6 ms·

Peter Higgs published about 5 scientific papers after his Nobel-winning work in 1964 until his retirement in 1996, none of which were particularly impressive. I

by bvv 10y ago

Peter Higgs published about 5 scientific papers after his Nobel-winning work in 1964 until his retirement in 1996, none of which were particularly impressive. I think this is below any reasonable standards, not just below contemporary academic standards. Therefore, barring special circumstances like an exemplary teaching record, in my opinion Edinburgh University would have been right to sack him and replace him with a more productive person. In short: I don't think that Higgs nearly getting sacked is an accurate indication that academia has too much of a 'publish or perish' culture.

js8 10y ago
I would go even further. Look at history of art - most artists were just alcoholic bums, such as Verlaine. We would be better off as a society if we made those people more productive than writing poetry, for example, they could be soldiers.
- augustt 10y ago
  I'm definitely not in the humanities camp, but I don't see how someone who produced work that presumably thousands of people found value in would be less beneficial to society than yet another person to die at war.
- hilop 10y ago
  If you are being sarcastic, it isn't working. Did Verlaine have a lifetime paid appointment to not create any poetry? While other artists were soldiers because they needed income?
  - js8 10y ago
    The point is it's about time horizon. The parent would decide that in early days of Higgs' career, he wasn't productive enough, and thus he would prevent him making the discovery for which he is famous. Likewise, at the time Verlaine, it would be more productive if he was just sent to war. But from a longer time horizon, nobody really cares about those people in the 1950s having to support Peter Higgs living, or about people not having Verlaine in the army. We care about their results differently now. I wish that timescale is the one thing that people who use the word "productivity" or "efficiency" would understand. There is no universal optimum, it depends on the time horizon you're looking at. And while I am at it, let me make another comment to the article. I think today, we are so obsessed about efficiency of other people working, because there simply aren't enough jobs for everybody (due to automation). Since having a job (in a general sense) is customarily a requirement to being fed, most humans optimize towards not actual productivity, but an appearance of productivity. All these attempts to measure productivity are just a symptom of this problem - we desperately need something with which we can bang people in control of resources over their heads with, so that we could eat. In other words, most jobs are changing from doing actual work into proving to other people in society that you did, ever so diminishing, amount of work. It's a shift in the focus of the competition, and unless we collectively realize that we can just lay back and don't need to actually compete, it won't get any better.
    - bvv 10y ago
      > The parent would decide that in early days of Higgs' career, he wasn't productive enough, and thus he would prevent him making the discovery for which he is famous. You are stretching the meaning of my comment. Did you know that he published three papers in the three years before getting hired in Edinburgh in 1960? I only pointed out that (on any 'time horizon') his scientific productivity after 1964 was basically non-existent. In fact I agree on some level with a lot of the comments here, including yours. I just think that Peter Higgs is not the right example to justify the cause. > and unless we collectively realize that we can just lay back and don't need to actually compete, it won't get any better. And therefore, sadly, it won't.
      - js8 10y ago
