9 ms·

Feeling like a pariah, even when you’re not

80 points by luu 5y ago

benjaminjosephw 5y ago
Social groups, whether in academia, industry, civil society, or anywhere else are never as able to maintain the level of objectivity they think they possess. Group think isn't (just) a structural failure but a intractable bias all human communities face simply because they are made up of humans. I think there is an implicit belief in the scientific and technology communities that rational investigation can be free from bias. But social bias is simply part of the reality of being human and ignoring that bias becomes much more dangerous and damaging than acknowledging and mitigating it.
- JackFr 5y ago
  Precisely this. Research and science will at their heart always be a fundamentally human endeavor and we ignore that at our peril.
- ObserverNeutral 5y ago
  But academia is better because your paper has your name on it and when the bias somehow resolves itself then people would know you were right, even though you might be dead by the time it happens. People in academia are still humans and as you said they have biases but they also try to play the biases to elevate themselves. However the cumulative look at a paper during the course of decades and centuries are bound to sniff BS and unmask it This is different than say trading in financial markets where biases are always there and the issue never resolves itself, just companies and CEOs come and go.
- linuxftw 5y ago
  Many scientists actively speak out about the strong biases and conflicts of interest in their respective industries. The media universally lambasts them as crackpots. Couple that with the fact that most people don't feel comfortable with the topic of 'science,' they choose to mentally defer any interpretation of evidence/facts to some authority, it's incredibly easy to mislead the population.
  - teachingassist 5y ago
    Only speaking against popular biases and conflicts of interest often is crackpot - it represents a failure to recognise your own biases and conflicts of interests. You can present an alternative view without accusing other people of bias.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - linuxftw 5y ago
      > You can present an alternative view without accusing other people of bias. Maybe at some point in the distant past. It's all industry shills now.
- cratermoon 5y ago
  All of the above applies to journalism as well, and is something that any media-savvy person will keep in mind at all times. Whenever I see someone expressing an opinion that this or that source is biased, or that there is such a thing as an unbiased source, I do a mental face-palm. The best propaganda and misinformation is framed to appear unbiased to its audience.
  - shuntress 5y ago
    Things to watch out for are slogans like "Fair and balanced"
    - kbenson 5y ago
      Actually, I think the ham-fisted approach like that is easier to spot without paying attention. The harder ones to spot will always be the ones that align with your own interests and ideals. The best way I've found to get some perspective on those is to occasionally go to the "fair and balanced" site specifically to get the other take on an issue. It soon becomes obvious that there are actually different takes on the issue, but neither side is giving even lip service to the other sides position, instead just putting up straw men to knock down. It's a lot harder for these sites to claim being unbiased successfully while having a lot of bias when you have more information than they assume you do, so that's one good way to spot it (but it requires a lot of work and vigilance, so is hard to keep up).
  - majormajor 5y ago
    > The best propaganda and misinformation is framed to appear unbiased to its audience. The most effective propaganda I've seen seems to be highly emotionally charged. Political parties and religions are our most prominent organizations that depend entirely on evangelism, and I don't see many examples of them thriving through appearing to appear purely logical and unbiased.
    - mistermann 5y ago
      Key phrase: "that I've seen". Well done propaganda (framed to appear unbiased to its audience) is not even noticed as such by the reader. The effectiveness of this can be seen right here on HN in the hundreds/thousands of culture-war themed posts where people will quote newspaper articles that are written (intentionally or not) in a loose/ambiguous/leading way that facilitates significant interpretation of the words, so different readers will form different conclusions, and neither can be deemed wrong as they can all be using perfectly sound logic. When someone posts such an article as proof of their viewpoint, predictable heated arguments ensue, with both sides typically believing themselves to be right.
- bobthechef 5y ago
