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As someone who is not in academia, I'm curious how dysfunctional the incentive structures of these institutions really are? Is it more the case that aggrieved p

As someone who is not in academia, I'm curious how dysfunctional the incentive structures of these institutions really are? Is it more the case that aggrieved professors doing actually good research is just a rare situation bound to happen every once in a while?

washadjeffmad 3y ago
Everyone thinks their research is important, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it. Not every chair, board, or panel can fully understand every topic, especially when it's highly specialized, much less predict its impact. So often, people feel like they're being neglected when they're just not visible because they haven't communicated something to an audience they either don't recognize or don't value. They often write grants that don't explain the value of their work in a way that can be presented to people who don't already understand the value of the subject. And if they're already pessimistic about support, they won't ask for support. If they're too focused on their work and not paying attention to the new hires, they won't realize they need to talk to their department about which faculty are using which labs this semester. In general, even when faculty talk to each other, they aren't always listening - at least not beyond anything that might directly be of interest to them. And rarely does anyone ask, "How does all of this work, anyway?" In a way, you're seeing the system working. Despite Karikó being unhappy with Penn State, she was able to perform and carry out research that did not prove critical until a global pandemic, her research was able to be located, accessed, and used, and she was subsequently recognized for it. We can't reward potential. It's unfortunate that she felt unsupported by her department, but she did have personal advocates who helped to advance her, and she certainly wasn't the only researcher at Penn State - was she treated any differently to them? And being blunt, if it were obvious that her research was valuable, wouldn't it have already been done by others, making this story pointless? Is it possible to be recognized for being a hidden gem before you're found?
waterheater 3y ago
What is your definition of "academic research"? Not all research is academic, so take a moment to think about what that means for you. I'll give you what I think it is in the next paragraph. A HN commenter once wisely stated: "Building things [in academia] is fine, but of course it's not academic research - which is defined by the creation of game-changing concepts and philosophical structures, some of which happen to be mathematical." I completely agree. Many universities are majority funded by the US federal government. The proportion of money a university receives from federal student aid and federal research grants is wild, even for a state-run public university. Without those funds, the people currently employed at a university will lose their jobs, so a university will attempt to work with those funding sources as much as possible. How do universities increase incoming federal student aid dollars? Enroll more students. How do universities increase incoming federal research grant dollars? Submit more grants. Though their phrasing is different, these two goals are what drive the modern university administrator. Let's set aside the student enrollment situation and just focus on the grants. Federal research grants come from major federal entities, such as the DHHS, NSF, DoE, DoD, and others. When a professor receives a grant, the university take a sizable cut of the grant. Some here have said that R1 institutions take 70%, and that seems reasonable to me. So, for every grant that a professor receives, the university receives money. As such, universities select for professors who can write grants and get them. Federal grants are often focused on big problems, and these big problems require lots of technical resources, interdisciplinary collaboration, and personnel. These problems aren't unimportant, but they aren't "game-changing" concepts; by applying for a competitive federal grant, everyone is playing the game. One important note about grants is, they typically require regular updates on results and a flow of publications. So, you have a situation where universities tend to select for professors with grant-seeking behavior, and those professors ensure the universities receive grant dollars. If a professor is sitting around playing with ideas which might become game-changing philosophy and mathematics, they probably aren't publishing papers, which means they probably haven't received a grant, which means the university isn't getting grant dollars from that professor. As a result, in the eyes of the university, professors who publish more are better, and professors who publish less are worse. I don't want discredit the professors who do very good work on grant dollars. It's just becoming more apparent that the current organizational structures of the modern research university is breaking down. For example, though I don't personally agree with doctoral students forming unions, I understand why they're doing it: professors try to maximize doctoral student output by paying them a pittance. As I said in other comments, 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, it should, in time, naturally fix the problem.
derbOac 3y ago
I've been in academics as a tenured faculty member and in other capacities and this story rings very true to me. Obviously extreme but by the same token clearly illustrative of prototypical problems. Note that this isn't the first Nobel prize winner in recent years to point out similar issues. There's a kind of passing the buck phenomenon I think, for lack of a better way of putting it, combined with denial about the nature of research which is at its best by definition novel and risky. Basically no one wants to actually pay for anything, except for the federal government. The state or university doesn't say "we happily fund scientific advances", they expect it to be funded by the federal government. I always liken it to hiring a plumber, but with the expectation that they make money for you instead of fixing your plumbing, or that you hire them ostensibly for the latter but actually for the former. At some point there has to be service or product provision that is being paid for, and in our current society this is the federal government. There are many complicating factors, like the fact that "funding" for all intents and purposes as far as a university is concerned means "federal government" (this isn't actually true but is mostly true), or that the evaluations of grants are based on current consensus about what is likely to produce significant findings, which deincentivizes novel research, or that projects rather than persons are funded, or that universities are administratively topheavy, or that the funding system also incentivizes pyramid schemes of graduate school, etc. There are functional departments and universities where people can supportively function in the current zeitgeist, and some smart people can get funding for good grants. But the incentive structures are incredibly perverse now at most institutions, and basically boil down to how much money you bring in in the form of indirect funds on grants. I have been in conversations with colleagues at other universities, who were arguing about faculty who were bringing in large grant amounts, but from non-federal sources, with no indirect funds, and how this was unacceptable because it didn't benefit the university financially sufficiently even though it paid for grad students etc. Yes universities have costs etc but in the current system Karikó's experience was bound to happen. Peter Higgs has said he would never be hired today and it's probably true. All of this will continue, or you just won't hear about certain advances because they will be shut down and never develop.

