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I'm someone who finished a PhD, here's my perspective. You don't believe your supervisor or your research group and so you quit, great. It's great that you hav

I'm someone who finished a PhD, here's my perspective. You don't believe your supervisor or your research group and so you quit, great. It's great that you have the critical thinking abilities and confidence in yourself to make such a decision. However, I think it's extremely unprofessional to write a blog post saying that your supervisor is superficial or your research group is performative art. I don't say this because I think we should just take the venerable professor's word for it, but because accusations in general, if they're vague enough, are impossible to defend against. I think if there's enough substance to make your comment specific, you should. Maybe even write a paper explaining why what they're doing is nonsense. If you're right, this would genuinely be a contribution to the field. If you can't be specific enough to be scientific about it, just keep it to yourself.

omgJustTest 4y ago
Edit: removed to follow rules
- jacquesm 4y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
selimthegrim 4y ago
You finished a PhD, you should know how much weight his accusations would be given seeing as he isn’t a professor. I kept my mouth shut when I heard my co-advisor was badmouthing my other co-advisor’s research and the result was the committee blowing up at the prospectus. Sometimes it pays to be proactive.
JackFr 4y ago
Exactly. Giving the OP the benefit of the doubt -- that he is completely correct in his assessment of the group -- he is certainly doing himself no favors publicly throwing them under the bus. I imagine other prospective advisors, in any field, might be reluctant to take him on if this is a pontential outcome.
- RobertRoberts 4y ago
  This can go both ways. While he may be hurt by this, light needs to be shed on systemic failure. I know a few people who have PhD's that had fantastic support, counselors and teachers, and they still had questions on the validity of their degrees and processes. Here, this person's experience seems to be a money grab by a school unqualified to provide him a PhD in his area. Going public though, maybe a hard decision, and may hurt him, but who knows? Maybe there are people out there that want someone that is willing to stand up like this publicly?
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    This seems like the most important point. Is it normal for research groups to take on PhD candidates who they are unable to support in the field of interest? {Takes on Quantum Computing grad student} + {has insufficient Quantum Computing expertise in group to even advise} seems... pretty bad. PS: And being from a tenured family and having grown up exposed to academia, I'm inclined to take author at their judgement here, given that taking on students in hot topics meshes with how the incentives of grant funding, publishing, and prestige work.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Kranar 4y ago
  I don't think he's trying to do himself any favors. If anything he's trying to do others a favor by expressing a very common problem within academia.
  - matthewdgreen 4y ago
    Academia is full of mechanisms to negatively judge your research work. In fact judgement is pretty much the only constant in the field: every single piece of work you do will be under constant scrutiny, will be torn apart both before and after publication, and your entire (research) value will be harshly judged by outsiders on a more or less constant basis. The one positive of this environment that when you see someone who has succeeded in publishing a substantial amount, it's safe to presume that their work is not entirely without merit. That's not a 100% guarantee, but it's a good heuristic. A post like this implies that the author's personal judgement is more insightful than a process that I know to be enormously thorough and harsh, and yet it provides only vague assertions and no details on methodology. At the same time it's hard to ignore that the post is written by someone who is (understandably) a bit bitter and probably isn't being entirely objective in their evaluation. In general it's not my impression that this sort of post produces reliable feedback that outsiders should rely on, and (unless it's very carefully anonymized, which it isn't) it also leaves bitterness in its wake.
gotbeans 4y ago
> If you can't be specific enough to be scientific about it, just keep it to yourself. It's a blog post, he definitely can say what he thinks, orthogonal to unprofessionality. It's up to the reader to understand that's his view of reality and without any hard proof we should take his view as a data point, and potentially an erroneous one. Nothing more. Last we need is people writing accusatory white papers to explain themselves over an opinion they had on a personal blog post.
pm90 4y ago
This is terrible advice (also from a smurf account). Yes unsubstantiated claims can be harmful, but that doesn’t mean that no such claims should ever be made. The author is not just bad mouthing their research group, but presenting their perspective of what took place.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > presenting their perspective of what took place. I know this is the age of oversharing, but just because something is from a perspective doesn't mean that people should be interested in it, or that is wise or fair to share. Making it specific and detailed is a way to make it fairer and more productive. edit: also, to appeal to self-interest, people respond to detailed argument with attacks on the supports of that argument. People respond to vague accusations with ad hominem (which may be very specific) because there's no argument to attack. Vague accusations are almost always eventually more damaging to the accuser than to the accused.
  - spicybright 4y ago
    I don't like saying "in the old days" much, and I wasn't able to read the article, but this seemed like something you'd rant to a friend or two over a beer instead of to the general public. That doesn't mean brushing it off though. More of a vent to cool yourself off before taking the next action. At least that's what I've always done. At least you can somewhat "un-say" things now a days if you control the content hosting.
mordae 4y ago
> extremely unprofessional I disagree. It is extremely unprofessional to act like doing research while pocketing mostly public funds like that. I am 100% behind the author. They have apparently tried to resolve the issue internally and this serves as good warning for people considering science career in today's world.
- yanderekko 4y ago
