but prize-based competitions would be difficult to implement on a large-scale. On another note, who would judge these competitions? For most domain-specific research, it would be peers in those domains -- so not much would be changed.

Addressing #2: This already exists. The government does contract out many tech projects, e.g. to Lockheed Martin or Boeing. Life science labs I've been associated with, have also received contracts from the NIH (as opposed to grants). While these aren't commission-based, these contracts are probably what you have in mind.

Address #3: This also already happens to a degree, typically with public research universities. Especially when a new center opens, the state + federal government will give some minimum funds for the center or institute to keep their lights on. But no funding is ever "permanent", especially when you have politicians slashing research budgets. Finally, it's interestingly that you mention that these institutions would be more or less under the complete control by an executive director or a BOD. The article mentions that having individuals of such power over a field (as these executives would have) stifles change, and I agree. It would be too optimistic to believe that these executives would not pick and choose projects of their liking, which is actually pretty much what currently happens. Plus, not having to submit grants virtually guarantees less accountability.

Re: Academia Is Eating Its Young

#92

Post by vwinsyee »

simonster wrote: post #73
bokonist wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, I think the problem is slightly different. The job of a tenured professor in 1980 was pretty sweet. Upper middle class salary, great job security, a soap box from which to influence impressionable minds, freedom to pursue intellectual interests, etc. Naturally, as with any career track that looks pretty sweet, people rush to enter the field. Thus the great numbers of grad students. There are basically three ways…

I think that, in a sense, a) would have been the right solution here. While I'm not sure this is the case in all fields, at least in mine, when you apply for grants, people too much about how famous you already are and what you have published. People don't care about how many grants you already have, or how much money you burned through to produce your previous publications. This is bad. First, it creates the illusio…

A quick comment about point 2: A lot of academia is about quantity over quality these days. One high-impact, well-designed paper with strong conclusions could very well be worth more than 50 weaker papers. Unfortunately these days, many people, especially those outside of the field, may perceive the 50 weaker-paper lab(s) to be more "efficient" than the 1 strong-paper lab.

Re: Academia Is Eating Its Young

#93

Post by vwinsyee »

irollboozers wrote: post #86
streptomycin wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't wait to write a grant application targeting the average Internet user rather than experts in my field. That will surely be a productive use of my time, and will undoubtedly result in a more fair distribution of money. Honestly, I'm not trying to be an asshole and I commend you for your spirit, but I just can't see how you and others think crowdsourcing science funding is a good idea. Science has problems, but…

We openly tell researchers that crowdfunding isn't for everyone, at least not yet. If it isn't valuable for you, that doesn't mean it can't be valuable for anyone else. Just don't do it and wait around for others to validate it. I don't believe you're being an asshole. You're just picking up the mantle that being a scientist automagically entitles you to know what's best for other scientists.

I'd have to share the parent's skeptism. I'm in biostatistics and neuroscience, and for the most part, could evaluate a stats or neuro proposal. But, if I were to look at, say, an astrophysics or physical chemistry research proposal, I'd probably have little to no idea on the proposal's merits. So I'm curious how Microryza will help non-domain experts evaluate proposals.

Re: Academia Is Eating Its Young

#94

Post by xenophanes »

Look at the URL in the picture at the top. He did a search before doing the autocomplete.

This changes the results.

Try it. If you don't do the search for what you want to autocomplete, you will not get the same autocomplete options, in this particular case.

So he's basically posting a picture of doctored autocomplete options. If he just went to google.com and typed that in the search box, he would not get that dropdown.

Re: Academia Is Eating Its Young

#95

Post by eli_gottlieb »

spc476 wrote: post #83
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(due to the unsustainable nature of what it takes to get tenure, and midlife burnout) I'm in academia right now, and this is indeed a problem. I generally only meet two kinds of academics: the perpetually tired (like myself) and the perpetually energetic. This may have something to do with the ways our bodies metabolize the utterly ubiquitous, universal stimulants (ie: loads and loads of caffeine) we take to cope wit…

By "middle school" do you mean the US 6th-8th grade (more or less)? Because in "middle school" I wanted to become a cartoonist, not the computer programmer than I ended up being. I personally think that specializing in middle school is way too early.

The point wouldn't necessarily be to start specializing that early, but that those years are simply unnecessary bullshit. Nobody I know remembers them being anything but a repetition of elementary school and a first introduction to the material of high school.

So it's probably easiest to just eliminate it, move kids directly on to high school or a vocational program, and graduate them three years earlier into higher ed, apprenticeships, or first jobs.

Re: Academia Is Eating Its Young

#96

Post by simonster »

vwinsyee wrote: post #92
simonster wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that, in a sense, a) would have been the right solution here. While I'm not sure this is the case in all fields, at least in mine, when you apply for grants, people too much about how famous you already are and what you have published. People don't care about how many grants you already have, or how much money you burned through to produce your previous publications. This is bad. First, it creates the illusio…

A quick comment about point 2: A lot of academia is about quantity over quality these days. One high-impact, well-designed paper with strong conclusions could very well be worth more than 50 weaker papers. Unfortunately these days, many people, especially those outside of the field, may perceive the 50 weaker-paper lab(s) to be more "efficient" than the 1 strong-paper lab.

> One high-impact, well-designed paper with strong conclusions could very well be worth more than 50 weaker papers.