        Ah, OK. But I am not sure what cause are we justifying here - the tenure? I guess the idea of tenure is predicated on beating somebody enough to have him go through graduate and postgraduate studies, so then only people who are likely to really want to work in the field will remain and they will continue working on their own. It seems to me that there is tradeoff. We can look today at Peter Higgs and say, whoah, what a failure he was after 1964. But could that have been said in 1974? I am not sure. What if in 1975 he would come up with another breakthrough? So the trade-off is in the timescale on which we judge the scientist's output. If you shorten the timescale, you decrease your accepted risk, and you can miss some rare wins (and I think that's where the Higgs example shines, because it is an example of such rare event). If you make the time scale longer, you accept greater risk of people turning badly. Idea of tenure advocates maximal practical timescale of such trust - one human lifespan, because with tenures arguably the wins are worth more than the accrued losses.
  - henriquemaia 10y ago
    To balance your view, I think js8's sarcastic point worked very well. There is much more to a person's achievement than 'raw productivity' measured by some arbitrary scale.
    - Ar-Curunir 10y ago
      But the scale isn't arbitrary; even mathematicians, who are notorious for low output, have more than one paper every two years.
- zebraflask 10y ago
  I think your grasp of art history is a little off, but I'm also assuming that was sarcasm for the sake of it. Verlaine? Not exactly a good example.
  - js8 10y ago
    Yeah, I know, I am sure somebody can find a better example.
aub3bhat 10y ago
This is a truly idiotic thing to say. "none of which were particularly impressive" First who are you to judge quality of his work, that guy has a Nobel. Imagine if they did follow your utterly idiotic suggestion and did kick him out, other universities who recognize importance of his work and would instantly hire him. Years later when he would actually win the prize, Edinburgh University would look crazy for kicking out a Nobel prize winning physicist. So no Peter Higgs is a genius, he knew importance of what he had achieved and took leisurely path, nothing wrong in that. Edinburgh University knew importance of his work and correctly decided that keeping him was a great investment. The fact that you think that a researcher who won a Nobel prize somehow did not work "hard enough" in later years and should have been fired is a great indicator of dysfunctional academic culture.
- Ar-Curunir 10y ago
  Beyond his Higgs Boson papers, the rest haven't been cited particularly much. Not indicative of a genius. Sure, no-one is calling him stupid, but there are potentially many other people who have changed the field as much, or more than him. Just because he won a Nobel Prize for one work doesn't make him immune to criticism.
  - aub3bhat 10y ago
    There is valid criticism, and then there's "this guy did not do anything after making a Nobel worthy discovery, should have been kicked out". Also "haven't been cited particularly much" is utterly bullshit. Unless the goal is to optimize for mediocrity (3 papers each year with 20-50 citations each) being better than one break-through Nobel worthy work. Frankly citations are very very easy to game if you are a professor with reasonable means at a good university, and are a really really bad indicator of success. Since he already had a very successful paper maybe he wanted to write risky papers. In any case that's not worse than other researchers who write cookie-cutter papers adding extra terms to equations that are guaranteed to be cited by the next guy adding even more terms. By finding these minor faults with a Nobel award winning researcher, you are displaying the same dysfunctional thinking that has plagued academia.
dunkelheit 10y ago
I think you highlight an important issue. I had an impression from the interview that he talks about going for years publishing nothing with considerable amount of braggadocio. The question is, what did he do all these years? If he pursued ambitious and risky avenues of research that didn't pan out, then he has all the rights to brag, as that's what tenured academics are supposed to do in theory (but still he would do everyone a favor by writing up some of that stuff). If, OTOH, he just decided to coast after doing some excellent work, then I am much less sympathetic. Contemporary academia may be obsessed with publishing, but there is some middle ground between that and publishing a paper every 6 years. A certain webcomic comes to mind: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2495 http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2495
amelius 10y ago
That is just anecdotal evidence. You need many more samples to be convincing.

