4 ms·
> "Aiming to produce PDF files that would be accepted at conferences (which seems to be easy-going if you sprinkle some fancy quantum vocabulary over something
by Emma_Goldman 4y ago
> "Aiming to produce PDF files that would be accepted at conferences (which seems to be easy-going if you sprinkle some fancy quantum vocabulary over something and hand it in to a non-quantum conference). I felt less and less comfortable in a setting that apparently expected me to pick some low-hanging – let’s call it fruits – and call it a day. After all, science is all about the pursuit of knowledge, even though the incentives of research funding might not be entirely aligned with that"
This is broadly similar to my experience. The priority of most academics is not to produce deep, novel, and creative work. It is to churn out sausages in the shapes favoured by journals, at a factory production rate. That's what they have to do for their career. After a while, though, they start to be unable to tell the difference between the two.
- dixego 4y agoFrom what I can tell, the cause of this is that "number of papers published per unit of time" is the only metric institutions seem to care about when it comes to evaluating researchers' work.
- low_tech_love 4y agoThis is true, but that doesn’t mean you have to do it. If you keep looking at your neighbor in order to determine your next step, you will be disappointed in every walk of life, not only in academia. If you don’t subscribe to the same ideas, do it differently, and get ready for some resistance. In academia you have to carve your path just like everywhere else. That said: I agree that academia is just a big circle jerk. :)
- musicale 4y ago> I felt less and less comfortable in a setting that apparently expected me to pick some low-hanging – let’s call it fruits – and call it a day. Why should you be uncomfortable with that? A discipline with lots of low-hanging fruit sounds like a pretty good place to be. However, I concur regarding the quantity-over-quality problem. Personally I favor quality over quantity, both as a reader and as a writer. It wastes less of the reader's time and improves the signal-to-noise ratio of the field.
- cycomanic 4y agoI disagree, generally it's important to get feedback often and early. Conferences and publications are an important part of the process. That is not to defend the salami strategies of some research labs, but science is moving to fast to wait for your deeply thought out 500 page opus dei, which likely has been obsoleted by some finding published at a conference 2 years ago that you didn't attend. I have seen the false perception a few times that a PhD is mainly about sitting down and thinking deeply for a long time without talking to anyone and then getting an eureka moment and writing it all up. This is not how most modern science is done (maybe it's still possible if you're a genius in very few select areas of mathematics). So if this is what you think a PhD is about, you're likely not going to enjoy it.
- bsedlm 4y agothere's too much science "up in the air" (to refer to the stuff that hasn't made it down to the text books) it bothers me but I cannot do anything about it (other than be bothered by it) > I have seen the false perception a few times that a PhD is mainly about sitting down and thinking deeply for a long time without talking to anyone and then getting an eureka moment and writing it all up. also, a big part of the complaint from the linked and removed original blogpost is precisely the lack of being able to find people with whom to discuss. His advisors are not knowledgeable enough, (blog author claims) further, they advised them not to require so much in-depth knowledge in their thesis (!!).