This is true. Assessing impact is difficult, and journal impact factor is not a great proxy. However, at least in my field, most Nature and Science papers aren't worth 50 second- or even third-tier papers.

Re: Academia Is Eating Its Young

#97

Post by XorNot »

simonster wrote: post #96
vwinsyee wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quick comment about point 2: A lot of academia is about quantity over quality these days. One high-impact, well-designed paper with strong conclusions could very well be worth more than 50 weaker papers. Unfortunately these days, many people, especially those outside of the field, may perceive the 50 weaker-paper lab(s) to be more "efficient" than the 1 strong-paper lab.

> One high-impact, well-designed paper with strong conclusions could very well be worth more than 50 weaker papers. This is true. Assessing impact is difficult, and journal impact factor is not a great proxy. However, at least in my field, most Nature and Science papers aren't worth 50 second- or even third-tier papers.

In my field (chemistry) plenty of people utterly loathe high-impact factor journal papers. They do something that looks impressive, but are a useless source of detail on _how_ it was actually accomplished, since more often then not they omit - not intentionally really - something which turns out to be very important to the process.

Several simpler papers not trying to be as dramatic are going to be far more insightful since you get the descriptions of what was found _not_ to work about the method they were trying to replicate. Weaker papers - to me - are gold, since they're what you publish when you were trying to copy something and it just doesn't work as well as is being claimed.

Re: Academia Is Eating Its Young

#98

Post by XorNot »

jurassic wrote: post #19
anologwintermut wrote: post #10

I always wonder when reading these just how much the author is rationalizing their choice to leave. If( and I'm assuming here) they were in grad school for CS and left , most of those problems really don't apply. There isn't the glut of adjuncts and postdocs one sees in e.g Micro biology because industry absorbs most of them. Tech transfer isn't nearly as big a problem (though may still be a problem). And reproducibi…

For all but the superstars with a desire to pursue academia, it is irrational to stay. Especially outside CS, a lot of quality people are heading towards oblivion (middle age with no job, no prospects) by doing a PhD. I know some of them, and it makes me sad to think about it. There just aren't enough jobs and funding dollars to go around. It's not to humanities adjunct-hell level yet, but it stopped being a sound ec…

What we desperately need is far less people _wanting_ to do a PhD, and its not because it would reduce competition - it's because then the entire postgrad student environment would be forced to seriously consider how it attracts students.

Unfortunately its very hard to make a rational sort of choice at the junction point where you choose, because by then you've already decided you want to do a PhD and so any offer seems like a good one.

But you really shouldn't do this: you need to turn a critical eye to the facilities if you're looking at physical sciences, get a feel for the environment (basically, if people are joking something is always broken, that's a red flag because it won't be funny 18 months in), and try and figure out where your supervisor is at regarding publications - anyone who's established but say, lacks a Nature paper, or has one, needs to be treated suspiciously because their incentive to help you get papers published is low compared to wanting you to pursue high-risk/high-reward type activities. You also really need to pay attention if the project you're being asked to do matches up with what the lab/group you'll be in can do.

A PhD is taking effectively a massive paycut for nebulous future earnings potential, not to mention is asking a lot of your enthusiasm and creativity for a long duration.

Re: Academia Is Eating Its Young

#99

Post by microarchitect »

impendia wrote: post #63
microarchitect wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Research without the requirement to teach undergraduates, publication with the requirement of a Ph.D. A lot of institutions like this exist and if you compare them with traditional universities, the results are at best inconclusive. Compare IAS to Princeton, for example. Is the quality of research at the IAS better than at Princeton? I really doubt it.

Perhaps not, but the quality of research at IAS is surely better than that at all but a handful of universities. Also, the IAS does things like have "special years" devoted to a particular topic, and then a ton of professors in that area take their sabbatical that year to go to IAS for a year. It would be difficult for a university to do that.

Perhaps not, but the quality of research at IAS is surely better than that at all but a handful of universities.

Fair enough, but they also have much "better" researchers than most other universities. My hypothesis is that if you tried to scale the IAS model to researchers outside the top 1%, it would be less successful.

I suspect the reason for this is that cross-pollination of ideas that you get from working with other researchers and graduate students, combined with the clarity of expression and understanding you're forced to acquire when teaching undergraduates is the reason why research universities have been so successful in advancing human knowledge. This isn't to say there is no place for other types of research institutions. However, I am skeptical of unsupported claims that there are "better" means of advancing human knowledge that are structured very differently from a research university.

Re: Academia Is Eating Its Young

#100

Post by grest »

simonster wrote: post #96
vwinsyee wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quick comment about point 2: A lot of academia is about quantity over quality these days. One high-impact, well-designed paper with strong conclusions could very well be worth more than 50 weaker papers. Unfortunately these days, many people, especially those outside of the field, may perceive the 50 weaker-paper lab(s) to be more "efficient" than the 1 strong-paper lab.

> One high-impact, well-designed paper with strong conclusions could very well be worth more than 50 weaker papers. This is true. Assessing impact is difficult, and journal impact factor is not a great proxy. However, at least in my field, most Nature and Science papers aren't worth 50 second- or even third-tier papers.

Yes, the risk-taking strategy of working towards a potentially high-impact publication is not worth the reward (as measured in citation rate comparing low-impact and high-impact articles )- see Foster et al Tradition and Innovation in Scientists Research Strategies http://arxiv.org/pdf/1302.6906.pdf
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