by bvv 10y ago

js8 10y ago

I would go even further. Look at history of art - most artists were just alcoholic bums, such as Verlaine. We would be better off as a society if we made those people more productive than writing poetry, for example, they could be soldiers.

augustt 10y ago
I'm definitely not in the humanities camp, but I don't see how someone who produced work that presumably thousands of people found value in would be less beneficial to society than yet another person to die at war.
hilop 10y ago
If you are being sarcastic, it isn't working. Did Verlaine have a lifetime paid appointment to not create any poetry? While other artists were soldiers because they needed income?
- js8 10y ago
  The point is it's about time horizon. The parent would decide that in early days of Higgs' career, he wasn't productive enough, and thus he would prevent him making the discovery for which he is famous. Likewise, at the time Verlaine, it would be more productive if he was just sent to war. But from a longer time horizon, nobody really cares about those people in the 1950s having to support Peter Higgs living, or about people not having Verlaine in the army. We care about their results differently now. I wish that timescale is the one thing that people who use the word "productivity" or "efficiency" would understand. There is no universal optimum, it depends on the time horizon you're looking at. And while I am at it, let me make another comment to the article. I think today, we are so obsessed about efficiency of other people working, because there simply aren't enough jobs for everybody (due to automation). Since having a job (in a general sense) is customarily a requirement to being fed, most humans optimize towards not actual productivity, but an appearance of productivity. All these attempts to measure productivity are just a symptom of this problem - we desperately need something with which we can bang people in control of resources over their heads with, so that we could eat. In other words, most jobs are changing from doing actual work into proving to other people in society that you did, ever so diminishing, amount of work. It's a shift in the focus of the competition, and unless we collectively realize that we can just lay back and don't need to actually compete, it won't get any better.
  - bvv 10y ago
    > The parent would decide that in early days of Higgs' career, he wasn't productive enough, and thus he would prevent him making the discovery for which he is famous. You are stretching the meaning of my comment. Did you know that he published three papers in the three years before getting hired in Edinburgh in 1960? I only pointed out that (on any 'time horizon') his scientific productivity after 1964 was basically non-existent. In fact I agree on some level with a lot of the comments here, including yours. I just think that Peter Higgs is not the right example to justify the cause. > and unless we collectively realize that we can just lay back and don't need to actually compete, it won't get any better. And therefore, sadly, it won't.
    - js8 10y ago
      Ah, OK. But I am not sure what cause are we justifying here - the tenure? I guess the idea of tenure is predicated on beating somebody enough to have him go through graduate and postgraduate studies, so then only people who are likely to really want to work in the field will remain and they will continue working on their own. It seems to me that there is tradeoff. We can look today at Peter Higgs and say, whoah, what a failure he was after 1964. But could that have been said in 1974? I am not sure. What if in 1975 he would come up with another breakthrough? So the trade-off is in the timescale on which we judge the scientist's output. If you shorten the timescale, you decrease your accepted risk, and you can miss some rare wins (and I think that's where the Higgs example shines, because it is an example of such rare event). If you make the time scale longer, you accept greater risk of people turning badly. Idea of tenure advocates maximal practical timescale of such trust - one human lifespan, because with tenures arguably the wins are worth more than the accrued losses.
- henriquemaia 10y ago
  To balance your view, I think js8's sarcastic point worked very well. There is much more to a person's achievement than 'raw productivity' measured by some arbitrary scale.
  - Ar-Curunir 10y ago
    But the scale isn't arbitrary; even mathematicians, who are notorious for low output, have more than one paper every two years.
zebraflask 10y ago
I think your grasp of art history is a little off, but I'm also assuming that was sarcasm for the sake of it. Verlaine? Not exactly a good example.
- js8 10y ago
  Yeah, I know, I am sure somebody can find a better example.

aub3bhat 10y ago

This is a truly idiotic thing to say. "none of which were particularly impressive" First who are you to judge quality of his work, that guy has a Nobel. Imagine if they did follow your utterly idiotic suggestion and did kick him out, other universities who recognize importance of his work and would instantly hire him. Years later when he would actually win the prize, Edinburgh University would look crazy for kicking out a Nobel prize winning physicist. So no Peter Higgs is a genius, he knew importance of what he had achieved and took leisurely path, nothing wrong in that. Edinburgh University knew importance of his work and correctly decided that keeping him was a great investment. The fact that you think that a researcher who won a Nobel prize somehow did not work "hard enough" in later years and should have been fired is a great indicator of dysfunctional academic culture.

Ar-Curunir 10y ago
Beyond his Higgs Boson papers, the rest haven't been cited particularly much. Not indicative of a genius. Sure, no-one is calling him stupid, but there are potentially many other people who have changed the field as much, or more than him. Just because he won a Nobel Prize for one work doesn't make him immune to criticism.
- aub3bhat 10y ago
  There is valid criticism, and then there's "this guy did not do anything after making a Nobel worthy discovery, should have been kicked out". Also "haven't been cited particularly much" is utterly bullshit. Unless the goal is to optimize for mediocrity (3 papers each year with 20-50 citations each) being better than one break-through Nobel worthy work. Frankly citations are very very easy to game if you are a professor with reasonable means at a good university, and are a really really bad indicator of success. Since he already had a very successful paper maybe he wanted to write risky papers. In any case that's not worse than other researchers who write cookie-cutter papers adding extra terms to equations that are guaranteed to be cited by the next guy adding even more terms. By finding these minor faults with a Nobel award winning researcher, you are displaying the same dysfunctional thinking that has plagued academia.

dunkelheit 10y ago

I think you highlight an important issue. I had an impression from the interview that he talks about going for years publishing nothing with considerable amount of braggadocio. The question is, what did he do all these years? If he pursued ambitious and risky avenues of research that didn't pan out, then he has all the rights to brag, as that's what tenured academics are supposed to do in theory (but still he would do everyone a favor by writing up some of that stuff). If, OTOH, he just decided to coast after doing some excellent work, then I am much less sympathetic. Contemporary academia may be obsessed with publishing, but there is some middle ground between that and publishing a paper every 6 years. A certain webcomic comes to mind: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2495 http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2495

amelius 10y ago

That is just anecdotal evidence. You need many more samples to be convincing.