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The Suicide PhD Candidate Huixiang Chen (2019)
- roschdal 3y agoCompetition in academia is so vicious because the stakes are so small. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law
- bowsamic 3y agoBut the stakes aren’t low in academia, you can have your career destroyed by a bad couple of years…
- cmdli 3y agoI think the quote is referring to the stakes of the underlying decision being made, not necessarily the stakes of the politics. Academics will argue in great detail about trivialities and those trivialities can decide careers.
- Almondsetat 3y agoJust go work in the industry, this obsession with staying forever in the ivory tower is perplexing
- bowsamic 3y agoMost PhDs are not able to be competitive in the job market
- odyssey7 3y agoA friend recently gave up a career in which his very soul was bound but which had kept him impoverished and struggling, always having to navigate churn to afford to live. He works in a call center now, and he’s so much less depressed that it’s like he’s a different person.
- bowsamic 3y agoI mean that's great but honestly if you're a PhD or postdoc, being told that working in a call centre is better for you is hardly an encouraging thought. In fact, it would bring great shame to most people from their families.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- willcipriano 3y agoDon't these careers pay pretty low, especially for the level of education? I always assumed that was the low stakes part. Its like making game-of-thrones-esque will-to-power moves at your McDonalds job. After a victory in a vicious trial by combat: "To your knees, I now dub you assistant manager of McDonalds store #1263245, your pay now raises two and a half percent and you get to park a little closer to the building."
- bowsamic 3y agoNo, I get paid very competitively here in Germany
- jltsiren 3y agoThose two are unrelated. Academic politics involve mostly those who have already won. Competition is fierce in the academia, because many people find academic research inherently interesting, but there is only money to employ a small fraction of them.
- readyman 3y ago>Competition is fierce in the academia, because many people find academic research inherently interesting Why do we keep telling ourselves that profit is the only way to motivate competition? It is a lie. >there is only money to employ a small fraction of them But there is plenty of money for profit? The dictates of our society are beginning to sound like a bunk academic paper.
- bdjsiqoocwk 3y ago[flagged]
- xandrius 3y agoThat he had some difficulties and chose to suicide is clear from the article but I wouldn't go throwing around diagnoses nobody asked for about someone who (probably) you never met, it's just not necessary. Also let's not go victim-blaming when someone can't take the harsh realities of some parts of the academia, people shouldn't need to go through this much pressure just to devote themselves to further our collective knowledge.
- bdjsiqoocwk 3y agoWhat does "blaming" mean here? He did make that decision. I'm not "blaming" anyone all I'm saying is stating the fact he did make the decision. You're adding the word "blaming" here as if I'm doing something wrong.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hyperphoton 3y ago[dead]
- amir734jj 3y agoAs someone who very recently finished his Ph.D. in CS and was working full-time as a software engineer at the same time, I must say that getting a Ph.D. is difficult and takes a lot of willpower and dedication. It's not easy. Some people will say this person wastes years learning about this particular obscure problem, some people say this person doesn't have industry experience. But after getting a PhD myself, I have a huge respect for anyone who has a PhD. It's not easy. Too many times 5 minutes before meeting my advisor I wanted to tell him I wanted to quit or take 1 year off. I was under immense mental pressure and was having similar thoughts because my parents thought I was close to finishing but I was not. I don't know this particular person but I feel the pain he went through.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoYa, the nightmares towards the end when you are finally writing your thesis are the worst, but it was mentally fulfilling and I guess I don’t regret it, even though my thesis will never be read by anyone else. The things you actually learn and the thing you study can be really different. I actually still have nightmares about not finishing my thesis for some reason, or having my topics rejected (although for some reason, the mental stress didn’t start until I got past that point). Design topics are the worst: you can’t measure how fast they are or how effective they are. My advice to anyone who wants to do a PhD is to get into a field where the metrics are obvious, and then lean into Goodhart’s law for all its worth (but be super honest with numbers and careful with your methodology).
- mattdano 3y agoFollow up on what happened with the professor: https://www.wuft.org/education/2021-04-23/university-of-florida-professor-resigns-amid-investigations-into-students-suicide?_amp=true https://www.wuft.org/education/2021-04-23/university-of-flor...