  >I disagree. It is extremely unprofessional to act like doing research while pocketing mostly public funds like that. This can be true while it's also true that making a vague, unsubstantiated assertion about how your love for the field is just too deep and pure for academia is still unprofessional. Of the people who claim they dropped out of school because they were just too smart or creative to go through the motions, the vast majority are probably very wrong. If you want people to take you seriously, make a better argument.
  - TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
    Can you quote research to support your claim? Alas I only have an anecdote. I considered starting a PhD around ten years ago. One particular university was having an open day. When I got there everyone was locked out because someone hadn't bothered to tell someone else the open day was happening. There were visits to the facilities, which were interesting enough but a lot of the tech had been there since the 90s (or 70s in some cases) and there wasn't anything fresh to see. And there was a show-and-tell by various researchers and one lead professor, during which I realised the professor was a Grade A Bullshitter [1], and the researchers weren't even remotely familiar with other work in the field. The main person I wanted to see didn't bother to turn up. Bizarrely, there was a persistently religious undertone - very strange in a field that isn't even remotely religious. (The university is quite well known for its theology department.) Now, this is a very niche field, so I have no way of knowing if it was typical. But as experiences go it certainly didn't suggest that that particular department was simmering with eager high-voltage professionalism. Since then I've read "We're looking for PhD students" notices on various email lists. It's striking how many [2] seem like transparently contrived attempts at getting funding from organisations who already know what exactly they want to fund, and how few have are truly research-driven. It feels very much like a box ticking exercise. Org gets money, org hands it out to researchers, researchers get students, students write up dissertation, dissertation is forgotten, rinse and repeat. [1] Subsequently confirmed independently by other people in various "Oh, him - yes, he's a loon" conversations. [2] Not all. There are places who on the leading edge. But even there some of the research feels dissociated from real problems - almost as if the goal is the production of "Towards..." "Considering..." and "A critique/summary/review/taxonomy of..." of papers, and not so much developing techniques and solutions that that would really move the field forward.
anjc 4y ago
It's also likely that, as a new student, the writer simply doesn't understand these "performative" aspects yet. The research group isn't succeeding by accident, put it that way.
Invictus0 4y ago
This post isn't about the advisors. No one reading this knows who the advisors are, they won't show up in Google. "Saying that your supervisor is superficial or your research group is performative art" is also hardly an accusation, it's an opinion. No names are named: how can there be an accusation without an accused?
time_to_smile 4y ago
I interact very heavily with academics (though am thankfully no longer one myself) and one thing I can't stand is that all of them will complain endlessly about the horribly abusive and broken system that academia has become, then without hesitation turn around and flog the next person in line when it's their turn to continue the process from the abusing side. As someone who once held the title of assistant professor, I have little patience for people who recognize that the system is in many ways repulsive, and yet refuse to even consider to stop playing the game because it's all that they know. The amount of bullshit being produced and regurgitated in academia needs to be called out. Your definition of "unprofessional" is just "this makes us look bad" Academics who defend a broken system are a major factor in why that system continues to decline. I'm glad the OP wrote this article and find it expectedly discouraging that someone creeps out from the woodwork to try to shush it.
- Terry_Roll 4y ago
  > Academics who defend a broken system are a major factor in why that system continues to decline. Much like military & law enforcement personnel who wear their medals defending a broken system. The OP should count themselves lucky they have seen that having a few letters after their name on a piece of paper or business card doesnt cut it with many. Estate agents (realtors) have devalued the letters after name's obedience to "authority".
- spicybright 4y ago
  I mostly agree, but I actually think the biggest pressure is people afraid of getting kicked out. You pay your weight in gold, but if you become a pain to someone high enough on the totem pole, it's easy to get kicked out of a program, leaving you with not much. You gotta play the game to have any chance of changing things. A lot like politics, actually.
- sdfhdhjdw3 4y ago
  > I interact very heavily with academics (though am thankfully no longer one myself) and one thing I can't stand is that all of them will complain endlessly about the horribly abusive and broken system that academia has become, then without hesitation turn around and flog the next person in line when it's their turn to continue the process from the abusing side. Completely agree. > The amount of bullshit being produced and regurgitated in academia needs to be called out. Your definition of "unprofessional" is just "this makes us look bad" No, it isn't. First off, I'm not in the academia. I'm not part of the "us". It doesn't affect me if person A is attacking people B. For me I don't care at all. Also, I specifically said that the problem wasn't criticism. The problem is criticism so vague it's impossible to defend, because there's nothing to address. Person A says that person B is superficial. Person B responds "no I'm not". Very substantive!
noodles_nomore 4y ago
At a quick glance the author appears to be anonymous and doesn't name anyone.
- justinclift 4y ago
  The author's "About" page links to both their GitHub profile (full name, partial photo), and that in turn links to a more complete profile listing their location, current employer, previous employers + education, etc. Not at all anonymous. :/
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
sicp-enjoyer 4y ago
I think you're right that it could be a bit more tactful. It's also not surprising to me that the person who finished advocates a "go along to get along" and "don't rock the boat" attitude.
BeetleB 4y ago
Spent a lot of time in academia, and I quite disagree. He's pointing out something that is very common in academia - common enough to be widely accepted. Saying he is unprofessional in criticizing his supervisors is like saying someone is unprofessional in criticizing his boss for demanding Leetcode style interviews. If his supervisor were an outlier, I could see your point. But a big purpose behind his blog post is to highlight how common this is.
