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Science as a whole has died a hard death. All reward and prestige of being a researcher has been lost and the people in the study have a slim chance of being a

Science as a whole has died a hard death. All reward and prestige of being a researcher has been lost and the people in the study have a slim chance of being able to work with their degree. Which I understand is about the opposite of what this article wants, but you shouldn't trust the people who have broken science to fix it. Research itself gets locked behind tightly walled journals and are written with obscure and difficult language laymen can't understand, peer review has become a hoop jumping scam that let's bad research through. Medical review and other ethics boards are suffocating the ability for researchers to actually do things in a massive overcorrection from the early days of research. Media is in a continuous game of misrepresentation of everything researchers say and trust in scientific truth had lead to instructional actors getting their fingers in the process and corrupting it to suit their ends. ARXIV and the likes are the future of science. Where literal discord servers are getting together to publish studies. Yeah. Bunk gets published all the time, but peer review can just happen dynamically through good old regular unchecked skepticism. I would never in a billion years engage in the academic side of research. If I wanted to be a scientist I'd do it as a hobby, buying the tools to do it in my garage and publishing to open journals where ethics boards and bureaucrats cannot touch me beyond the reach of actual law. In all hopes, academia will start to crumble and this sort of garage philosophy will grow into a network of people that replaces it with a fresher and more dynamic outlook.

tptacek 3y ago
I've heard a lot of complaints from a lot of different people working in lab science (in my case, my interest was in bio & chem) and none of them were about "tightly walled journals" (working academic researchers generally have institutional access, and when the logins are annoying to manage they just sci-hub like everyone else) or IRBs. Rather, it was very basic stuff, like being told to come in at 5:30AM to feed a cell line only to have the PI show up at 2PM, throw the experiment in the garbage, threaten the student's livelihood, and then demand they stay until 11:30PM redoing the experiment. Over and over again, at random intervals. I asked around about this stuff because a family member now works in the field and had some startling experiences, only to find that this is apparently almost universal, and that what I'm describing is on the lighter end of it. There are stories about labs at elite universities where the grad students have set up secluded spaces to go hide from their PIs and cry. It's everything you've heard about working as a developer at a video game company, dialed up to 11.
- bioemerl 3y ago
  I don't really speak out of concern of the well being of those in research, but for the health of the system as a whole. The fact it's a monster that eats people alive to me is an evidence that the whole thing needs to be torn down and replaced, which is the best way to erase all these sorts of harms. But this isn't about today's scientists. I fully expect a collapse of academia to harm anyone currently in it, because the skills you need to succeed will change dramatically
  - searine 3y ago
    >The fact it's a monster that eats people alive to me is an evidence that the whole thing needs to be torn down and replaced, which is the best way to erase all these sorts of harms. It is easy to tear down but hard to build. I get that you are jaded, but tearing down institutional science is just going to harm future scientists by robbing them of opportunity. Yes the system isn't perfect, but that doesn't mean we have to throw it in the trash in its entirety.
    - askin4it 3y ago
      What does Opportunity have to do with science? In this case, it seems like the Opportunity is an opportunity to get trapped in a system that is likely to be both unsatisfactory and unproductive. My fear is that we've crossed the event horizon and we can't rollback all the alterations that accumulated over the years and gotten academics into a cul-de-sac or box canyon. (Pick your metaphor...) next stop, the singularity, where we will have the opportunity to experience life as a dimensionless point...
      - searine 3y ago
        >What does Opportunity have to do with science? Most science requires specialized tools and materials that cannot be obtained outside of an institutional environment. Tearing down the institutions means ceasing basically all non-profit generating "big science" efforts. That robs future scientists of working on the cutting edge. A garage lab is fun idea, but the reality is infeasible in most circumstances. Even if possible, it will be slap-shod and a gigantic money pit that no granting agency will give a dime to. >My fear is that we've crossed the event horizon Hyperbole. Science existed before institutions and will exist after if it all should come tumbling down. There are more scientists than there has ever been, and as a result a lot of "boring" but necessary science is happening, but that doesn't mean there aren't rebels and outlaws in that same system asking interesting questions and overturning ideas.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nenrkkfn 3y ago
I had a tenured faculty position at an R1 university and left it in part because of a completely dysfunctional institutional environment with no insight. My best friends include full professors at well-known institutions, though, and I've continued to be involved with academics and research. I'm frankly tired of science being characterized in terms of competitiveness and abuse. That's true, but it's deeper than that. It is now structurally corrupt, in the sense that nominal credit does not reflect actual contributions and results are often questionable or even fraudulent, and the incentives are structured to reward collecting new data that are very predictable rather than new ideas or exploring unknowns. The characterization of science as just being "stressful" or "competitive", as opposed to being broken and corrupt, does disservice and deflects from real change by implicitly putting the responsibility on those who are affected the most. It's as if you had a city full of crime, white collar as well as otherwise, and then discussed the problems in terms of victims being anxious, rather than the fact there's no police in the the city and the court system is corrupt.
- EatingWithForks 3y ago
  I think I developed a similar conclusion that research as a whole is corrupted when there was that CS student that committed suicide due being affected by paper-approval collusion agreements involving nearly all the prominent researchers in the field. Nothing was done about it, even though it directly contributed to someone's death. I had so much disgust for the field since then.
  - extasia 3y ago
    I wasn't aware of this, do you have a link you could share?
    - jasonhong 3y ago
      I think it's referring to this case: https://huixiangvoice.medium.com/the-hidden-story-behind-the-suicide-phd-candidate-huixiang-chen-236cd39f79d3 https://huixiangvoice.medium.com/the-hidden-story-behind-the... And for outcomes, the paper in question was retracted and the professor involved resigned. However, I haven't seen updates regarding the review ring (where a bunch of peer reviewers collude). https://retractionwatch.com/2021/03/16/after-grad-student-suicide-misconduct-findings-university-suspends-professor/ https://retractionwatch.com/2021/03/16/after-grad-student-su... https://www.wuft.org/news/2021/04/23/university-of-florida-professor-resigns-amid-investigations-into-students-suicide/ https://www.wuft.org/news/2021/04/23/university-of-florida-p...

