4 ms·
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
by 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 agoAlright, 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 agoThat'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.