- sdfhdhjdw3 4y ago
  > Spent a lot of time in academia, and I quite disagree. He's pointing out something that is very common in academia - common enough to be widely accepted. Saying he is unprofessional in criticizing his supervisors is like saying someone is unprofessional in criticizing his boss for demanding Leetcode style interviews. I specifically said the issue isn't criticizing. The issue is criticizing in a way which is so vague as to be impossible to defend. It's exhausting commenting on HN. You have to append every minor observation of a laundry list of responses to likely misinterpretations.
  - cinntaile 4y ago
    The whole purpose of not being specific is to not implicate certain people. This way he can criticize the "whole" industry.
  - Benjammer 4y ago
    >It's exhausting commenting on HN. You have to append every minor observation of a laundry list of responses to likely misinterpretations. Interesting seeing this response after you just posted: >If you can't be specific enough to be scientific about it, just keep it to yourself Was this a tongue-in-cheek demonstration of your point? Or is vague criticism only unacceptable in academia?
    - sdfhdhjdw3 4y ago
      The post I was responding to was the example. I wanted to claim that you shouldn't make vague criticism. I immediately expected that people would respond as if my claim was that you shouldn't criticize. And sure enough, that's what the post I responded to did. Me: "You shouldn't make vague criticism" Response: "OMG you're saying university professors are above criticism." Do you think I'm being vague here? :-)
ghaff 4y ago
In general, I tend to be of the school that, while I won't say you should never blow up bridges with great force, the default should almost always be that whatever satisfaction is gained by publishing a cathartic blog post or twitter thread is probably better written in a diary somewhere without pushing a publish button.
- iab 4y ago
  Blogs need a "emotion-meter" metric that auto-delays publication for a set time. Probably true for every communication method in existence.
draw_down 4y ago
alexashka 4y ago
> If you can't be specific enough to be scientific about it, just keep it to yourself Why? What you're doing right now is telling other people how to live their lives. Is that ok, or should you be scientific about it, or keep it to yourself?
- burnished 4y ago
  They do justify why they believe what they are saying.
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
It's a difficult row to hoe. Some light sometimes needs to be shed (look at Susan Fowler's post on Uber. I think it triggered a fairly necessary reevaluation, or Edward Snowden's revelations), but it is seldom without cost to the person that's holding the flashlight (Snowden is unlikely to receive a warm welcome, if he comes back to the US, and I suspect that Russia won't be a particularly joyful place, in the near future. I have no idea how Susan Fowler has done). In my own case, my history (quite checkered) has given me some fairly unique views into a lot of terrible behaviors, rotten attitudes, and outright hypocrisy by many folks that like to project a wholesome, professional, image. Now that I'm out of the rat race, I could probably be more specific. But I won't. In some, rare, cases, perpetrators went on to cause harm (Not much. I never worked with John Wayne Gacy), but most ended up in rather unenviable places. In a number of other cases, however, people ended up changing their behavior/attitude, and going on to be happier, healthier people. For reasons that I won't go into here, I believe in second chances. I was given first-, second-, and third chances. It has less to do with "professionalism," and more to do with being human. It's not my job to clean up the world (just the bits around me), and I need to pick my battles carefully, so I can do the most good.
omoikane 4y ago
The original text says performative act, and not performative art. Not a big deal perhaps but this subtle difference carries a different connotation for me, I wonder if you might get a different impression if you read it again.
dqpb 4y ago
> accusations in general, if they're vague enough, are impossible to defend against General accusations are easy to defend against, you just ask for specifics.
noptd 4y ago
- bumby 4y ago
  I flagged this but thought it is prudent to explain why. The author deliberately took it down because the attention it garnered made them uncomfortable. While we all know what goes up on the internet is forever, it doesn't preclude us from having the decency to respect their wishes.
- acqbu 4y ago
  thanks for sharing
- rat9988 4y ago
  Can mods delete this please? I think web archive is misused in many cases when it's posted on HN. Web archive, in my opinion, shouldn't be used to circumvent author wishes or paywalls.
sampo 4y ago
> If you can't be specific enough to be scientific about it, just keep it to yourself. This is some serious gatekeeping. A PhD student is an apprentice, on a path to get scientific training. They are not yet trained enough, so that you could reasonable expect them to "be scientific" to a level of rigorous standards.
wwwwasmistake 4y ago
dandigangi 4y ago
Can't say I agree or disagree since article is gone but it does make me very curious how it was written to prompt your comment. Disparaging (the article I mean, not you) can take you down some bad paths with your career and academia.
dj_mc_merlin 4y ago
Do you think his chances would be better in academia if he: 1. Writes a vague blog post about his dissatisfaction with his PhD or 2. Writes a paper attacking his supervisor explicitly ? Obviously the 3rd option ("shut the fuck up if you don't want your overlords to hear") would be the best, but also perhaps the most boring.
- nobodyandproud 4y ago
  > Obviously the 3rd option ("shut the fuck up if you don't want your overlords to hear") would be the best, but also perhaps the most boring Best for whom?
  - dj_mc_merlin 4y ago
    Best for the blog post author. Picking fights with people stronger than you, in a system you don't intend to leave, doesn't usually work out well for you. Nor in general. STFUing is a near-optimal strategy in a lot of situations, really.
    - nobodyandproud 4y ago
      Locally (as in, local maxima) I would agree. I can’t think of any whistle-blower who didn’t suffer major blowback, unless they remained anonymous. However it also leads to a tragedy of commons, in this case in the form of institutional corruption.
btrettel 4y ago
