6 ms·

Yes, this is the key takeaway. It is really a blow to academia that a private company could be so much better than them. It clearly demonstrates, to my mind, th

by Gatsky 5y ago

Yes, this is the key takeaway. It is really a blow to academia that a private company could be so much better than them. It clearly demonstrates, to my mind, that academia is a poor engine for progress and getting worse. This is due to structural and sociological pathologies which there seems to be little appetite to mitigate. I say this as an academic, of course.

Salgat 5y ago
The biggest issue with academia is their hyper focus on pumping out as many papers as cheaply and quickly as possible. Big ambitious projects are much less efficient at pulling this off.
- stevenbedrick 5y ago
  The reason for that "hyper focus" is due to the "structural and sociological pathologies" that the grandparent posted about. Change the funding model and the rest will follow.
jcfrei 5y ago
It always depends. In lots of fields it's just a fact that all the exciting research happens in private companies and then for others it's reversed. Private companies can do research well when a near or mid-term commercialization is possible. Otherwise it's up to the public institutions.
an_opabinia 5y ago
But weren’t all those Google employees trained in the academy? Wasn’t this competition organized and designed by people in the academy? Who defined the goal, who laid not just the foundation but built the whole town? It’s clearly a positive collaboration. In any case, left to their own devices, corporate R&D teams wouldn’t be able to define goals that work for their business. Like without the competition and goals being defined for them, DeepMind would be having meetings with brand managers about the avant- grade of ad tracking.
- Gatsky 5y ago
  I did not say that we should burn down the Universities, only that they have gone astray. I think this is actually not a very controversial comment. Every academic I know is deeply unhappy, even the ones who are really doing as well as one can. This is a generalisation.
- deeviant 5y ago
  > But weren’t all those Google employees trained in the academy? Wasn’t this competition organized and designed by people in the academy? Getting an education (even an advanced one) is a completely separate thing than entering academia and I suspect you know this.
  - an_opabinia 5y ago
    > Getting an education (even an advanced one) is a completely separate thing than entering academia and I suspect you know this. This is the same energy as saying that being the son of an incredibly rich person is a completely separate thing than being rich.
kaba0 5y ago
I think it’s unfair to generalize it to all areas of academia.
folli 5y ago
My (admittedly biology/pharma-centric) point of view is a bit less fatalistic: Private companies are much more efficient in reaching a well-defined goal. Academia is much more efficient in reaching ill-defined goals. The thing is that the majority of goals for basic science are very ill-defined and virtually all breakthroughs are serendipitous (reaching from antibiotics to more recently CRISPR-Cas). So I don't think it makes sense to advocate for one vs the other.
nopasswrdmngr 5y ago
Do you share this perspective with prospective graduate students?
- Gatsky 5y ago
  Yes, definitely. I am not in a position where I recruit anyone, nor do I hope to be, I just finished my PhD. But there is a significant portion of students who will go ahead with a research career no matter what you tell them. This is partly due to a lack of alternatives (in some fields in particular eg for life science students for example), and partly due to the irresistable cachet of academia for some. I think some people also have a degree of sadomasachism, and will fly towards the flames again and again. Science is pretty difficult frankly, especially these days. Sure science is worth doing, and can be quite rewarding, no doubt. But I can't quite understand the popularity. Writing papers is particularly painful, again I can't understand why there are so many papers being written, it is torrential. As others have noted, this is not the same as actual progress. But lately I have noticed something telling about several leading researchers in my field, people who have made it in every sense of the word, work at the top institutions, regularly publish stunning research in Science, Nature. They have been moving to the pharmaceutical industry in significant numbers. This tells you, basically, that academia sucks for everyone. This is also my impression from talking to people who have entered research in the last 15 years. The older researchers seem happier. Perhpas it is the pay scales that scale with seniority, or just survivorship bias.

by Gatsky 5y ago

Salgat 5y ago

The biggest issue with academia is their hyper focus on pumping out as many papers as cheaply and quickly as possible. Big ambitious projects are much less efficient at pulling this off.

stevenbedrick 5y ago
The reason for that "hyper focus" is due to the "structural and sociological pathologies" that the grandparent posted about. Change the funding model and the rest will follow.

jcfrei 5y ago

It always depends. In lots of fields it's just a fact that all the exciting research happens in private companies and then for others it's reversed. Private companies can do research well when a near or mid-term commercialization is possible. Otherwise it's up to the public institutions.

an_opabinia 5y ago

But weren’t all those Google employees trained in the academy? Wasn’t this competition organized and designed by people in the academy? Who defined the goal, who laid not just the foundation but built the whole town? It’s clearly a positive collaboration. In any case, left to their own devices, corporate R&D teams wouldn’t be able to define goals that work for their business. Like without the competition and goals being defined for them, DeepMind would be having meetings with brand managers about the avant- grade of ad tracking.

Gatsky 5y ago
I did not say that we should burn down the Universities, only that they have gone astray. I think this is actually not a very controversial comment. Every academic I know is deeply unhappy, even the ones who are really doing as well as one can. This is a generalisation.
deeviant 5y ago
> But weren’t all those Google employees trained in the academy? Wasn’t this competition organized and designed by people in the academy? Getting an education (even an advanced one) is a completely separate thing than entering academia and I suspect you know this.
- an_opabinia 5y ago
  > Getting an education (even an advanced one) is a completely separate thing than entering academia and I suspect you know this. This is the same energy as saying that being the son of an incredibly rich person is a completely separate thing than being rich.

kaba0 5y ago

I think it’s unfair to generalize it to all areas of academia.

folli 5y ago

My (admittedly biology/pharma-centric) point of view is a bit less fatalistic: Private companies are much more efficient in reaching a well-defined goal. Academia is much more efficient in reaching ill-defined goals. The thing is that the majority of goals for basic science are very ill-defined and virtually all breakthroughs are serendipitous (reaching from antibiotics to more recently CRISPR-Cas). So I don't think it makes sense to advocate for one vs the other.

nopasswrdmngr 5y ago

Do you share this perspective with prospective graduate students?

Gatsky 5y ago
Yes, definitely. I am not in a position where I recruit anyone, nor do I hope to be, I just finished my PhD. But there is a significant portion of students who will go ahead with a research career no matter what you tell them. This is partly due to a lack of alternatives (in some fields in particular eg for life science students for example), and partly due to the irresistable cachet of academia for some. I think some people also have a degree of sadomasachism, and will fly towards the flames again and again. Science is pretty difficult frankly, especially these days. Sure science is worth doing, and can be quite rewarding, no doubt. But I can't quite understand the popularity. Writing papers is particularly painful, again I can't understand why there are so many papers being written, it is torrential. As others have noted, this is not the same as actual progress. But lately I have noticed something telling about several leading researchers in my field, people who have made it in every sense of the word, work at the top institutions, regularly publish stunning research in Science, Nature. They have been moving to the pharmaceutical industry in significant numbers. This tells you, basically, that academia sucks for everyone. This is also my impression from talking to people who have entered research in the last 15 years. The older researchers seem happier. Perhpas it is the pay scales that scale with seniority, or just survivorship bias.