tptacek 3y ago

I've heard a lot of complaints from a lot of different people working in lab science (in my case, my interest was in bio & chem) and none of them were about "tightly walled journals" (working academic researchers generally have institutional access, and when the logins are annoying to manage they just sci-hub like everyone else) or IRBs. Rather, it was very basic stuff, like being told to come in at 5:30AM to feed a cell line only to have the PI show up at 2PM, throw the experiment in the garbage, threaten the student's livelihood, and then demand they stay until 11:30PM redoing the experiment. Over and over again, at random intervals. I asked around about this stuff because a family member now works in the field and had some startling experiences, only to find that this is apparently almost universal, and that what I'm describing is on the lighter end of it. There are stories about labs at elite universities where the grad students have set up secluded spaces to go hide from their PIs and cry. It's everything you've heard about working as a developer at a video game company, dialed up to 11.

bioemerl 3y ago
I don't really speak out of concern of the well being of those in research, but for the health of the system as a whole. The fact it's a monster that eats people alive to me is an evidence that the whole thing needs to be torn down and replaced, which is the best way to erase all these sorts of harms. But this isn't about today's scientists. I fully expect a collapse of academia to harm anyone currently in it, because the skills you need to succeed will change dramatically
- searine 3y ago
  >The fact it's a monster that eats people alive to me is an evidence that the whole thing needs to be torn down and replaced, which is the best way to erase all these sorts of harms. It is easy to tear down but hard to build. I get that you are jaded, but tearing down institutional science is just going to harm future scientists by robbing them of opportunity. Yes the system isn't perfect, but that doesn't mean we have to throw it in the trash in its entirety.
  - askin4it 3y ago
    What does Opportunity have to do with science? In this case, it seems like the Opportunity is an opportunity to get trapped in a system that is likely to be both unsatisfactory and unproductive. My fear is that we've crossed the event horizon and we can't rollback all the alterations that accumulated over the years and gotten academics into a cul-de-sac or box canyon. (Pick your metaphor...) next stop, the singularity, where we will have the opportunity to experience life as a dimensionless point...
    - searine 3y ago
      >What does Opportunity have to do with science? Most science requires specialized tools and materials that cannot be obtained outside of an institutional environment. Tearing down the institutions means ceasing basically all non-profit generating "big science" efforts. That robs future scientists of working on the cutting edge. A garage lab is fun idea, but the reality is infeasible in most circumstances. Even if possible, it will be slap-shod and a gigantic money pit that no granting agency will give a dime to. >My fear is that we've crossed the event horizon Hyperbole. Science existed before institutions and will exist after if it all should come tumbling down. There are more scientists than there has ever been, and as a result a lot of "boring" but necessary science is happening, but that doesn't mean there aren't rebels and outlaws in that same system asking interesting questions and overturning ideas.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

nenrkkfn 3y ago

I had a tenured faculty position at an R1 university and left it in part because of a completely dysfunctional institutional environment with no insight. My best friends include full professors at well-known institutions, though, and I've continued to be involved with academics and research. I'm frankly tired of science being characterized in terms of competitiveness and abuse. That's true, but it's deeper than that. It is now structurally corrupt, in the sense that nominal credit does not reflect actual contributions and results are often questionable or even fraudulent, and the incentives are structured to reward collecting new data that are very predictable rather than new ideas or exploring unknowns. The characterization of science as just being "stressful" or "competitive", as opposed to being broken and corrupt, does disservice and deflects from real change by implicitly putting the responsibility on those who are affected the most. It's as if you had a city full of crime, white collar as well as otherwise, and then discussed the problems in terms of victims being anxious, rather than the fact there's no police in the the city and the court system is corrupt.

EatingWithForks 3y ago
I think I developed a similar conclusion that research as a whole is corrupted when there was that CS student that committed suicide due being affected by paper-approval collusion agreements involving nearly all the prominent researchers in the field. Nothing was done about it, even though it directly contributed to someone's death. I had so much disgust for the field since then.
- extasia 3y ago
  I wasn't aware of this, do you have a link you could share?
  - jasonhong 3y ago
    I think it's referring to this case: https://huixiangvoice.medium.com/the-hidden-story-behind-the-suicide-phd-candidate-huixiang-chen-236cd39f79d3 https://huixiangvoice.medium.com/the-hidden-story-behind-the... And for outcomes, the paper in question was retracted and the professor involved resigned. However, I haven't seen updates regarding the review ring (where a bunch of peer reviewers collude). https://retractionwatch.com/2021/03/16/after-grad-student-suicide-misconduct-findings-university-suspends-professor/ https://retractionwatch.com/2021/03/16/after-grad-student-su... https://www.wuft.org/news/2021/04/23/university-of-florida-professor-resigns-amid-investigations-into-students-suicide/ https://www.wuft.org/news/2021/04/23/university-of-florida-p...