- yalok 3y agoThis was 3 years ago - I wonder what the investigation concluded. I only found this petition demanding the disclosure of investigation - https://www.change.org/p/demand-that-uf-release-the-investigation-into-huixiang-chen-s-abuse-and-suicide https://www.change.org/p/demand-that-uf-release-the-investig...
- linehedonist 3y agoDoesn’t matter. He resigned in disgrace, will never work in academia again. Honestly I’m now curious what he’s been up to the last two years.
- ken47 3y agoHow pervasive is corruption higher academia? The big names (Marc Tessier-Lavigne, Ariely, etc.) will make headlines, but how many more are there that we never hear about? I happen to know a prolific cheater who became a professor at a well-known university. I'd be surprised if their cheating stopped when they got to university and beyond...
- isoprophlex 3y agoIn my naïve early years as a phd student (doing experimental organic chemistry), I tried to replicate some promising results. I'm a poor experimentalist (so poor I later switched to computational chemistry), but these procedures were absolutely impossible to follow once you got down to the details. My advisor told me "yeah. we don't try to replicate anything that comes out of that lab." and left it at that. Sobered me up real quick to the realities of how widespread these bullshit cheating practices are.
- begueradj 3y agoYou are right. I remember I read an article about a PhD student struggling to reproduce experiment results despite he performed them hundreds of times. And when he talked about his worries to his friends, they told him they were in the same situation. So everyone had to write in his/her paper the results the mentors wanted. I wish I could find that article. He was into biology. Off-topic, but related: "Reproducibility trial: 246 biologists get different results from same data sets" (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03177-1 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03177-1)
- kromem 3y agoWhile I don't think we'll have a Terminator 2 style Judgment Day in the future because of AI, I do think there's a great deal of misconduct in many areas that's going to be exposed due to massive abilities to cross-correlate data at nuanced levels. People who have been up to shifty things should be very nervous, and those entertaining doing shifty things should consider that it's very likely it will be exposed in the next decade.
- MattGaiser 3y ago
- yalok 3y agoPoor guy - very sad story. A reminder not to put one’s work or academic achievements at the very top - they are not worth of loosing the peace of mind and moreover health/life. Have to periodically check myself if my priorities are right. It’s a whole skill how to do your best at work, but yet not take it too close to heart and keep hoping in eternal things and not temporal…
- romeros 3y agoIt depends on the culture you were brought up in. In Indian/Chinese/Asian cultures ones sense of identity is typically tied up with academic achievements.
- fennecbutt 3y agoIdk perhaps. But men generally have a high suicide rate and I think there are two main contributers: feelings of loneliness and feelings of failure (both involving deep feelings of helplessness) and I think the latter applies in this case :/
- isoprophlex 3y agoAcademia: the only winning move is not to play
- oezi 3y agoThe core issue of academic misconduct is the 1:1 relationship between PhD candidate and mentor. The near absolute power asymmetry makes the PhD candidate near totally dependent on the mentor. If the mentor is abusive there is almost no recourse without the PhD candidate losing everything. It is very sad that Huixiang lost his life over a paternalistic, archaic system. And he isn't the only one who was badly impacted.
- raverbashing 3y agoNot only the mentor, but the whole academic system Thanks but no thank
- neonsunset 3y agoWhat does it have to do with “paternalism”?
- jpmoral 3y agopaternalism the policy or practice on the part of people in authority of restricting the freedom and responsibilities of those subordinate to or otherwise dependent on them in their supposed interest.
- shikshake 3y agoThe entire relationship between an advisor and the the candidate is paternalistic, the advisor holds so much control over the student’s future. I’m glad I quit in hindsight.
- oefrha 3y agoIIRC the 2021 follow-on article was more informative. Discussed at the time: A Dishonest, Indifferent, and Toxic Culture - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26211670 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26211670 - Feb 2021 (191 comments)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dafty4 3y agoThe professor has resigned after being placed on leave, FWIW: https://www.wuft.org/education/2021-04-23/university-of-florida-professor-resigns-amid-investigations-into-students-suicide?_amp=true https://www.wuft.org/education/2021-04-23/university-of-flor...
- qez 3y agoIf you find yourself explaining the intricacies of CNN algorithms in your suicide note, consider that you are too "dug into" a bespoke topic. In 2 years, none of these math problems would be his mind at all.
