4 ms·

Those two questions have the same answer. I have a PhD and my experience is that the process is broken because it's geared towards the wrong goals of (1) writin

by akadien 17y ago

Those two questions have the same answer. I have a PhD and my experience is that the process is broken because it's geared towards the wrong goals of (1) writing papers, (2) getting grants, and (3) the game of getting a tenure-track position and then tenure. If you happen to make a great discovery, that's nice, too. Most people I know get a PhD for career advancement, not to engage in the scientific and discovery process. My experience was that the process was more "cargo cult science" and less science.

foldr 17y ago
I think you just had the wrong expectations about what a PhD is. The idea isn't just to work on interesting problems for 5 years. You're also meant to learn how to function as an academic, which necessarily means learning how to write papers and (maybe) get grants. There's nothing "cargo cult" about that. After all, cynicism aside, one of the best ways to get a paper published is to actually have a good idea. >Most people I know get a PhD for career advancement, not to engage in the scientific and discovery process. If you're in your 20s you'd have to be a bit crazy to take 5 years out without thinking about your future career. If PhD programs didn't cater at all to people's career needs you'd have an even heavier bias towards wealthy students in grad school. That wouldn't be good for research.
- akadien 17y ago
  It would appear so, but I did not. I have no regrets and enjoyed my time as student and professor. I self-funded my PhD through fellowships and work, which gave me freedom to work on any problem I wanted. That taught me self-reliance and the power of creativity, not just technical skill and process. That is something I don't think my counterparts who were supported by grants grasped very well. During my time as a professor, I tried to give my own PhD students the same freedom. I agree that having good discoveries and novel algorithms should be a good way to get a paper published. I respectfully disagree that the process isn't "cargo cult", though. In practice, it tends to be more often than not. The research culture rewards quantity over quality, and most papers are rubbish. You will hear "Dr A has B publications" 100+ times more often than "Dr C has a few papers that have been cited hundreds of times." That's an indicator that our research culture is broken.
  - foldr 17y ago
    I guess it depends a lot on the field. I'm funded mostly by my department and there aren't any restrictions on what I can work on. I don't find the standard of published papers to be particularly awful, and my colleagues seem to be getting on fine. I agree that the emphasis on publication volume is a pain, but it's not so easy to find good alternatives. In principle, it's all very well to say that one good publication should count for more than ten mediocre publications, but it gets a little tricky to make decisions that way in practice. It could well have the opposite of the desired effect by making the process even more cliquey that it currently is. In general, I'm a bit bemused that people seem to hold academia to such absurdly high standards. Some people seem to go in expecting it to be a bullshit-free paradise of open and free enquiry. Well, it isn't -- academics are human too. But it's really not as bad as all that.

by akadien 17y ago

foldr 17y ago

I think you just had the wrong expectations about what a PhD is. The idea isn't just to work on interesting problems for 5 years. You're also meant to learn how to function as an academic, which necessarily means learning how to write papers and (maybe) get grants. There's nothing "cargo cult" about that. After all, cynicism aside, one of the best ways to get a paper published is to actually have a good idea. >Most people I know get a PhD for career advancement, not to engage in the scientific and discovery process. If you're in your 20s you'd have to be a bit crazy to take 5 years out without thinking about your future career. If PhD programs didn't cater at all to people's career needs you'd have an even heavier bias towards wealthy students in grad school. That wouldn't be good for research.

akadien 17y ago
It would appear so, but I did not. I have no regrets and enjoyed my time as student and professor. I self-funded my PhD through fellowships and work, which gave me freedom to work on any problem I wanted. That taught me self-reliance and the power of creativity, not just technical skill and process. That is something I don't think my counterparts who were supported by grants grasped very well. During my time as a professor, I tried to give my own PhD students the same freedom. I agree that having good discoveries and novel algorithms should be a good way to get a paper published. I respectfully disagree that the process isn't "cargo cult", though. In practice, it tends to be more often than not. The research culture rewards quantity over quality, and most papers are rubbish. You will hear "Dr A has B publications" 100+ times more often than "Dr C has a few papers that have been cited hundreds of times." That's an indicator that our research culture is broken.
- foldr 17y ago
  I guess it depends a lot on the field. I'm funded mostly by my department and there aren't any restrictions on what I can work on. I don't find the standard of published papers to be particularly awful, and my colleagues seem to be getting on fine. I agree that the emphasis on publication volume is a pain, but it's not so easy to find good alternatives. In principle, it's all very well to say that one good publication should count for more than ten mediocre publications, but it gets a little tricky to make decisions that way in practice. It could well have the opposite of the desired effect by making the process even more cliquey that it currently is. In general, I'm a bit bemused that people seem to hold academia to such absurdly high standards. Some people seem to go in expecting it to be a bullshit-free paradise of open and free enquiry. Well, it isn't -- academics are human too. But it's really not as bad as all that.