washadjeffmad 3y ago

Everyone thinks their research is important, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it. Not every chair, board, or panel can fully understand every topic, especially when it's highly specialized, much less predict its impact. So often, people feel like they're being neglected when they're just not visible because they haven't communicated something to an audience they either don't recognize or don't value. They often write grants that don't explain the value of their work in a way that can be presented to people who don't already understand the value of the subject. And if they're already pessimistic about support, they won't ask for support. If they're too focused on their work and not paying attention to the new hires, they won't realize they need to talk to their department about which faculty are using which labs this semester. In general, even when faculty talk to each other, they aren't always listening - at least not beyond anything that might directly be of interest to them. And rarely does anyone ask, "How does all of this work, anyway?" In a way, you're seeing the system working. Despite Karikó being unhappy with Penn State, she was able to perform and carry out research that did not prove critical until a global pandemic, her research was able to be located, accessed, and used, and she was subsequently recognized for it. We can't reward potential. It's unfortunate that she felt unsupported by her department, but she did have personal advocates who helped to advance her, and she certainly wasn't the only researcher at Penn State - was she treated any differently to them? And being blunt, if it were obvious that her research was valuable, wouldn't it have already been done by others, making this story pointless? Is it possible to be recognized for being a hidden gem before you're found?

waterheater 3y ago

What is your definition of "academic research"? Not all research is academic, so take a moment to think about what that means for you. I'll give you what I think it is in the next paragraph. A HN commenter once wisely stated: "Building things [in academia] is fine, but of course it's not academic research - which is defined by the creation of game-changing concepts and philosophical structures, some of which happen to be mathematical." I completely agree. Many universities are majority funded by the US federal government. The proportion of money a university receives from federal student aid and federal research grants is wild, even for a state-run public university. Without those funds, the people currently employed at a university will lose their jobs, so a university will attempt to work with those funding sources as much as possible. How do universities increase incoming federal student aid dollars? Enroll more students. How do universities increase incoming federal research grant dollars? Submit more grants. Though their phrasing is different, these two goals are what drive the modern university administrator. Let's set aside the student enrollment situation and just focus on the grants. Federal research grants come from major federal entities, such as the DHHS, NSF, DoE, DoD, and others. When a professor receives a grant, the university take a sizable cut of the grant. Some here have said that R1 institutions take 70%, and that seems reasonable to me. So, for every grant that a professor receives, the university receives money. As such, universities select for professors who can write grants and get them. Federal grants are often focused on big problems, and these big problems require lots of technical resources, interdisciplinary collaboration, and personnel. These problems aren't unimportant, but they aren't "game-changing" concepts; by applying for a competitive federal grant, everyone is playing the game. One important note about grants is, they typically require regular updates on results and a flow of publications. So, you have a situation where universities tend to select for professors with grant-seeking behavior, and those professors ensure the universities receive grant dollars. If a professor is sitting around playing with ideas which might become game-changing philosophy and mathematics, they probably aren't publishing papers, which means they probably haven't received a grant, which means the university isn't getting grant dollars from that professor. As a result, in the eyes of the university, professors who publish more are better, and professors who publish less are worse. I don't want discredit the professors who do very good work on grant dollars. It's just becoming more apparent that the current organizational structures of the modern research university is breaking down. For example, though I don't personally agree with doctoral students forming unions, I understand why they're doing it: professors try to maximize doctoral student output by paying them a pittance. As I said in other comments, 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, it should, in time, naturally fix the problem.

derbOac 3y ago

I've been in academics as a tenured faculty member and in other capacities and this story rings very true to me. Obviously extreme but by the same token clearly illustrative of prototypical problems. Note that this isn't the first Nobel prize winner in recent years to point out similar issues. There's a kind of passing the buck phenomenon I think, for lack of a better way of putting it, combined with denial about the nature of research which is at its best by definition novel and risky. Basically no one wants to actually pay for anything, except for the federal government. The state or university doesn't say "we happily fund scientific advances", they expect it to be funded by the federal government. I always liken it to hiring a plumber, but with the expectation that they make money for you instead of fixing your plumbing, or that you hire them ostensibly for the latter but actually for the former. At some point there has to be service or product provision that is being paid for, and in our current society this is the federal government. There are many complicating factors, like the fact that "funding" for all intents and purposes as far as a university is concerned means "federal government" (this isn't actually true but is mostly true), or that the evaluations of grants are based on current consensus about what is likely to produce significant findings, which deincentivizes novel research, or that projects rather than persons are funded, or that universities are administratively topheavy, or that the funding system also incentivizes pyramid schemes of graduate school, etc. There are functional departments and universities where people can supportively function in the current zeitgeist, and some smart people can get funding for good grants. But the incentive structures are incredibly perverse now at most institutions, and basically boil down to how much money you bring in in the form of indirect funds on grants. I have been in conversations with colleagues at other universities, who were arguing about faculty who were bringing in large grant amounts, but from non-federal sources, with no indirect funds, and how this was unacceptable because it didn't benefit the university financially sufficiently even though it paid for grad students etc. Yes universities have costs etc but in the current system Karikó's experience was bound to happen. Peter Higgs has said he would never be hired today and it's probably true. All of this will continue, or you just won't hear about certain advances because they will be shut down and never develop.