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But how would you solve this issue though? Once you decide that you will value and promote people who fit the characteristics of Kariko, a thousand impostors im

But how would you solve this issue though? Once you decide that you will value and promote people who fit the characteristics of Kariko, a thousand impostors immediately pop up who will match all the outward appearances of that you wanted to promote.

waterheater 3y ago
You're talking about shifting a culture, and the culture is defined by the people. The current doctoral student mentality will define the future of academia, and most doctoral students are disheartened by the idea of writing grants for their careers. So, any future cultural solution will start with doctoral students. A solution which should help fix the culture is: (1) universities significantly reduce their total number of incoming doctoral students for the next twenty years, (2) universities immediately pay the existing doctoral students better, and (3) universities explicitly select for doctoral students interested in an academic career. Of course, this approach has financial risk for the university, so the political cost of implementation may be too steep for some. However, this approach should, in the long run, create a positive outlook for doctoral students, ensure that the average quality of doctoral students is higher, and reduce the amount of doctoral "slave labor" which is heavily exploited to support the grant-seeking paradigm (not exaggerating; I know a doctoral student who was required to be in the lab whenever the PI was, which was often 10 hours a day, sometimes 7 days a week).
- OfSanguineFire 3y ago
  In some European countries, PhD students are paid a salary equivalent to a middle-class income in that country, and PhD slots are already few. Nevertheless, even there there is the same grant culture that everyone is complaining about here. I don’t see how the three things you propose would fix things.
  - waterheater 3y ago
    If you're taking about sustaining a culture change, the doctoral students must be selected such that they will both seek academic research and avoid grant-seeking behaviors. That's why I think it's a solution, but I suppose it's not THE solution. A few more ideas which come to mind right now include: - Stop treating the grant-seeking people as members of the faculty. If a professor is interested in doing academic research, the department funds a maximum of two doctoral students (something done at IIT Bombay, to my knowledge, though the exact quantity may vary). Hire grant-seeking researchers exclusively in a university-affiliated "research institute", physically and departmentally removed from the faculty. Don't call them professors; call them researchers. - Make faculty prioritize. I know multiple computer science faculty who are tenured professors at a major institution but are actually working full-time for tech companies, yet they weren't on sabbatical. At least one of these professors moved across the country to the Bay Area, was (to my knowledge) relived of their teaching duties, and still tried to advise doctoral students. This practice should not be allowed. Free up the salary for faculty who care about the core mission of the university: education. - Develop an intensive doctoral curriculum tightly focused on performing academic research. To my knowledge, the acquisition of academic research skills is arcane. Certainly the academic advisor should pass these skills to their student, but it seems that too many faculty are wrapped up in grant-seeking behaviors to show them. Doctoral students need to be explicitly taught the necessary skills to be a successful professor, which can only happen when the vast majority of doctoral students are attempting to perform academic research and not grant-seeking research. - Create a researcher pathway in the "research institute." If a student applies for the doctoral program but doesn't wish to perform academic research in their career, offer them a junior researcher position in the research institute with opportunities to advance as a researcher, which is honestly what some students who get their doctoral degree actually want. If one was to award a terminal degree to the researcher, it would not be a PhD. I am an eternal optimist on these topics. I strongly believe that universities can still thrive, but they need to adapt by making hard administrative delineations and creating alternative paths for entrants.
caddemon 3y ago
You don't value and promote a single or even a handful of archetypes. You value and promote a healthy diversity of approaches. Not just diversity amongst individuals but also between institutions. If MIT, Harvard, Stanford all had meaningfully different research philosophies, it wouldn't be quite so obvious how to game the system. If the NIH gave some grants like they already do, some grants that would target someone like Karikó, some grants that would target reproducibility experts, etc. (in addition to some that may be a combination of such criteria) it would be a much more complicated political game to try to be an ideal imposter. You'd still have some but I think there would be many more filtered out, and more true positives kept.

waterheater 3y ago

You're talking about shifting a culture, and the culture is defined by the people. The current doctoral student mentality will define the future of academia, and most doctoral students are disheartened by the idea of writing grants for their careers. So, any future cultural solution will start with doctoral students. A solution which should help fix the culture is: (1) universities significantly reduce their total number of incoming doctoral students for the next twenty years, (2) universities immediately pay the existing doctoral students better, and (3) universities explicitly select for doctoral students interested in an academic career. Of course, this approach has financial risk for the university, so the political cost of implementation may be too steep for some. However, this approach should, in the long run, create a positive outlook for doctoral students, ensure that the average quality of doctoral students is higher, and reduce the amount of doctoral "slave labor" which is heavily exploited to support the grant-seeking paradigm (not exaggerating; I know a doctoral student who was required to be in the lab whenever the PI was, which was often 10 hours a day, sometimes 7 days a week).

OfSanguineFire 3y ago
In some European countries, PhD students are paid a salary equivalent to a middle-class income in that country, and PhD slots are already few. Nevertheless, even there there is the same grant culture that everyone is complaining about here. I don’t see how the three things you propose would fix things.
- waterheater 3y ago
  If you're taking about sustaining a culture change, the doctoral students must be selected such that they will both seek academic research and avoid grant-seeking behaviors. That's why I think it's a solution, but I suppose it's not THE solution. A few more ideas which come to mind right now include: - Stop treating the grant-seeking people as members of the faculty. If a professor is interested in doing academic research, the department funds a maximum of two doctoral students (something done at IIT Bombay, to my knowledge, though the exact quantity may vary). Hire grant-seeking researchers exclusively in a university-affiliated "research institute", physically and departmentally removed from the faculty. Don't call them professors; call them researchers. - Make faculty prioritize. I know multiple computer science faculty who are tenured professors at a major institution but are actually working full-time for tech companies, yet they weren't on sabbatical. At least one of these professors moved across the country to the Bay Area, was (to my knowledge) relived of their teaching duties, and still tried to advise doctoral students. This practice should not be allowed. Free up the salary for faculty who care about the core mission of the university: education. - Develop an intensive doctoral curriculum tightly focused on performing academic research. To my knowledge, the acquisition of academic research skills is arcane. Certainly the academic advisor should pass these skills to their student, but it seems that too many faculty are wrapped up in grant-seeking behaviors to show them. Doctoral students need to be explicitly taught the necessary skills to be a successful professor, which can only happen when the vast majority of doctoral students are attempting to perform academic research and not grant-seeking research. - Create a researcher pathway in the "research institute." If a student applies for the doctoral program but doesn't wish to perform academic research in their career, offer them a junior researcher position in the research institute with opportunities to advance as a researcher, which is honestly what some students who get their doctoral degree actually want. If one was to award a terminal degree to the researcher, it would not be a PhD. I am an eternal optimist on these topics. I strongly believe that universities can still thrive, but they need to adapt by making hard administrative delineations and creating alternative paths for entrants.

caddemon 3y ago

You don't value and promote a single or even a handful of archetypes. You value and promote a healthy diversity of approaches. Not just diversity amongst individuals but also between institutions. If MIT, Harvard, Stanford all had meaningfully different research philosophies, it wouldn't be quite so obvious how to game the system. If the NIH gave some grants like they already do, some grants that would target someone like Karikó, some grants that would target reproducibility experts, etc. (in addition to some that may be a combination of such criteria) it would be a much more complicated political game to try to be an ideal imposter. You'd still have some but I think there would be many more filtered out, and more true positives kept.