  Those we regard as "intelligent" are actually capable of more egregious errors than those we do not regard that way. If a person's will is corrupted by vice, then he uses his intellect to rationalize his errors and his vices. And the more intelligent, the most elaborate these rationalizations can become until this person is trapped in the thick fog of his vile theories, unable and unwilling to escape. They become blinded by their own evil constructions which they then transmit onto their students. While vices like those having to do with sexual depravity (and the resulting mental blindness it causes) are ubiquitous, pride and envy are especially central here. They produce the same contemptuous attitude that leads such people to hate the masses and suppose that if they believe something, then it must be false. It also explains the politics of today.
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  Let's not forget: this also applies to forums, such as HN. I have seen enough comments (edit: with significant merit) downvoted without comment to believe this is true here, and I've seen it on other forums as well. Go against the prevailing opinion at your own risk, if you value fake internet points.
majke 5y ago
Rejection is probably one of the strongest feelings for a normal person. For me two thoughts help keep my spirits up: - I was the same person before the rejection as I am after it. There is nothing changing in reality - only my own view, my own feelings. This is all mostly self-inflicted. - "If you don't feel rejected every day, it means you're not trying hard enough."
- Razengan 5y ago
  > I was the same person before the rejection as I am after it. There is nothing changing in reality - only my own view, my own feelings. This is all mostly self-inflicted. The reality being that members of my own species choose not to be with me or work with me. I am unwelcome. Repeat that many times over many years.
  - bittercynic 5y ago
    _Some_ members. If every member of our species choose not to be with or work with you it would be a major problem, but probably not an insoluble one.
    - tnzm 5y ago
      Yep just kill him and then there's nobody to have that problem. /s
      - bittercynic 5y ago
        Damn, how about join a casual sports league or volunteer at Habitat or some kind of group sessions. Anything to get social experience.
        tnzm 5y ago
        Damn, have you considered social experience could be the reason someone ended like that? It's a feedback loop and the less in control you are, the less in control you are. Until you hit rock bottom. Which might not happen, and where you might bounce off, or not.
agumonkey 5y ago
Ultimately it's an ~education thing (for the lack of a better word). You and others want to be in a place where people aren't hiding their thoughts that much. Ability to express subjective criticism in a mellow manner is very important. And the ability to accept being wrong. Basically being tuned to others POV to improve everybody's view or understanding without undermining their well being too.
- mannykannot 5y ago
  It is not clear to me whether you are suggesting the issue is merely one of how to give and receive justified criticism. I see the greater issue as one of the use of marginal, overblown or simply unjustified criticism and innuendo to isolate people and undermine reputations. We all know it happens.
  - lbhdc 5y ago
    I have worked in a few departments where this has happened. It seemed that it was a means used by a group of engineers to get rid of other engineers they didn't see as "one of them".
    - agumonkey 5y ago
      Did this happen as a last resort after more noble attempt failed ? Or was it the first reflex of the group ? Also was the other person really unfriendly or detrimental to the group or was it somehow subjective/ego driven (threatened by a newcomer) ?
      - lbhdc 5y ago
        No, this wasn't some misunderstanding, or even a disagreement. It was control. Those that didn't play the game were ostracized. Where possible they were set up to fail, and were generally made miserable. Ego driven? Certainly. I don't think there was any fear of newcomers, but was more about loyalty. Many of these people had worked together previously, and would coordinate to enforce what they wanted. Eventually they moved in mass to another company, killing our eng department. They rinsed and repeated at the new company. I had an HR rep tell me they felt like there was little they could do, because of their culture of silence, and how profitable they were.
zomglings 5y ago
We are hearing from two people who were able to weather the political whirlwind. Sadly, this playbook of ostracization is a generally successful one. The people who are successfully sidelined by this kind of behavior become actual pariahs. Their isolation is so complete that people have a tendency to explain this as "academia working as intended".
- _e 5y ago