- firtoz 3y agoChoosing to do a PHD means you are willing to dig into a bespoke topic. They had no way out of their predicaments - it seems their mentor had forced them into a corner, where either they had to produce fraudulent work, or abandon their entire career. I think there is also a lot of cultural pressure at play also. Being caught after producing fraudulent work is also an easy way to have the same effect of abandoning your whole career. And without a fruitful result of your life's work, it would feel that you have wasted your whole life. And in some cultures, that would mean being terribly judged by your family and friends, and worse. So they did really think that they had no other options out and everything else was "worse than death".
- pushedx 3y agoWhen you are young, and you are researching something as a PhD student, it really can seem like the most important thing in your life. All of your waking thoughts (and late night thoughts) can be shaped by it. When you walk outside you're not even noticing things around you but you're lost in thought about the current problem. This is why it's so important to have some "spiritual" life of some sort as you cultivate an academic career, where you can practice appreciating the truly valuable aspects of life, and be grateful and peaceful when you need to be. For many people on this path you don't learn these things until much later in life. This is reinforced by your entire life being dictated by grades and exam scores until the moment you start your research.
- brandall10 3y agoThe audience for this note is his colleagues and this quandary is the central tenant leading to his decision. While killing oneself over an academic pursuit seems extreme, getting a PhD is a pretty extreme thing to do and one of those things where it seems like one's life to that point has been entirely dedicated to the pursuit. Reading Philip Guo's "The PhD Grind" several years back ended up giving me one of those multi-year Kafkaesque nightmares that caused me to wake up in a cold sweat. I get it.
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoA follow-up post from 2021 that got some more attention here: A Dishonest, Indifferent, and Toxic Culture https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26211670 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26211670
- swatson741 3y agoThis guy obviously wasn't cut out to do this sort of work. The real question here is was that his advisors intention or his misfortune?
- mlsu 3y agoI think what's so fascinating about academia (really, university life in general) is the juxtaposition of intelligence with the cheating and fraudulent behavior that occurs. I have never, ever cheated in school. I was really surprised when I went to college, with the amount of cheating that went on. A huge proportion of my class would take a shortcut. Get the answers to an assignment from a friend, cheat the clicker, plagiarize. A smaller subset were determined to never honestly do an assignment. Every assignment was approached, first and foremost, with a strategy for how to defraud it. What's so interesting is that so many of these cheaters, the worst ones included, were extremely intelligent people. The most capable cheaters were as smart as the honest top of the class. (The slackers, who just wanted the degree, all muddled through with C's. Which is fine!). Academic fraud at the highest level, among tenured professors, is the most extreme possible case of this. What gets me is that if you stop and think about fraud, about cheating, for literally a minute, you can only come to the conclusion that it's a huge disservice to absolutely everyone. It's obviously a disservice to the honest people in your cohort, because it robs them of advancement. It's a disservice to you, because you waste time cheating instead of learning -- which only leads to issues down the road, because you need the things you're learning about in school. But I think most importantly, it's a joyless activity. Any pride you have in your work, passion for what you're doing, it's all permanently tainted by the fraud. One of the funnest, most enjoyable parts of life, in my mind, is getting really really good at something really really hard, and mastering it. These people are the absolute best. Tao Li, the stories in here [1], the Alzheimer's case. I mean I'm angry about these things of course, but more than anything, it's a pity/feeling bad for/disgust reaction. They wasted their whole lives on getting to the top of the field, only to suck all of the joy out of the achievement by cheating to get there. These people are so clearly gifted. How is it that they cannot make this connection? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39643437 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39643437
- ken47 3y agoI think you're deceiving yourself with your implication that cheaters tend to be "extremely intelligent." Being able to exhibit intelligence in short bursts is not the same capability as being able to exercise it for hours a day, for months on end, in a mental marathon like academia or many other career paths require. The cheaters that you're referring to, are at best, clever, which is inferior to being intelligent. You may believe that they simply lack the desire to use their intelligence over a longer timespan, but there is effectively no difference between never wanting to do it and not being able to do it. There may occasionally be cheaters who cheat because they get a kick out of it, and happen to be intelligent, but that isn't the norm.