I also have a PhD. There's a major asymmetry in US academia that public accusations can address, if done tactfully, truthfully, and specifically enough to allow a defense. In US academia, subordinates need positive references to get jobs. That leads many to be quite deferential to their supervisors, even allowing abuse. Nominally this is supposed to highlight strengths and weaknesses of a job candidate, but it also can serve to warn potential employers away from a particular job candidate. However, in contrast, there is no formal mechanism to warn others about bad supervisors. Given that, I am okay with tactfully, truthfully, and specifically going public about negative experiences with academic supervisors. To be clear: I don't advocate defamation. Keep good records, and if you choose the go public, be tactful and stick to what can be easily corroborated. Also: My experience is that subordinates are rarely given the opportunity to reply to defamatory claims made by academic supervisors when providing references. So if your focus is on the ability of someone to defend against defamation, I don't think you can defend the status quo.
tomcat27 4y ago
> However, I think it's extremely unprofessional to write a blog post saying that your supervisor is superficial or your research group is performative art. lol. You don't know the weight of crushed aspirations and a two year opportunity cost. > I don't say this because I think we should just take the venerable professor's word for it, but because accusations in general, if they're vague enough, are impossible to defend against. again lol. publication game is well know. > I think if there's enough substance to make your comment specific, you should. Maybe even write a paper explaining why what they're doing is nonsense. If you're right, this would genuinely be a contribution to the field. If you can't be specific enough to be scientific about it, just keep it to yourself. again lol. this is a very academic answer. Actually, I'm not sure university administrations write a paper on policies and ask for peer comments before making changes. They just do it, in the most brutal, authoritarian/top-down/corporate way possible. But the top brass needs papers from the bottom. Show me how much academia has been optimized by writing papers about academia. Well, even if they did they are useless.
holyra 4y ago
This is a harsh reply. I also had the same issue as the author: absent supervisions. I had only two meetings during my phd and they never reviewed my papers (I tried everything to motivate them and I finally gave up). I did everything on my own. It was very hard. I learned the hard way (try and fail... do it again...). I finally finished my phd with great appreciations from the jury. However this ends with a considerable cost: I am completely broken. I now suffer of a severe depression and generalized anxiety disorders. I take several medications and this does not help so much. I lost a lot of friends. My life is basically a journey in hell since several years now.
- JanisErdmanis 4y ago
  > I had only two meetings during my phd and they never reviewed my papers This sounds unreal. How did your supervisor managed his subordinates so they wound not spend their time in leisure activities? > However this ends with a considerable cost I can relate to that. Broken aspirations, depleted ambition and energy and lack of interpersonal relationships sometimes make me feel sad.
  - holyra 4y ago
    > This sounds unreal. How did your supervisor managed his subordinates so they wound not spend their time in leisure activities? Self-pressure? I cannot spend my work time in leisure time, otherwise I ashame. It is pretty even the opposite that I experienced: I felt ashame in my leisure time to not work to get more progress on my phd. We were only two phd students supervised by the same pair of supervisors. In fact we saw our supervisors a lot. However this was more in a friend way. Every time we switch to work-related discussions they found excuses to leave or just say that they will take some time later to ask our questions / reveiw our drafts (and this never happen). In the case of the other student, he was more lucky and find an unofficial supervisor that help him a lot. I find some support from another researcher at the end of my phd. And thanks to him I had some review of my manuscript. This gave me some confidence to finish the writing.
    - JanisErdmanis 4y ago
Osmium 4y ago
While you’re not wrong, in the sense that this wouldn’t hold up as a piece of journalism, anyone who’s been in academia will read it differently: this is an emotional, honest account of a problem common enough that even if this one case were not true, we know it is all too plausible. I feel for this student. Both for what they’ve gone through, and also how this moment of catharsis has probably also caused additional strife for them in all the attention it’s seen. Honestly, I feel for the professor and the rest of the research group too, and all the perverse incentives that have lead otherwise smart people down these unfortunate paths.
Qem 4y ago
> I don't say this because I think we should just take the venerable professor's word for it, but because accusations in general, if they're vague enough, are impossible to defend against. I have my doubts on this, because widespread use of sealed recommendation letters already make blackballing/indefensible accusations sort of the norm in academia, but in this case biased against students. When a student gets the courage to complain in the open, I tend to see it as making the playing field more even. I think a Glassdoor-like site, but for academic advisors and research groups would be quite popular.
aqsalose 4y ago
His accusations in the web archive snapshot that I pulled are ... quite mild, concrete and specific enough: Nobody to talk about in the university about your projects or topics. First PhD student. No postdoc working on the same topic. Advisors who suggest to do a thesis on something else, less difficult or familiar ... and the project seems to be less and less about the hot buzzword in the advertisement or grant proposal. This is spots on description of what happens if you waltz into some university department or research group intending to "do a PhD" in something that isn't the core competency your group. This is very common in "provincial universities" but also happens to lesser in top schools if you just happen to come in with expectations that are misaligned with the reality. It is a side product of the sad aspect of academic reality that finding funding for a PhD student is often much easier than finding funding for a post-doc or more senior member, even though that is exactly the wrong way to build a good research group. Philip Guo's the PhD Grind describes many of the same challenges. I also share a memory of older member of the faculty suggesting that your PhD is supposed to a formality to endure. "A driving license", not real real research with your own ideas. It was very depressing thing to hear, because I too went in with an attitude of "I shall study a question I was interested in my undergrad, but seriously this time".