  This is why it is so important to have the courage to get up and leave. If one has been successfully sidelined then, yes, they will become an actual pariah because they feel like they have to explain everything that they do and will continue to do so because they feel like no one is acknowledging them. This is part of the gaslighters trap. It should not be a surprise that there are some who might feel threatened by people who want to challenge the status quo in search of the truth or constantly push their mental and physical limits.
  - zomglings 5y ago
    As the academic job market gets more and more competitive, in group vs. out group dynamics get stronger and stronger and stronger. And yet so many of my classmates from graduate school (mathematics) prefer to live through "visiting assistant professor" hell than make the transition into technology, where they would do very well! I never really thought of it as a matter of courage, but maybe it is.
    - ta988 5y ago
      Do very well in what sense? Money?
      - zomglings 5y ago
        Money, mental health.
- derbOac 5y ago
  I really appreciated this post by Gelman — I don't always empathize with his writing, but it was a good thing to learn about this side of his experience, him being someone that I think of as being on the other side of that social inclusion continuum. At the same time I agree with you that it's hard to know what to make of it because he did obviously get through it, and the problem is that so many don't, for many reasons. I have maybe too many reactions to put into words, but the thing I wrestle with most about the phenomenon he's pointing to is why isn't this more fully acknowledged by the community, however you define that? It's the strangling silence about these types of phenomena that is maybe the worst, at a number of levels. When you're going through it, I think part of the problem is that there's no inputs to provide a different perspective, to show you "hey this looks this way but it's not". It's not even within someone's abilities at that point at some level, as you're lacking any sort of realistic social inputs. Then, at another level, why doesn't, say the academic community come to terms with how common these sorts of pathological dynamics are, and how dominant they are in outcomes? Why isn't the broader nonacademic community more aware of these kinds of problems? I don't think these sorts of issues are without consequence either. For example, this story isn't really about the same thing, but I do think it starts to involve related social problems, that had worldwide implications for COVID, measles, and tuberculosis: https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwu... . To me one of the worst problems with politicization of COVID science is how unrealistic both sides seemed to get, with one invoking strange conspiracy theories when typical academic politics is trouble enough, and the other seemingly in denial about any sort of problems in academic science.
BrandoElFollito 5y ago
I worked in academia a few years, and moved to industry during my PhD (which I completed). There were strong political jousts, like everywhere else. This was unfortunately coupled to an inherent lack of money (and low salaries), and enormous egos that were growing as people were getting higher diplomas or positions. This is one of the reasons that made me left because I saw that either I jump into the cage and bite my way up (putting actual research on the side), or always get sided. The time where I was finishing my PhD and working at the same time (and therefore I was completely independent financially) was great - I could just flip the finger to the fights and concentrate on research and on teaching (which I loved and still love very, very much). Academia is no different that other groups of people with common or conflicting interests.
- ZephyrBlu 5y ago
  > There were strong political jousts, like everywhere else. This was unfortunately coupled to an inherent lack of money (and low salaries), and enormous egos that were growing as people were getting higher diplomas or positions Sayre's Law: "'In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake.' By way of corollary, it adds: 'That is why academic politics are so bitter.'" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law
  - cratermoon 5y ago
    Wasn't there an adage going around that when something like "lock a group up people in a room with a ham sandwich and by the end of a day they'll be arguing about which side of the sandwich is best"?
- JackFr 5y ago
  “The reason that university politics is so vicious is because stakes are so small” ― Henry Kissinger
  - dctoedt 5y ago
    Yes - Sayle's Law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law
darkerside 5y ago
The funny thing about this that I realized is, there are at least some instances where I am rejected by one or more individuals but I attribute the rejection to the entire group. Realistically, this is not what's going on. It's just that most people do not care, or don't care enough to intervene. This is why it's important to have at least a few influential friends who can advocate on your behalf.
JohnWhigham 5y ago