- neilv 3y agoThis brings up something very important for grad students to know these days, since I've heard of wronged students at various universities over the years... Any grad student who encounters academic dishonesty by their advisor (at least in the US)... First go talk to a lawyer. A lawyer of your own, not connected with the university (except perhaps as an alum). Not a dean, not an ombud, not the kindly professor who's a friend to all students, not that other professor who sounded especially forthright in class. Ask the lawyer for a free initial consultation. Where you might find they're comfortable handling this situation, or they might recommend a better lawyer for it. They can also talk about how the costs would work for your situation. You can check out a few lawyers this way. Once you have a lawyer, they can advise you how to approach the university, and/or approach the university themself, to protect you, and to get the harm to you fixed. Getting a lawyer doesn't mean you can't work things out with the university, and finish successfully. But if you try to do it on your own, trusting university channels, there will likely be people who don't believe you, people who are friends/colleagues of the person committing misconduct and not wanting it to be a big deal, people scared of the person's influence, and people who will ruthlessly cover up wrongdoing to cover either their own butt or the university's. Also, if a dishonest advisor suspects you are a threat, they are in a position to easily ruin your career with impunity, and you don't want to gamble on their true character. You need help navigating that. You can come back from this. You just need the the help of a lawyer, so even the sketchiest elements of the university will know they have to take you seriously, and deal with you fairly. And a lawyer can help make sure that they follow through on fixing it. Also, whatever you do, don't let yourself be destroyed like this person in the article did. It sounds like he didn't feel he had options, was extremely stressed, probably sleep deprived, temporarily disenchanted with the field by the situation, and had been physically threatened. His case was tragic. Don't let another tragic case happen. You have more power than you think, and you'll feel better about the field and life once this BS is fixed.
- linehedonist 3y agoI think this is bad advice. Bringing a lawyer to the academy is a fundamentally adversarial move, and barring exceptional circumstances will not go well (some female academics denied tenure in the 80s did do well from lawsuits on gender discrimination grounds).
- account-5 3y agoMy limited experience of academia, as an under grad was enough to put me off academia for life. I much prefer doing and learning stuff, practical stuff, than jumping through academic hoops. I'll be glad when it's done finally. I can't imagine bothering with further study after since it all seems more geared towards pretense than anything useful. Obviously this is my opinion based on my experience as an old student who came to it late just to see if had certain things been picked up in school I might have been able to go to university/college then. I don't know if my life experience has made me jaded by the experience, despite all benefit I have gained from it...
- anta40 3y ago>> But this paper has very severe issues: the design doesn’t make any sense and the reviewers also pay no attention to it. The paper was accepted at no reason which can make anyone feel guilty in this case. After the deadline, crazy modifications of the paper were made and I started to... My understanding: - The paper didn't had proper review, yet got accepted. Hmmm. - To save everyone faces, the author did some hacks/patches. Unfortunately, it deviated significantly from the original claim. - The supervisor refused to help him. Couldn't you just retract your paper? Thus, no need to lie.
- epolanski 3y agoThe entire world of scientific papers is ridiculous and I wrote it many times. I worked in one of the most prestigious labs in the world and seen it first hand. And people wonder why 85%+ of papers in natural sciences are not reproducible. The incentives are all wrong in academia and science, it's just farming papers, farming citations, money and politics. The two major wrong incentives are the pressure to publish on high impact papers for PhDs and postdocs, as their career depends on it (this gives them limited timeframes to fail and really explore), and lab funding being tied to the same incentive. The pressure to publish is also a major factor behind tweaking data. As your PhD is ending you need those publications or you can forget an academic career. And it's a pyramid, so you need to get ahead of others in your situations. You tweak data, you pull your strings, you leverage your or your labs connections. On top of that, add the fact that as soon as you move in any direction you are effectively entering a niche where the number of people qualified to review your paper is small, and everybody knows each other. If you're working on helicoidal peptides as energy transmitters on metal surfaces it's a niche. Advanced perovskite synthesis? Niche. Hormonal regulation of some gland? Niche. There can't be that many experts on pretty much any topic in science, those are all small clubs, even when you get to popular topics. It's a perverse system.
- ahahahahah 3y ago> My understanding: Maybe take a step back and consider where your understanding is sourced from. I don't think I'd take the claims or ravings of a suicidal person as completely true representations of facts you need to account for the fact that this is all just the representations of someone that we know holds particularly extreme views.
- tonygeraldine 3y ago[dead]
- tonygeraldine 3y ago[dead]