omgJustTest 4y ago

Edit: removed to follow rules

jacquesm 4y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

selimthegrim 4y ago

You finished a PhD, you should know how much weight his accusations would be given seeing as he isn’t a professor. I kept my mouth shut when I heard my co-advisor was badmouthing my other co-advisor’s research and the result was the committee blowing up at the prospectus. Sometimes it pays to be proactive.

JackFr 4y ago

Exactly. Giving the OP the benefit of the doubt -- that he is completely correct in his assessment of the group -- he is certainly doing himself no favors publicly throwing them under the bus. I imagine other prospective advisors, in any field, might be reluctant to take him on if this is a pontential outcome.

RobertRoberts 4y ago
This can go both ways. While he may be hurt by this, light needs to be shed on systemic failure. I know a few people who have PhD's that had fantastic support, counselors and teachers, and they still had questions on the validity of their degrees and processes. Here, this person's experience seems to be a money grab by a school unqualified to provide him a PhD in his area. Going public though, maybe a hard decision, and may hurt him, but who knows? Maybe there are people out there that want someone that is willing to stand up like this publicly?
- ethbr0 4y ago
  This seems like the most important point. Is it normal for research groups to take on PhD candidates who they are unable to support in the field of interest? {Takes on Quantum Computing grad student} + {has insufficient Quantum Computing expertise in group to even advise} seems... pretty bad. PS: And being from a tenured family and having grown up exposed to academia, I'm inclined to take author at their judgement here, given that taking on students in hot topics meshes with how the incentives of grant funding, publishing, and prestige work.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Kranar 4y ago
I don't think he's trying to do himself any favors. If anything he's trying to do others a favor by expressing a very common problem within academia.
- matthewdgreen 4y ago
  Academia is full of mechanisms to negatively judge your research work. In fact judgement is pretty much the only constant in the field: every single piece of work you do will be under constant scrutiny, will be torn apart both before and after publication, and your entire (research) value will be harshly judged by outsiders on a more or less constant basis. The one positive of this environment that when you see someone who has succeeded in publishing a substantial amount, it's safe to presume that their work is not entirely without merit. That's not a 100% guarantee, but it's a good heuristic. A post like this implies that the author's personal judgement is more insightful than a process that I know to be enormously thorough and harsh, and yet it provides only vague assertions and no details on methodology. At the same time it's hard to ignore that the post is written by someone who is (understandably) a bit bitter and probably isn't being entirely objective in their evaluation. In general it's not my impression that this sort of post produces reliable feedback that outsiders should rely on, and (unless it's very carefully anonymized, which it isn't) it also leaves bitterness in its wake.

gotbeans 4y ago

> If you can't be specific enough to be scientific about it, just keep it to yourself. It's a blog post, he definitely can say what he thinks, orthogonal to unprofessionality. It's up to the reader to understand that's his view of reality and without any hard proof we should take his view as a data point, and potentially an erroneous one. Nothing more. Last we need is people writing accusatory white papers to explain themselves over an opinion they had on a personal blog post.

pm90 4y ago

This is terrible advice (also from a smurf account). Yes unsubstantiated claims can be harmful, but that doesn’t mean that no such claims should ever be made. The author is not just bad mouthing their research group, but presenting their perspective of what took place.

pessimizer 4y ago
> presenting their perspective of what took place. I know this is the age of oversharing, but just because something is from a perspective doesn't mean that people should be interested in it, or that is wise or fair to share. Making it specific and detailed is a way to make it fairer and more productive. edit: also, to appeal to self-interest, people respond to detailed argument with attacks on the supports of that argument. People respond to vague accusations with ad hominem (which may be very specific) because there's no argument to attack. Vague accusations are almost always eventually more damaging to the accuser than to the accused.
- spicybright 4y ago
  I don't like saying "in the old days" much, and I wasn't able to read the article, but this seemed like something you'd rant to a friend or two over a beer instead of to the general public. That doesn't mean brushing it off though. More of a vent to cool yourself off before taking the next action. At least that's what I've always done. At least you can somewhat "un-say" things now a days if you control the content hosting.

mordae 4y ago

> extremely unprofessional I disagree. It is extremely unprofessional to act like doing research while pocketing mostly public funds like that. I am 100% behind the author. They have apparently tried to resolve the issue internally and this serves as good warning for people considering science career in today's world.