Just want to say thanks to the author for not contorting this with a sexist slant and ignoring that everyone experiences these dynamics in professional circles.
whack 5y ago
> There was no exchange of articles or courtroom-type setting where the authors of the lies had to directly defend or abandon those statements, and I guess the others in the department had some sort of cynical view that the details didn’t matter. Or, more precisely, they had a consensus that they didn’t want to think about the ugly thing that had happened, so they’d look away The above resonated with me. One of the hard lessons I've had to learn in life, is that you will simply never be given a fair chance by some people. We would love to live in a world where we can face our accusations head-on, and after rebutting them, never have to face them again. 99% of life does not work this way though. Key well-connected influencers may decide they don't like you for completely arbitrary reasons. And other people who know nothing about you, but trust the influencers, will take their side by default as well. No one is going to come out in the open and make concrete accusations against you. They will just silently embellish minor transgressions, or take things out of context to paint you in a negative light... and do most of this in private conversations where you don't even have a chance to respond to any of it. The end-results are very tangible and negative of course, but the means are completely under wraps and nearly impossible to fight against. Ultimately, you can't fight against it any more than an ant can fight against its colony. If you find yourself in a system that has a vendetta against you, your best bet is to simply leave and find a different system that does value you. Or try your best to ignore them, respond only to the most vocal criticisms, continue focusing on your work, and let your success be your shield. Winning over the critics is a fool's errand - you're better off simply accepting that you will always have critics who dislike you. As the old saying goes, haters gonna hate
- kbenson 5y ago
  > They will just silently embellish minor transgressions, or take things out of context to paint you in a negative light... And it doesn't really require embellishment. Context is everything in this case. The difference between a small joke meant to be endearing and an attack can be entirely in the eye of the beholder. Even something as inane as "working hard or hardly working?" can be taken negatively if you're already primed to expect it that way. It's very, very hard to get back to even neutral with people that have negative assumptions about you. Even if you point out that some initial interaction that gave them a negative impression was entirely mistaken on their part or unfounded, it's not like people go back through all the interactions after that point which they interpreted negatively because of that, so these self-reinforced opinions are very hard to shake for people. It really brings into perspective that old adage, "you never get a second chance to make a first impression."
hitekker 5y ago
> It was an interesting bit of group dynamics, in that the vast majority of my colleagues there did not ever have to be in the position of actually endorsing the lies about my work; they just were able to not think about it and move on. There was no exchange of articles or courtroom-type setting where the authors of the lies had to directly defend or abandon those statements, and I guess the others in the department had some sort of cynical view that the details didn’t matter. Or, more precisely, they had a consensus that they didn’t want to think about the ugly thing that had happened, so they’d look away. Perhap as Martin Luther King once said, in the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.
hzay 5y ago
It's funny how freely the word pariah is used in english. When I was a kid my parents used to tell me never ever to say that word, and that I might get arrested if I do. I never dug into this to find out why but that's a super taboo word in tamilnadu.
- cmrajan 5y ago
  Yes, but in english it's simply used to mean as outcast instead of all the social connotations that it carries from it's originating language Tamil.
cryptica 5y ago
These days, being honest will make you a social pariah in every social circle.
m463 5y ago
I listened to an interesting Joe Rogan episode with David Sinclair, a doctor studying aging. At one point, he published a paper and someone from one of the drug companies wrote a scathing rebuttal, which caused him countless problems. Because his research was called into question, he couldn't get funding, and his lab shrunk from maybe people to only a few. So he had to do a lot of extra work to re-prove all his assertions and a couple of years were lost.
- ta988 5y ago
  It is not lost if then that person's truth emerges. In any political system, one may have to burn themself to make any change.
EricE 5y ago
"The science is settled!" If there ever was a more vile phrase...

