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I have a problem with the assumption that "publish or perish" is killing the universities. The assumption is that one has to publish a lot of material. That is
by brentr 18y ago
I have a problem with the assumption that "publish or perish" is killing the universities. The assumption is that one has to publish a lot of material. That is not true. Gauss had an excellent quote that applies here, "few but ripe." This point behind the quote is publish a little, but let what you publish be truly brilliant. Do you honestly think Harvard's math department would not want the person who manages to prove the Riemann hypothesis if that person also only had two other published papers? The answer is resounding, "hell no." Academia is about quality, not quantity.
- yagibear 18y agoBut quality is much harder to evaluate than quantity, particularly in the short term.
- anamax 18y ago> Do you honestly think Harvard's math department would not want the person who manages to prove the Riemann hypothesis if that person also only had two other published papers? Doesn't "want" depend somewhat on what they expect him to do in the future? Suppose, for example, that he'd decided to devote the rest of his life to beating video games while blindfolded. Would they still want him?
- brentr 18y agoYou have suddenly taken my argument to the absurd. Under my assumption, this mathematician is likely to continue to pursue mathematics. Why would he have worked on the Riemann hypothesis if he had no true interest in math? In addition to that, he has shown that he is willing to tackle some of the greatest problems in mathematics. So, therefore, I assume that he will continue to publish and that the ideas published are likely to be very deep. Therefore, he is likely to continue publishing few papers, but very deep papers.