Academics, we need to talk
matt-welsh.blogspot.com
Academics, we need to talk
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Re: Academics, we need to talk
#2I know you Silicon Valley people think that farmers are a bunch of hicks and an easy target to be disrupted.
No f-ing way.
Cornell University has many departments that are good, but when I look at the agriculture and vet school they are beyond anybody else.
Ag schools do research which is relevant to the technological and business problems of their industry. They do plenty of work on genetic engineering, chemistry and work closely with the likes of Monsanto. They are doing a lot for big ag. They also do research to help small farmers beat pests without pesticides, produce and market (delicious!) Halal meat, even help householders same money and have a better lawn. "Organic" and "Alternative" innovations diffuse into the mainstream. Pesticides are expensive to buy and to apply; if there is a cultural tweak that's cheaper, they'll do it in a flash. When corn prices got high, Cornell promoted dairy farmers to plant cabbages and other crops as an alternative forage.
They are always beta testing new crops in our area; Cornell and UNH are finding variants of plants that perform well in the cold Northeast climate, have expanded Wine production and are commercializing new fruits such as the Paw Paw.
Their research is relevant, and it is also communicated directly to the public and industry. Cornell Agricultural Extension has an office in every county of the state that you can walk up to and call and get questions answered, go to an event, etc. They work with trade publications, local government.
And it is not just New York, they do research on tropical agriculture and run a program to get access to agricultural literature to anyone in poor countries that need it.
I would point to that as being a much more real "technology transfer" than the people who are concerned about copyrights and patents.
Re: Academics, we need to talk
#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 as a "good" paper or a publishable article. The big journals in these fields drive the notion of what is and isn't legitimate research. That's the point where what constitutes career-advancing "academic output" has to be changed. But I'm not enough of an insider to have any idea of how to go about doing that.
Re: Academics, we need to talk
#4I know you Silicon Valley people think that farmers are a bunch of hicks and an easy target to be disrupted. No f-ing way. Cornell University has many departments that are good, but when I look at the agriculture and vet school they are beyond anybody else. Ag schools do research which is relevant to the technological and business problems of their industry. They do plenty of work on genetic engineering, chemistry an…
I'm having trouble figuring out how this relates to the article.
Re: Academics, we need to talk
#5Academic research that unknowingly (or sometimes even knowingly) duplicates secret industry work is much more valuable than this discussion indicates. Sure, it's not valuable _to Google_ for someone to publish things they already know. But everyone else benefits. If people at Google want their research to stop being duplicated, they should publish it.
Of course, if your goal is that Google adopt your new system in their data centers, then you need to know what they already do. But the problem with that model of research is the initial goal, not the way it's currently executed.
Re: Academics, we need to talk
#6I know you Silicon Valley people think that farmers are a bunch of hicks and an easy target to be disrupted. No f-ing way. Cornell University has many departments that are good, but when I look at the agriculture and vet school they are beyond anybody else. Ag schools do research which is relevant to the technological and business problems of their industry. They do plenty of work on genetic engineering, chemistry an…
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.
Re: Academics, we need to talk
#7> 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…
I'm sad that journal reputation often trumps practicality of not exactly "breakthrough" articles that are nonetheless extremely interesting. One could argue that blog-reading should form an important part of being well-read in the literature, but again there's the concern over quality of research & insights that leads us to journals in the first place.
Re: Academics, we need to talk
#8What stood out for me:
My PhD advisor never seemed to care particularly about publishing papers; rather, he wanted to move the needle for the field, and he did (multiple times).
Racking up publications is fine, but if you want to have impact on the real world, there's a lot more you can do.
Re: Academics, we need to talk
#9Now, 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 circles? Hey, at least the CS academics occasionally produce something useful to industry, which is more than I can say about other groups running in circles. Sure it could be about burning through money, or a real desire to improve the state of CS academia. But if that was the case I'd expect these articles to have categorically different discussion and calls to action. Or - at the very least - address goals of acedemia other than performing research for industry.
I've never been an academic, and never want to be, but even I gave up reading after the "(I know, crazy, right?)" line. At that point, I knew for 100% sure, that the target audience of this article is not academics. Nobody is that much of a condescending prick to the person they're trying to persuade. 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."
Re: Academics, we need to talk
#10> Industry is far more collaborative and credit is widely shared.
This couldn't be farther from the truth. Your idea's are generally credited to the company, which in turn is credited to the CEO or some other high up. On collaboration, it's only more collaborative within a given company, and not always even then. Between companies it's outright hostile to collaboration by definition.