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> The grant system completely compromises most faculty'$ ability to do anything with their decades of training besides sell themselves. I agree that the academ

by timr 6y ago

> The grant system completely compromises most faculty'$ ability to do anything with their decades of training besides sell themselves. I agree that the academic world is broken, but this narrative that success -- in any field -- isn't dependent on your ability to sell yourself is problematic. I left academia behind because I saw that it was a brutal, improbable grind, sure, but mainly because I could see that the same skills needed for success as a professor had a much higher expected value elsewhere. In academia or otherwise, disproportionate success comes to those who combine ability with self-promotion. The people who put their heads down and focus on obscure problems will always be at the mercy of the winds.

josephg 6y ago
> but this narrative that success -- in any field -- isn't dependent on your ability to sell yourself is problematic. Some people make fantastic researchers and are terrible at selling themselves and their work. It seems like a bad deal for everyone if these people are blocked from making contributions to science.
- etrautmann 6y ago
  Yes - the idea that everyone in science must be a fantastic Jack or Jill of all trades is absurd. There is no room for oddballs that are missing any of 20 subtle skills, including many social ones that should have little to do with research skill. Incentivizing teams to succeed instead of individuals is essential for reforming our current broken system.
  - usrusr 6y ago
    The question is what would be the alternative to grant applications. A grant lottery?Tenure lottery? Stop funding entirely and just include "dear God, make our science advance" in your evening prayer? Nobody considers the grant treadmill an achievement to be proud of, but arguments against the claim that it's the least bad solution have to go beyond just "it's not good".
    - alpineidyll3 6y ago
      How about actually measuring them by the citation count on their papers (note this is already a minor factor in tenure decisions, after monies brought in :P )
      - mcguire 6y ago
        Has a bit of a problem for them as don't have many papers yet.
      - jltsiren 6y ago
        Citations are cheap, and they are being gamed all the time. It's like search engine optimization, but on a smaller scale. Grants are one of the least bad means of evaluating a researcher, because the decisions are not made lightly. Getting funded usually implies that experts have spent a nontrivial amount of time judging the merits of the applicant and their ideas and found them particularly worthy.
        alpineidyll3 6y ago
        Having gotten grants including the NSF career award. I respectfully disagree lol.
      - cycomanic 6y ago
        The thing is, you're trying to create a metric that measures an essentially unmeasureable quantity and to predict future outcomes on this. Moreover you're trying to do this for generally very smart people, so obviously they adapt their behaviour to those metrics (they game the system is a less favourable way of saying this). So the only thing you have achieved that the academics change their work to maximize those metrics. We have seen this with grants as well, to be successful you essentially have to write lots of grant (a period without grants can be career ending), so academics spend up to 50% of their time on grant writing and reviewing. At this point I'm not convinced a lottery would not be a better way of distributing money (and I say that as someone who has been fairly successful at getting grants)
- UncleMeat 6y ago
  Yes, but how do you identify these people? The whole grant process is trying to find these people and give them money.
  - alpineidyll3 6y ago
    If we weren't paying every mafioso at harvard 200k/yr in summer salary, we could fund a good number of them at subsistence wage. (note: there are also many decent people at harvard...)
- timr 6y ago
  > Some people make fantastic researchers and are terrible at selling themselves and their work. It seems like a bad deal for everyone if these people are blocked from making contributions to science. Sure...lots of people make fantastic technical workers, and are terrible at selling themselves and their work. I'm not denying their existence. I'm saying that academia is an organization made up of humans, and as such, has the same bias toward self-promotion and social skills as any other field. At the end of the day, people make the decision of who get to be professors, get grants, and so on. Success in an academic discipline, for most people, is about being known, liked and respected amongst the small circle of colleagues who dominate that discipline. The mythology I am combatting here is that academia was ever this magical unicorn land where introverts and brilliant weirdos can prosper. It happens more often than some fields, I guess, but mostly the same social dynamics apply. It's kind of the same wishful thinking you see from brilliant engineers who can't work on a team -- they invariably stop progressing, and wonder why they don't get promoted up the technical ladder. They can still contribute in the area of their greatest skill, but they're limited in the long run by their social abilities. It's really common to see brilliant people with no interpersonal skills wash out in grad school. It's almost a cliché. The ones who do make it, rarely advance to a professorship -- they'll get stuck at postdoc or staff scientist or something like that, because some professor is more than willing to keep them around, hidden in the lab, for their exceptional technical skill.
alpineidyll3 6y ago
It's true one must advocate for one's self. It's not true that we should choose structures that require more self promotion than productivity. Academia used to be rife with corners where obscure problem solvers could live a decent life. The pressure for grant monies and summer salaries have done away with those corners and it shouldn't be so.
- mcguire 6y ago
  On one hand, I've heard E. Allen Emerson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Allen_Emerson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Allen_Emerson) complain that he was hoping with tenure he'd be able to just go off and work on whatever interested him. On the other...there is no other hand.