80 points by luu 5y ago

Social groups, whether in academia, industry, civil society, or anywhere else are never as able to maintain the level of objectivity they think they possess. Group think isn't (just) a structural failure but a intractable bias all human communities face simply because they are made up of humans. I think there is an implicit belief in the scientific and technology communities that rational investigation can be free from bias. But social bias is simply part of the reality of being human and ignoring that bias becomes much more dangerous and damaging than acknowledging and mitigating it.

JackFr 5y ago
Precisely this. Research and science will at their heart always be a fundamentally human endeavor and we ignore that at our peril.
ObserverNeutral 5y ago
But academia is better because your paper has your name on it and when the bias somehow resolves itself then people would know you were right, even though you might be dead by the time it happens. People in academia are still humans and as you said they have biases but they also try to play the biases to elevate themselves. However the cumulative look at a paper during the course of decades and centuries are bound to sniff BS and unmask it This is different than say trading in financial markets where biases are always there and the issue never resolves itself, just companies and CEOs come and go.
linuxftw 5y ago
Many scientists actively speak out about the strong biases and conflicts of interest in their respective industries. The media universally lambasts them as crackpots. Couple that with the fact that most people don't feel comfortable with the topic of 'science,' they choose to mentally defer any interpretation of evidence/facts to some authority, it's incredibly easy to mislead the population.
- teachingassist 5y ago
  Only speaking against popular biases and conflicts of interest often is crackpot - it represents a failure to recognise your own biases and conflicts of interests. You can present an alternative view without accusing other people of bias.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - linuxftw 5y ago
    > You can present an alternative view without accusing other people of bias. Maybe at some point in the distant past. It's all industry shills now.
cratermoon 5y ago
All of the above applies to journalism as well, and is something that any media-savvy person will keep in mind at all times. Whenever I see someone expressing an opinion that this or that source is biased, or that there is such a thing as an unbiased source, I do a mental face-palm. The best propaganda and misinformation is framed to appear unbiased to its audience.
- shuntress 5y ago
  Things to watch out for are slogans like "Fair and balanced"
  - kbenson 5y ago
    Actually, I think the ham-fisted approach like that is easier to spot without paying attention. The harder ones to spot will always be the ones that align with your own interests and ideals. The best way I've found to get some perspective on those is to occasionally go to the "fair and balanced" site specifically to get the other take on an issue. It soon becomes obvious that there are actually different takes on the issue, but neither side is giving even lip service to the other sides position, instead just putting up straw men to knock down. It's a lot harder for these sites to claim being unbiased successfully while having a lot of bias when you have more information than they assume you do, so that's one good way to spot it (but it requires a lot of work and vigilance, so is hard to keep up).
- majormajor 5y ago
  > The best propaganda and misinformation is framed to appear unbiased to its audience. The most effective propaganda I've seen seems to be highly emotionally charged. Political parties and religions are our most prominent organizations that depend entirely on evangelism, and I don't see many examples of them thriving through appearing to appear purely logical and unbiased.
  - mistermann 5y ago
    Key phrase: "that I've seen". Well done propaganda (framed to appear unbiased to its audience) is not even noticed as such by the reader. The effectiveness of this can be seen right here on HN in the hundreds/thousands of culture-war themed posts where people will quote newspaper articles that are written (intentionally or not) in a loose/ambiguous/leading way that facilitates significant interpretation of the words, so different readers will form different conclusions, and neither can be deemed wrong as they can all be using perfectly sound logic. When someone posts such an article as proof of their viewpoint, predictable heated arguments ensue, with both sides typically believing themselves to be right.
bobthechef 5y ago
Those we regard as "intelligent" are actually capable of more egregious errors than those we do not regard that way. If a person's will is corrupted by vice, then he uses his intellect to rationalize his errors and his vices. And the more intelligent, the most elaborate these rationalizations can become until this person is trapped in the thick fog of his vile theories, unable and unwilling to escape. They become blinded by their own evil constructions which they then transmit onto their students. While vices like those having to do with sexual depravity (and the resulting mental blindness it causes) are ubiquitous, pride and envy are especially central here. They produce the same contemptuous attitude that leads such people to hate the masses and suppose that if they believe something, then it must be false. It also explains the politics of today.
actually_a_dog 5y ago
Let's not forget: this also applies to forums, such as HN. I have seen enough comments (edit: with significant merit) downvoted without comment to believe this is true here, and I've seen it on other forums as well. Go against the prevailing opinion at your own risk, if you value fake internet points.

majke 5y ago

Rejection is probably one of the strongest feelings for a normal person. For me two thoughts help keep my spirits up: - I was the same person before the rejection as I am after it. There is nothing changing in reality - only my own view, my own feelings. This is all mostly self-inflicted. - "If you don't feel rejected every day, it means you're not trying hard enough."

Razengan 5y ago
> I was the same person before the rejection as I am after it. There is nothing changing in reality - only my own view, my own feelings. This is all mostly self-inflicted. The reality being that members of my own species choose not to be with me or work with me. I am unwelcome. Repeat that many times over many years.
- bittercynic 5y ago
  _Some_ members. If every member of our species choose not to be with or work with you it would be a major problem, but probably not an insoluble one.
  - tnzm 5y ago
    Yep just kill him and then there's nobody to have that problem. /s
    - bittercynic 5y ago
      Damn, how about join a casual sports league or volunteer at Habitat or some kind of group sessions. Anything to get social experience.
      - tnzm 5y ago
        Damn, have you considered social experience could be the reason someone ended like that? It's a feedback loop and the less in control you are, the less in control you are. Until you hit rock bottom. Which might not happen, and where you might bounce off, or not.

agumonkey 5y ago

Ultimately it's an ~education thing (for the lack of a better word). You and others want to be in a place where people aren't hiding their thoughts that much. Ability to express subjective criticism in a mellow manner is very important. And the ability to accept being wrong. Basically being tuned to others POV to improve everybody's view or understanding without undermining their well being too.

