4 ms·

The trouble here is that the entire academic structure is extremely difficult to question and change. Disrupting academia is kind of like disrupting the Catholi

The trouble here is that the entire academic structure is extremely difficult to question and change. Disrupting academia is kind of like disrupting the Catholic Church. It's so entrenched in its assumptions and rituals that trying to bring revolutionary change to it is pretty hopeless. Professors gained their status in this archaic structure and will resist challenging it. I mean, your PhD advisor will make sure you never challenge the research status quo with your thesis topic, let alone partaking in the academic publishing structure being fundamentally restructured.

Fomite 8y ago
> I mean, your PhD advisor will make sure you never challenge the research status quo with your thesis topic This will come as a surprise to both my PhD advisor and my current advisee
- ms013 8y ago
  Same for my PhD advisor and current/past students. Unfortunately, this HN post seems to be full of the usual cohort of passionately opinionated HN readers who don’t have a deep understanding about that which they’re passionately opinionated about.
  - shrimpx 8y ago
    You should elaborate with some detail instead of ad hominem.
- shrimpx 8y ago
  You should elaborate. In my experience academia is largely a status structure where people are groomed to be hirable at schools X, Y, Z and publish regularly in conferences/journals A, B, C. You're saying this is fertile ground for hardcore innovation? No way. The extreme majority of the work is incremental and predictable; small low-impact results. (Disclaimer: My experience is in CS.)
  - Fomite 8y ago
    Alright, I'll elaborate. My dissertation was based on a highly speculative new treatment, in a field where mathematical models are not widely used. One of the potential answers was "Yes, this should entirely change the course of care for a particular disease." My current advisee's first paper is, essentially, "Has the field been doing this wrong this whole time?" Note that I publish regularly in the good society level journals in my field, and on occasion in the splashier journals, got a tenure track job at an R1 university, and have enough grant funding to cover my lab. Also, your assertion that "incremental" research can't change the research status quo is flawed.
    - shrimpx 8y ago
      That's cool, congrats. In my field, computer science, it's far from your experience. Over and over I've experienced PhD students being pushed away from more radical ideas (opening "risky" but potentially really promising new areas of inquiry) toward incremental work on what's currently "hot" in the field. Yes I concur that I used "incremental" in an unnecessarily disparaging way. Some incremental work can be revolutionary, but in my experience in my field, most of it is humdrum.

Fomite 8y ago

> I mean, your PhD advisor will make sure you never challenge the research status quo with your thesis topic This will come as a surprise to both my PhD advisor and my current advisee

ms013 8y ago
Same for my PhD advisor and current/past students. Unfortunately, this HN post seems to be full of the usual cohort of passionately opinionated HN readers who don’t have a deep understanding about that which they’re passionately opinionated about.
- shrimpx 8y ago
  You should elaborate with some detail instead of ad hominem.
shrimpx 8y ago
You should elaborate. In my experience academia is largely a status structure where people are groomed to be hirable at schools X, Y, Z and publish regularly in conferences/journals A, B, C. You're saying this is fertile ground for hardcore innovation? No way. The extreme majority of the work is incremental and predictable; small low-impact results. (Disclaimer: My experience is in CS.)
- Fomite 8y ago
  Alright, I'll elaborate. My dissertation was based on a highly speculative new treatment, in a field where mathematical models are not widely used. One of the potential answers was "Yes, this should entirely change the course of care for a particular disease." My current advisee's first paper is, essentially, "Has the field been doing this wrong this whole time?" Note that I publish regularly in the good society level journals in my field, and on occasion in the splashier journals, got a tenure track job at an R1 university, and have enough grant funding to cover my lab. Also, your assertion that "incremental" research can't change the research status quo is flawed.
  - shrimpx 8y ago
    That's cool, congrats. In my field, computer science, it's far from your experience. Over and over I've experienced PhD students being pushed away from more radical ideas (opening "risky" but potentially really promising new areas of inquiry) toward incremental work on what's currently "hot" in the field. Yes I concur that I used "incremental" in an unnecessarily disparaging way. Some incremental work can be revolutionary, but in my experience in my field, most of it is humdrum.