by timr 6y ago

josephg 6y ago

> but this narrative that success -- in any field -- isn't dependent on your ability to sell yourself is problematic. Some people make fantastic researchers and are terrible at selling themselves and their work. It seems like a bad deal for everyone if these people are blocked from making contributions to science.

etrautmann 6y ago
Yes - the idea that everyone in science must be a fantastic Jack or Jill of all trades is absurd. There is no room for oddballs that are missing any of 20 subtle skills, including many social ones that should have little to do with research skill. Incentivizing teams to succeed instead of individuals is essential for reforming our current broken system.
- usrusr 6y ago
  The question is what would be the alternative to grant applications. A grant lottery?Tenure lottery? Stop funding entirely and just include "dear God, make our science advance" in your evening prayer? Nobody considers the grant treadmill an achievement to be proud of, but arguments against the claim that it's the least bad solution have to go beyond just "it's not good".
  - alpineidyll3 6y ago
    How about actually measuring them by the citation count on their papers (note this is already a minor factor in tenure decisions, after monies brought in :P )
    - mcguire 6y ago
      Has a bit of a problem for them as don't have many papers yet.
    - jltsiren 6y ago
      Citations are cheap, and they are being gamed all the time. It's like search engine optimization, but on a smaller scale. Grants are one of the least bad means of evaluating a researcher, because the decisions are not made lightly. Getting funded usually implies that experts have spent a nontrivial amount of time judging the merits of the applicant and their ideas and found them particularly worthy.
      - alpineidyll3 6y ago
        Having gotten grants including the NSF career award. I respectfully disagree lol.
    - cycomanic 6y ago
      The thing is, you're trying to create a metric that measures an essentially unmeasureable quantity and to predict future outcomes on this. Moreover you're trying to do this for generally very smart people, so obviously they adapt their behaviour to those metrics (they game the system is a less favourable way of saying this). So the only thing you have achieved that the academics change their work to maximize those metrics. We have seen this with grants as well, to be successful you essentially have to write lots of grant (a period without grants can be career ending), so academics spend up to 50% of their time on grant writing and reviewing. At this point I'm not convinced a lottery would not be a better way of distributing money (and I say that as someone who has been fairly successful at getting grants)
UncleMeat 6y ago
Yes, but how do you identify these people? The whole grant process is trying to find these people and give them money.
- alpineidyll3 6y ago
  If we weren't paying every mafioso at harvard 200k/yr in summer salary, we could fund a good number of them at subsistence wage. (note: there are also many decent people at harvard...)
timr 6y ago
> Some people make fantastic researchers and are terrible at selling themselves and their work. It seems like a bad deal for everyone if these people are blocked from making contributions to science. Sure...lots of people make fantastic technical workers, and are terrible at selling themselves and their work. I'm not denying their existence. I'm saying that academia is an organization made up of humans, and as such, has the same bias toward self-promotion and social skills as any other field. At the end of the day, people make the decision of who get to be professors, get grants, and so on. Success in an academic discipline, for most people, is about being known, liked and respected amongst the small circle of colleagues who dominate that discipline. The mythology I am combatting here is that academia was ever this magical unicorn land where introverts and brilliant weirdos can prosper. It happens more often than some fields, I guess, but mostly the same social dynamics apply. It's kind of the same wishful thinking you see from brilliant engineers who can't work on a team -- they invariably stop progressing, and wonder why they don't get promoted up the technical ladder. They can still contribute in the area of their greatest skill, but they're limited in the long run by their social abilities. It's really common to see brilliant people with no interpersonal skills wash out in grad school. It's almost a cliché. The ones who do make it, rarely advance to a professorship -- they'll get stuck at postdoc or staff scientist or something like that, because some professor is more than willing to keep them around, hidden in the lab, for their exceptional technical skill.

alpineidyll3 6y ago

It's true one must advocate for one's self. It's not true that we should choose structures that require more self promotion than productivity. Academia used to be rife with corners where obscure problem solvers could live a decent life. The pressure for grant monies and summer salaries have done away with those corners and it shouldn't be so.

mcguire 6y ago
On one hand, I've heard E. Allen Emerson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Allen_Emerson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Allen_Emerson) complain that he was hoping with tenure he'd be able to just go off and work on whatever interested him. On the other...there is no other hand.