3 ms·
My supervisor told me recently that it is very risky to focus on breakthrough topics except when you are doing PhD or if your are tenured. probably less true fo
by elashri 4y ago
My supervisor told me recently that it is very risky to focus on breakthrough topics except when you are doing PhD or if your are tenured. probably less true for PhD if you don't have ambitious PI. The demand for publications and results that is mainly the way to evaluate you starting from postdoc until tenure promotion is very tense. People usually try to do many things and stretch themselves. sometimes this even lead to burnout and many people leave academia for that adding to the very competitive and low gain opportunities available in most academic field.
To be honest, I really think that we have wrong metric. Most importantly, if you try to ignore them even if you get some local support within your group. Good luck getting any fund because funding agencies evaluation have the same problems.
- warkdarrior 4y ago> My supervisor told me recently that it is very risky to focus on breakthrough topics except when you are doing PhD or if your are tenured. Academic researchers spend the majority of their career in tenure or in PhD, with untenured/tenure-track status for only 7-9 years out of a career of, say, 40 years. So one would expect that 75% of academic research time would be spent on "breakthrough topics".
- kmmlng 4y agoAcademic researchers who make it to a tenure track position and stick with it for the rest of their career spend the majority of their career in tenure or in PhD. Most do not make it this far because there are fewer positions than applicants.
- elashri 4y agoYou will be right under the assumption that all or even most academic careers end up with a tenure. Majority of PhD holders don't end up in that position because the positions available are very limited.