yanderekko 4y ago
>I disagree. It is extremely unprofessional to act like doing research while pocketing mostly public funds like that. This can be true while it's also true that making a vague, unsubstantiated assertion about how your love for the field is just too deep and pure for academia is still unprofessional. Of the people who claim they dropped out of school because they were just too smart or creative to go through the motions, the vast majority are probably very wrong. If you want people to take you seriously, make a better argument.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  Can you quote research to support your claim? Alas I only have an anecdote. I considered starting a PhD around ten years ago. One particular university was having an open day. When I got there everyone was locked out because someone hadn't bothered to tell someone else the open day was happening. There were visits to the facilities, which were interesting enough but a lot of the tech had been there since the 90s (or 70s in some cases) and there wasn't anything fresh to see. And there was a show-and-tell by various researchers and one lead professor, during which I realised the professor was a Grade A Bullshitter [1], and the researchers weren't even remotely familiar with other work in the field. The main person I wanted to see didn't bother to turn up. Bizarrely, there was a persistently religious undertone - very strange in a field that isn't even remotely religious. (The university is quite well known for its theology department.) Now, this is a very niche field, so I have no way of knowing if it was typical. But as experiences go it certainly didn't suggest that that particular department was simmering with eager high-voltage professionalism. Since then I've read "We're looking for PhD students" notices on various email lists. It's striking how many [2] seem like transparently contrived attempts at getting funding from organisations who already know what exactly they want to fund, and how few have are truly research-driven. It feels very much like a box ticking exercise. Org gets money, org hands it out to researchers, researchers get students, students write up dissertation, dissertation is forgotten, rinse and repeat. [1] Subsequently confirmed independently by other people in various "Oh, him - yes, he's a loon" conversations. [2] Not all. There are places who on the leading edge. But even there some of the research feels dissociated from real problems - almost as if the goal is the production of "Towards..." "Considering..." and "A critique/summary/review/taxonomy of..." of papers, and not so much developing techniques and solutions that that would really move the field forward.

anjc 4y ago

It's also likely that, as a new student, the writer simply doesn't understand these "performative" aspects yet. The research group isn't succeeding by accident, put it that way.

Invictus0 4y ago

This post isn't about the advisors. No one reading this knows who the advisors are, they won't show up in Google. "Saying that your supervisor is superficial or your research group is performative art" is also hardly an accusation, it's an opinion. No names are named: how can there be an accusation without an accused?

time_to_smile 4y ago

I interact very heavily with academics (though am thankfully no longer one myself) and one thing I can't stand is that all of them will complain endlessly about the horribly abusive and broken system that academia has become, then without hesitation turn around and flog the next person in line when it's their turn to continue the process from the abusing side. As someone who once held the title of assistant professor, I have little patience for people who recognize that the system is in many ways repulsive, and yet refuse to even consider to stop playing the game because it's all that they know. The amount of bullshit being produced and regurgitated in academia needs to be called out. Your definition of "unprofessional" is just "this makes us look bad" Academics who defend a broken system are a major factor in why that system continues to decline. I'm glad the OP wrote this article and find it expectedly discouraging that someone creeps out from the woodwork to try to shush it.

Terry_Roll 4y ago
> Academics who defend a broken system are a major factor in why that system continues to decline. Much like military & law enforcement personnel who wear their medals defending a broken system. The OP should count themselves lucky they have seen that having a few letters after their name on a piece of paper or business card doesnt cut it with many. Estate agents (realtors) have devalued the letters after name's obedience to "authority".
spicybright 4y ago
I mostly agree, but I actually think the biggest pressure is people afraid of getting kicked out. You pay your weight in gold, but if you become a pain to someone high enough on the totem pole, it's easy to get kicked out of a program, leaving you with not much. You gotta play the game to have any chance of changing things. A lot like politics, actually.
sdfhdhjdw3 4y ago
> I interact very heavily with academics (though am thankfully no longer one myself) and one thing I can't stand is that all of them will complain endlessly about the horribly abusive and broken system that academia has become, then without hesitation turn around and flog the next person in line when it's their turn to continue the process from the abusing side. Completely agree. > The amount of bullshit being produced and regurgitated in academia needs to be called out. Your definition of "unprofessional" is just "this makes us look bad" No, it isn't. First off, I'm not in the academia. I'm not part of the "us". It doesn't affect me if person A is attacking people B. For me I don't care at all. Also, I specifically said that the problem wasn't criticism. The problem is criticism so vague it's impossible to defend, because there's nothing to address. Person A says that person B is superficial. Person B responds "no I'm not". Very substantive!

noodles_nomore 4y ago

At a quick glance the author appears to be anonymous and doesn't name anyone.

justinclift 4y ago
The author's "About" page links to both their GitHub profile (full name, partial photo), and that in turn links to a more complete profile listing their location, current employer, previous employers + education, etc. Not at all anonymous. :/
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

sicp-enjoyer 4y ago

I think you're right that it could be a bit more tactful. It's also not surprising to me that the person who finished advocates a "go along to get along" and "don't rock the boat" attitude.