mannykannot 5y ago
It is not clear to me whether you are suggesting the issue is merely one of how to give and receive justified criticism. I see the greater issue as one of the use of marginal, overblown or simply unjustified criticism and innuendo to isolate people and undermine reputations. We all know it happens.
- lbhdc 5y ago
  I have worked in a few departments where this has happened. It seemed that it was a means used by a group of engineers to get rid of other engineers they didn't see as "one of them".
  - agumonkey 5y ago
    Did this happen as a last resort after more noble attempt failed ? Or was it the first reflex of the group ? Also was the other person really unfriendly or detrimental to the group or was it somehow subjective/ego driven (threatened by a newcomer) ?
    - lbhdc 5y ago
      No, this wasn't some misunderstanding, or even a disagreement. It was control. Those that didn't play the game were ostracized. Where possible they were set up to fail, and were generally made miserable. Ego driven? Certainly. I don't think there was any fear of newcomers, but was more about loyalty. Many of these people had worked together previously, and would coordinate to enforce what they wanted. Eventually they moved in mass to another company, killing our eng department. They rinsed and repeated at the new company. I had an HR rep tell me they felt like there was little they could do, because of their culture of silence, and how profitable they were.

zomglings 5y ago

We are hearing from two people who were able to weather the political whirlwind. Sadly, this playbook of ostracization is a generally successful one. The people who are successfully sidelined by this kind of behavior become actual pariahs. Their isolation is so complete that people have a tendency to explain this as "academia working as intended".

_e 5y ago
This is why it is so important to have the courage to get up and leave. If one has been successfully sidelined then, yes, they will become an actual pariah because they feel like they have to explain everything that they do and will continue to do so because they feel like no one is acknowledging them. This is part of the gaslighters trap. It should not be a surprise that there are some who might feel threatened by people who want to challenge the status quo in search of the truth or constantly push their mental and physical limits.
- zomglings 5y ago
  As the academic job market gets more and more competitive, in group vs. out group dynamics get stronger and stronger and stronger. And yet so many of my classmates from graduate school (mathematics) prefer to live through "visiting assistant professor" hell than make the transition into technology, where they would do very well! I never really thought of it as a matter of courage, but maybe it is.
  - ta988 5y ago
    Do very well in what sense? Money?
    - zomglings 5y ago
      Money, mental health.
derbOac 5y ago
I really appreciated this post by Gelman — I don't always empathize with his writing, but it was a good thing to learn about this side of his experience, him being someone that I think of as being on the other side of that social inclusion continuum. At the same time I agree with you that it's hard to know what to make of it because he did obviously get through it, and the problem is that so many don't, for many reasons. I have maybe too many reactions to put into words, but the thing I wrestle with most about the phenomenon he's pointing to is why isn't this more fully acknowledged by the community, however you define that? It's the strangling silence about these types of phenomena that is maybe the worst, at a number of levels. When you're going through it, I think part of the problem is that there's no inputs to provide a different perspective, to show you "hey this looks this way but it's not". It's not even within someone's abilities at that point at some level, as you're lacking any sort of realistic social inputs. Then, at another level, why doesn't, say the academic community come to terms with how common these sorts of pathological dynamics are, and how dominant they are in outcomes? Why isn't the broader nonacademic community more aware of these kinds of problems? I don't think these sorts of issues are without consequence either. For example, this story isn't really about the same thing, but I do think it starts to involve related social problems, that had worldwide implications for COVID, measles, and tuberculosis: https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwu... . To me one of the worst problems with politicization of COVID science is how unrealistic both sides seemed to get, with one invoking strange conspiracy theories when typical academic politics is trouble enough, and the other seemingly in denial about any sort of problems in academic science.

BrandoElFollito 5y ago

I worked in academia a few years, and moved to industry during my PhD (which I completed). There were strong political jousts, like everywhere else. This was unfortunately coupled to an inherent lack of money (and low salaries), and enormous egos that were growing as people were getting higher diplomas or positions. This is one of the reasons that made me left because I saw that either I jump into the cage and bite my way up (putting actual research on the side), or always get sided. The time where I was finishing my PhD and working at the same time (and therefore I was completely independent financially) was great - I could just flip the finger to the fights and concentrate on research and on teaching (which I loved and still love very, very much). Academia is no different that other groups of people with common or conflicting interests.

