4 ms·

I'm not nearly qualified to make this argument, but has anyone ever suggested that we collectively do away with the principle that one must publish original res

I'm not nearly qualified to make this argument, but has anyone ever suggested that we collectively do away with the principle that one must publish original research in order to receive a PhD? Maybe in something like entomology, there are enough undescribed beetle species out there to supply myriads of dissertations, but in other fields it seems like you are just incentivizing trivial, useless, or fraudulent research.

obviouslynotme 3y ago
That wouldn't fix anything at all. You still get that PhD to do research and publish. The only fix for this is funded and career-advancing randomized replication. We should lean harder into the scientific method, not withdraw from it. Absolutely nothing else will work.
2482345 3y ago
As a completely unqualified laymen my initial question would be "If you don't reward novelty why would anyone focused on career building want to be novel?" Not that I doubt academia has people who want to push the cutting edge forward (if anything that seems to be the only reason to go into academia vs. private industry usually) but if I was a fresh-faced PhD aspirant I'd want to take the most reliable route to getting my degree and treading ground someone else has already walked seems like a much safer way to do that than novel research if the reward at the end is the same. But maybe that's a good thing? I can't actually say a reason I think it'd be that terrible except for the profs doing novel research that would lose their some of their student workforce.
bee_rider 3y ago
IMO the problem might be more that in general we’ve got this perception that there’s a sort of “academic ranking,” or something like that, that puts: Bachelors < Masters < PhD Which, of course, not not really the case. A PhD in <field> is a specialization in creating novel research in <field>. In terms of actually applying <field>, a Masters ought to be as prestigious or whatever as a PhD. That it isn’t thought of that way seems to indicate, I dunno, maybe we need a new type of super-masters degree (one that gives you a cool title I guess). Or, this will get me killed by some academics, but let’s just align with with the general public seems to think anyway: make a super-masters degree, give it the Dr title, make it the thing that indicates total mastery of a specific field (which is what the general public’s favorite Doctors, MDs, have, anyway) (to the extent to which a degree can even indicate that sort of thing, which is to say, not really, but it is as good as we’ve got). Then when PhDs can have a new title, Philosopher of <field>, haha.
wrp 3y ago
My impression has been that in the sciences, there are a significant number of people who get into a graduate program, just do what they are told by their adviser for a few years, get handed a PhD, land a job on the recommendation of their adviser, and spend the rest of their careers elaborating on what they did as a student. This is not necessarily bad, as there is a lot of drudge work that needs doing in science. The problem is the pressure to over-promote everything you do. The reality is that very few people, even among PhD's, have the capacity to do really original work. There was a study many years ago on the physics community that found that less than 10% of physicists published even one thing in their career that someone else found worth citing.

obviouslynotme 3y ago

That wouldn't fix anything at all. You still get that PhD to do research and publish. The only fix for this is funded and career-advancing randomized replication. We should lean harder into the scientific method, not withdraw from it. Absolutely nothing else will work.

2482345 3y ago

As a completely unqualified laymen my initial question would be "If you don't reward novelty why would anyone focused on career building want to be novel?" Not that I doubt academia has people who want to push the cutting edge forward (if anything that seems to be the only reason to go into academia vs. private industry usually) but if I was a fresh-faced PhD aspirant I'd want to take the most reliable route to getting my degree and treading ground someone else has already walked seems like a much safer way to do that than novel research if the reward at the end is the same. But maybe that's a good thing? I can't actually say a reason I think it'd be that terrible except for the profs doing novel research that would lose their some of their student workforce.

bee_rider 3y ago

IMO the problem might be more that in general we’ve got this perception that there’s a sort of “academic ranking,” or something like that, that puts: Bachelors < Masters < PhD Which, of course, not not really the case. A PhD in <field> is a specialization in creating novel research in <field>. In terms of actually applying <field>, a Masters ought to be as prestigious or whatever as a PhD. That it isn’t thought of that way seems to indicate, I dunno, maybe we need a new type of super-masters degree (one that gives you a cool title I guess). Or, this will get me killed by some academics, but let’s just align with with the general public seems to think anyway: make a super-masters degree, give it the Dr title, make it the thing that indicates total mastery of a specific field (which is what the general public’s favorite Doctors, MDs, have, anyway) (to the extent to which a degree can even indicate that sort of thing, which is to say, not really, but it is as good as we’ve got). Then when PhDs can have a new title, Philosopher of <field>, haha.

wrp 3y ago

My impression has been that in the sciences, there are a significant number of people who get into a graduate program, just do what they are told by their adviser for a few years, get handed a PhD, land a job on the recommendation of their adviser, and spend the rest of their careers elaborating on what they did as a student. This is not necessarily bad, as there is a lot of drudge work that needs doing in science. The problem is the pressure to over-promote everything you do. The reality is that very few people, even among PhD's, have the capacity to do really original work. There was a study many years ago on the physics community that found that less than 10% of physicists published even one thing in their career that someone else found worth citing.