BeetleB 4y ago

Spent a lot of time in academia, and I quite disagree. He's pointing out something that is very common in academia - common enough to be widely accepted. Saying he is unprofessional in criticizing his supervisors is like saying someone is unprofessional in criticizing his boss for demanding Leetcode style interviews. If his supervisor were an outlier, I could see your point. But a big purpose behind his blog post is to highlight how common this is.

sdfhdhjdw3 4y ago
> Spent a lot of time in academia, and I quite disagree. He's pointing out something that is very common in academia - common enough to be widely accepted. Saying he is unprofessional in criticizing his supervisors is like saying someone is unprofessional in criticizing his boss for demanding Leetcode style interviews. I specifically said the issue isn't criticizing. The issue is criticizing in a way which is so vague as to be impossible to defend. It's exhausting commenting on HN. You have to append every minor observation of a laundry list of responses to likely misinterpretations.
- cinntaile 4y ago
  The whole purpose of not being specific is to not implicate certain people. This way he can criticize the "whole" industry.
- Benjammer 4y ago
  >It's exhausting commenting on HN. You have to append every minor observation of a laundry list of responses to likely misinterpretations. Interesting seeing this response after you just posted: >If you can't be specific enough to be scientific about it, just keep it to yourself Was this a tongue-in-cheek demonstration of your point? Or is vague criticism only unacceptable in academia?
  - sdfhdhjdw3 4y ago
    The post I was responding to was the example. I wanted to claim that you shouldn't make vague criticism. I immediately expected that people would respond as if my claim was that you shouldn't criticize. And sure enough, that's what the post I responded to did. Me: "You shouldn't make vague criticism" Response: "OMG you're saying university professors are above criticism." Do you think I'm being vague here? :-)

ghaff 4y ago

In general, I tend to be of the school that, while I won't say you should never blow up bridges with great force, the default should almost always be that whatever satisfaction is gained by publishing a cathartic blog post or twitter thread is probably better written in a diary somewhere without pushing a publish button.

iab 4y ago
Blogs need a "emotion-meter" metric that auto-delays publication for a set time. Probably true for every communication method in existence.

draw_down 4y ago

alexashka 4y ago

> If you can't be specific enough to be scientific about it, just keep it to yourself Why? What you're doing right now is telling other people how to live their lives. Is that ok, or should you be scientific about it, or keep it to yourself?

burnished 4y ago
They do justify why they believe what they are saying.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

It's a difficult row to hoe. Some light sometimes needs to be shed (look at Susan Fowler's post on Uber. I think it triggered a fairly necessary reevaluation, or Edward Snowden's revelations), but it is seldom without cost to the person that's holding the flashlight (Snowden is unlikely to receive a warm welcome, if he comes back to the US, and I suspect that Russia won't be a particularly joyful place, in the near future. I have no idea how Susan Fowler has done). In my own case, my history (quite checkered) has given me some fairly unique views into a lot of terrible behaviors, rotten attitudes, and outright hypocrisy by many folks that like to project a wholesome, professional, image. Now that I'm out of the rat race, I could probably be more specific. But I won't. In some, rare, cases, perpetrators went on to cause harm (Not much. I never worked with John Wayne Gacy), but most ended up in rather unenviable places. In a number of other cases, however, people ended up changing their behavior/attitude, and going on to be happier, healthier people. For reasons that I won't go into here, I believe in second chances. I was given first-, second-, and third chances. It has less to do with "professionalism," and more to do with being human. It's not my job to clean up the world (just the bits around me), and I need to pick my battles carefully, so I can do the most good.

omoikane 4y ago

The original text says performative act, and not performative art. Not a big deal perhaps but this subtle difference carries a different connotation for me, I wonder if you might get a different impression if you read it again.

dqpb 4y ago

> accusations in general, if they're vague enough, are impossible to defend against General accusations are easy to defend against, you just ask for specifics.

noptd 4y ago

bumby 4y ago
I flagged this but thought it is prudent to explain why. The author deliberately took it down because the attention it garnered made them uncomfortable. While we all know what goes up on the internet is forever, it doesn't preclude us from having the decency to respect their wishes.
acqbu 4y ago
thanks for sharing
rat9988 4y ago
Can mods delete this please? I think web archive is misused in many cases when it's posted on HN. Web archive, in my opinion, shouldn't be used to circumvent author wishes or paywalls.

sampo 4y ago

> If you can't be specific enough to be scientific about it, just keep it to yourself. This is some serious gatekeeping. A PhD student is an apprentice, on a path to get scientific training. They are not yet trained enough, so that you could reasonable expect them to "be scientific" to a level of rigorous standards.

wwwwasmistake 4y ago

dandigangi 4y ago

Can't say I agree or disagree since article is gone but it does make me very curious how it was written to prompt your comment. Disparaging (the article I mean, not you) can take you down some bad paths with your career and academia.

dj_mc_merlin 4y ago

Do you think his chances would be better in academia if he: 1. Writes a vague blog post about his dissatisfaction with his PhD or 2. Writes a paper attacking his supervisor explicitly ? Obviously the 3rd option ("shut the fuck up if you don't want your overlords to hear") would be the best, but also perhaps the most boring.

nobodyandproud 4y ago
> Obviously the 3rd option ("shut the fuck up if you don't want your overlords to hear") would be the best, but also perhaps the most boring Best for whom?
- dj_mc_merlin 4y ago
  Best for the blog post author. Picking fights with people stronger than you, in a system you don't intend to leave, doesn't usually work out well for you. Nor in general. STFUing is a near-optimal strategy in a lot of situations, really.
  - nobodyandproud 4y ago
    Locally (as in, local maxima) I would agree. I can’t think of any whistle-blower who didn’t suffer major blowback, unless they remained anonymous. However it also leads to a tragedy of commons, in this case in the form of institutional corruption.