ZephyrBlu 5y ago
> There were strong political jousts, like everywhere else. This was unfortunately coupled to an inherent lack of money (and low salaries), and enormous egos that were growing as people were getting higher diplomas or positions Sayre's Law: "'In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake.' By way of corollary, it adds: 'That is why academic politics are so bitter.'" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law
- cratermoon 5y ago
  Wasn't there an adage going around that when something like "lock a group up people in a room with a ham sandwich and by the end of a day they'll be arguing about which side of the sandwich is best"?
JackFr 5y ago
“The reason that university politics is so vicious is because stakes are so small” ― Henry Kissinger
- dctoedt 5y ago
  Yes - Sayle's Law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law

darkerside 5y ago

The funny thing about this that I realized is, there are at least some instances where I am rejected by one or more individuals but I attribute the rejection to the entire group. Realistically, this is not what's going on. It's just that most people do not care, or don't care enough to intervene. This is why it's important to have at least a few influential friends who can advocate on your behalf.

JohnWhigham 5y ago

Just want to say thanks to the author for not contorting this with a sexist slant and ignoring that everyone experiences these dynamics in professional circles.

whack 5y ago

> There was no exchange of articles or courtroom-type setting where the authors of the lies had to directly defend or abandon those statements, and I guess the others in the department had some sort of cynical view that the details didn’t matter. Or, more precisely, they had a consensus that they didn’t want to think about the ugly thing that had happened, so they’d look away The above resonated with me. One of the hard lessons I've had to learn in life, is that you will simply never be given a fair chance by some people. We would love to live in a world where we can face our accusations head-on, and after rebutting them, never have to face them again. 99% of life does not work this way though. Key well-connected influencers may decide they don't like you for completely arbitrary reasons. And other people who know nothing about you, but trust the influencers, will take their side by default as well. No one is going to come out in the open and make concrete accusations against you. They will just silently embellish minor transgressions, or take things out of context to paint you in a negative light... and do most of this in private conversations where you don't even have a chance to respond to any of it. The end-results are very tangible and negative of course, but the means are completely under wraps and nearly impossible to fight against. Ultimately, you can't fight against it any more than an ant can fight against its colony. If you find yourself in a system that has a vendetta against you, your best bet is to simply leave and find a different system that does value you. Or try your best to ignore them, respond only to the most vocal criticisms, continue focusing on your work, and let your success be your shield. Winning over the critics is a fool's errand - you're better off simply accepting that you will always have critics who dislike you. As the old saying goes, haters gonna hate

kbenson 5y ago
> They will just silently embellish minor transgressions, or take things out of context to paint you in a negative light... And it doesn't really require embellishment. Context is everything in this case. The difference between a small joke meant to be endearing and an attack can be entirely in the eye of the beholder. Even something as inane as "working hard or hardly working?" can be taken negatively if you're already primed to expect it that way. It's very, very hard to get back to even neutral with people that have negative assumptions about you. Even if you point out that some initial interaction that gave them a negative impression was entirely mistaken on their part or unfounded, it's not like people go back through all the interactions after that point which they interpreted negatively because of that, so these self-reinforced opinions are very hard to shake for people. It really brings into perspective that old adage, "you never get a second chance to make a first impression."

hitekker 5y ago

> It was an interesting bit of group dynamics, in that the vast majority of my colleagues there did not ever have to be in the position of actually endorsing the lies about my work; they just were able to not think about it and move on. There was no exchange of articles or courtroom-type setting where the authors of the lies had to directly defend or abandon those statements, and I guess the others in the department had some sort of cynical view that the details didn’t matter. Or, more precisely, they had a consensus that they didn’t want to think about the ugly thing that had happened, so they’d look away. Perhap as Martin Luther King once said, in the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.

hzay 5y ago

It's funny how freely the word pariah is used in english. When I was a kid my parents used to tell me never ever to say that word, and that I might get arrested if I do. I never dug into this to find out why but that's a super taboo word in tamilnadu.

cmrajan 5y ago
Yes, but in english it's simply used to mean as outcast instead of all the social connotations that it carries from it's originating language Tamil.

cryptica 5y ago

These days, being honest will make you a social pariah in every social circle.

m463 5y ago

I listened to an interesting Joe Rogan episode with David Sinclair, a doctor studying aging. At one point, he published a paper and someone from one of the drug companies wrote a scathing rebuttal, which caused him countless problems. Because his research was called into question, he couldn't get funding, and his lab shrunk from maybe people to only a few. So he had to do a lot of extra work to re-prove all his assertions and a couple of years were lost.

ta988 5y ago
It is not lost if then that person's truth emerges. In any political system, one may have to burn themself to make any change.

EricE 5y ago

"The science is settled!" If there ever was a more vile phrase...