btrettel 4y ago

I also have a PhD. There's a major asymmetry in US academia that public accusations can address, if done tactfully, truthfully, and specifically enough to allow a defense. In US academia, subordinates need positive references to get jobs. That leads many to be quite deferential to their supervisors, even allowing abuse. Nominally this is supposed to highlight strengths and weaknesses of a job candidate, but it also can serve to warn potential employers away from a particular job candidate. However, in contrast, there is no formal mechanism to warn others about bad supervisors. Given that, I am okay with tactfully, truthfully, and specifically going public about negative experiences with academic supervisors. To be clear: I don't advocate defamation. Keep good records, and if you choose the go public, be tactful and stick to what can be easily corroborated. Also: My experience is that subordinates are rarely given the opportunity to reply to defamatory claims made by academic supervisors when providing references. So if your focus is on the ability of someone to defend against defamation, I don't think you can defend the status quo.

tomcat27 4y ago

> However, I think it's extremely unprofessional to write a blog post saying that your supervisor is superficial or your research group is performative art. lol. You don't know the weight of crushed aspirations and a two year opportunity cost. > I don't say this because I think we should just take the venerable professor's word for it, but because accusations in general, if they're vague enough, are impossible to defend against. again lol. publication game is well know. > I think if there's enough substance to make your comment specific, you should. Maybe even write a paper explaining why what they're doing is nonsense. If you're right, this would genuinely be a contribution to the field. If you can't be specific enough to be scientific about it, just keep it to yourself. again lol. this is a very academic answer. Actually, I'm not sure university administrations write a paper on policies and ask for peer comments before making changes. They just do it, in the most brutal, authoritarian/top-down/corporate way possible. But the top brass needs papers from the bottom. Show me how much academia has been optimized by writing papers about academia. Well, even if they did they are useless.

holyra 4y ago

This is a harsh reply. I also had the same issue as the author: absent supervisions. I had only two meetings during my phd and they never reviewed my papers (I tried everything to motivate them and I finally gave up). I did everything on my own. It was very hard. I learned the hard way (try and fail... do it again...). I finally finished my phd with great appreciations from the jury. However this ends with a considerable cost: I am completely broken. I now suffer of a severe depression and generalized anxiety disorders. I take several medications and this does not help so much. I lost a lot of friends. My life is basically a journey in hell since several years now.

JanisErdmanis 4y ago
> I had only two meetings during my phd and they never reviewed my papers This sounds unreal. How did your supervisor managed his subordinates so they wound not spend their time in leisure activities? > However this ends with a considerable cost I can relate to that. Broken aspirations, depleted ambition and energy and lack of interpersonal relationships sometimes make me feel sad.
- holyra 4y ago
  > This sounds unreal. How did your supervisor managed his subordinates so they wound not spend their time in leisure activities? Self-pressure? I cannot spend my work time in leisure time, otherwise I ashame. It is pretty even the opposite that I experienced: I felt ashame in my leisure time to not work to get more progress on my phd. We were only two phd students supervised by the same pair of supervisors. In fact we saw our supervisors a lot. However this was more in a friend way. Every time we switch to work-related discussions they found excuses to leave or just say that they will take some time later to ask our questions / reveiw our drafts (and this never happen). In the case of the other student, he was more lucky and find an unofficial supervisor that help him a lot. I find some support from another researcher at the end of my phd. And thanks to him I had some review of my manuscript. This gave me some confidence to finish the writing.
  - JanisErdmanis 4y ago

Osmium 4y ago

While you’re not wrong, in the sense that this wouldn’t hold up as a piece of journalism, anyone who’s been in academia will read it differently: this is an emotional, honest account of a problem common enough that even if this one case were not true, we know it is all too plausible. I feel for this student. Both for what they’ve gone through, and also how this moment of catharsis has probably also caused additional strife for them in all the attention it’s seen. Honestly, I feel for the professor and the rest of the research group too, and all the perverse incentives that have lead otherwise smart people down these unfortunate paths.

Qem 4y ago

> I don't say this because I think we should just take the venerable professor's word for it, but because accusations in general, if they're vague enough, are impossible to defend against. I have my doubts on this, because widespread use of sealed recommendation letters already make blackballing/indefensible accusations sort of the norm in academia, but in this case biased against students. When a student gets the courage to complain in the open, I tend to see it as making the playing field more even. I think a Glassdoor-like site, but for academic advisors and research groups would be quite popular.

aqsalose 4y ago

His accusations in the web archive snapshot that I pulled are ... quite mild, concrete and specific enough: Nobody to talk about in the university about your projects or topics. First PhD student. No postdoc working on the same topic. Advisors who suggest to do a thesis on something else, less difficult or familiar ... and the project seems to be less and less about the hot buzzword in the advertisement or grant proposal. This is spots on description of what happens if you waltz into some university department or research group intending to "do a PhD" in something that isn't the core competency your group. This is very common in "provincial universities" but also happens to lesser in top schools if you just happen to come in with expectations that are misaligned with the reality. It is a side product of the sad aspect of academic reality that finding funding for a PhD student is often much easier than finding funding for a post-doc or more senior member, even though that is exactly the wrong way to build a good research group. Philip Guo's the PhD Grind describes many of the same challenges. I also share a memory of older member of the faculty suggesting that your PhD is supposed to a formality to endure. "A driving license", not real real research with your own ideas. It was very depressing thing to hear, because I too went in with an attitude of "I shall study a question I was interested in my undergrad, but seriously this time".