5 ms·

Yes, I can attest that nowadays, in some fields, research has become a 'game', where: - people torture data until it yields unreproducible results; - people c

Yes, I can attest that nowadays, in some fields, research has become a 'game', where: - people torture data until it yields unreproducible results; - people choose venues that maximise their chances of getting published (and pay for publication sometimes, I'm looking at you, APC); - little concern given to excellence, rigour, and impact; - the chase for a 'diploma' from a renowned institute without putting the effort; I could go on and on, but I'll stop now. Perhaps something changes, I am waiting for this to happen for some time now (10y and counting). It's a bad system but that's what we have (at the moment).

antegamisou 2y ago
Yes it's horrifying indeed. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that there are many that fall into this rat race and treat it as another type of MSc credential.
3abiton 2y ago
> - people choose venues that maximises their chances of getting published (and pay for publication sometimes, I'm looking at you, APC); > > - little concern given to excellence, rigour, and impact; It's because the kpis of assessment are built like this. Goodhard's law. I know lots of good researchers who get frustrated with the system and end up giving up and faltering to those 2 points. If within a uni 2 research groups are putting out research at different rate at different quality, the one with higher quality, lower frequency, and higher standard and ambition gets heavily penalized. Seen it in action.
- graycat 2y ago
  Yes, in the STEM fields, for published papers, it's easy just to count them; much harder to read them; to evaluate them, some people just count awards, etc. So, the hard work that makes the good material in the paper may never be noticed. There is, "You get what you pay for." So, want papers, you will get papers, and you can count them. It goes, did Haydn write 101 symphonies or 1 symphony 101 times? Early on, had a good career going in computing but where occasionally some math made a lot of difference. So, to help that career got a Ph.D. in applied math. Never had any intention of being a professor but for a while did to try to help my seriously, fatally, stressed out wife (Valedictorian, PBK, Woodrow Wilson, NSF, Summa Cum Laude, Ph.D.) -- took a professor job near her family home and farm. In my little Ph.D department, saw the Chair and four professors get fired and one more leave, fired or not. The career I had before grad school was a lot better than the one those professors had. Had to conclude that, tenure or not, being a professor is, on average, a poor way to even reasonable financial security. Generally there is low pay, e.g., too little to buy a house, keep cars running, support a wife and family. There's a LOT of dirty politics, infighting, higher-ups who don't want you to be successful. Bluntly, a research university takes in money that a lot of people care about and puts out papers that only a few people care about: Net, there is no very strong reason to pay professors enough for even reasonable financial security. Key sources of the money are short term grants from the usual suspects, NSF, DOE, DARPA, NIH ("too many for them all to be turned off at once" -- JB Conant?), but that is essentially just contract work and not steady employment, with little promise that when a Professor's baby is ready for college there will be money enough for them to go. It's a house built on paper that can be blown away by any thunder storm. Now, for a career, e.g., financial security, to leave something for the kids in the family tree, regard business, e.g., now involving the Internet, as the best approach, and there regard computing and math as important tools but only tools. Research? Did some, and it is a key to the business. Academic research? Did some, published, on my own dime, still waiting for the checks. History, how'd we get here? Used to be that some guy built a valuable business and had several sons. One of the sons inherited the business, and the rest went to the military as an officer, academics as a professor, or to politics. Then WWII showed that the STEM fields can be crucial for national security, and some related funding started, e.g., summer math programs for selected high school students, research grants. "If you are so smart, why aren't you rich?" Ah, "The business of America is business."
  - EvgeniyZh 2y ago
    > that is essentially just contract work and not steady employment, That's not true, the university pays you salary. Depending on details you may be able to increase your salary using grants, but you won't lose your salary if you don't. And when you hit tenure it is very hard to fire you
    - graycat 2y ago
      Tenure or not, the university doesn't have to have the salary keep up with inflation. Really, bottom line, a prof has to continue to please their department colleagues, chair, and dean.
      - EvgeniyZh 2y ago
        Even in US public universities have salary scales that are indexed. Moving to a different place while keeping tenure is possible too. Anyway I don't see how it's different from any other job, including the fact that having good relationships with colleagues is not a bad idea anyway.
- eloisant 2y ago
  Yep. I also know researchers who refuse to play this game, but their career plateau'd and they have to work with little fundings.
knolan 2y ago
I’ve seen this with a PhD student publishing several rapid fire papers in MDPI journals. They are repeating well understood physics work done 50 years ago using off the shelf commercial simulation software. They don’t cite any papers older than a decade and claim without irony that the work is “significant” while none of their papers are cited. They will go to events where no one is an expert in the field and win prizes for showing lots of pretty pictures but nothing that isn’t already well understood. When I, an expert in the field, tell them they need to produce something novel at their research panels I’m told I’m wrong. When I list all the work they are ripping off I’m told it’s somehow different without explanation. When I question the obvious sloppiness in their work (the simulation data showing major artefacts) they blow up at me screaming and shouting. I’ve never experienced arrogance like this before. It’s shocking. Their supervisors tell me that they are close to firing them but then also celebrate all the publications they are getting. The mind boggles.
- Over2Chars 2y ago
  This isn't new, and academia has been rewarding behavior that wouldn't survive elsewhere for a long time. Maybe it's time we unshackled ourselves from these 'prestigious institutions'?
  - knolan 2y ago
    Your anti intellectual bias is showing. There are problems in all domains. I’ve seen plenty of arrogant fools in industry too. They’re using an industry tool to do well trodden industry problems that were solved by academics decades ago. I’m not tolerating his behaviour and I’ve made my views clear to my colleagues. He’s going to burn every bridge possible with this behaviour.
    - Over2Chars 2y ago
      I'm all in favor of intellectuals, it's academic bureaucracies I'm not fond of. I think Socrates was a hoot, and he taught in a cave or something like that. Priests teaching rural peasants to read in their monasteries, and collegial colleges for the public benefit are definitely meritorious. But,I mean, there is enormous corruption going on. How did Ren Youzai get into MIT? He was a body guard. Just because you've married into a billionaire's family MIT says "hey, send anyone you want in"? And I'm sure MIT isn't alone in mysteriously average students who not only get in but graduate when linked to massively rich and powerful families. A recent US president comes to mind. Is that anti-intellectual?
enum 2y ago
Any evidence that this approach works? Are people who do this able to move from the PhD to a solid position afterward that they could not have had without the PhD?
carlosjobim 2y ago
> Perhaps something changes, I am waiting for this to happen for some time now (10y and counting). What will change is that PhD will become an inherited title. If your parents were/are PhDs, you will ceremoniously be granted the title when coming of age. That title can then be rented out to people or organizations (such as companies) who are required to have a PhD by government regulation for the activity that they are in. You can of course also mortgage this title to a bank or other company that will take care of the process.
y-curious 2y ago
Chiming in with my own experience. I was with a new PI that was a charlatan; I am grateful for the experience because I now know how to recognize these sorts of people and avoid them. "There is no journal of negative results." he would say at our weekly meetings. In order to secure his future, he set ablaze the dreams of 5 PhDs in my lab (all of which took their masters and went into industry; One developed severe OCD). Data was massaged, lies were told to his bosses. Guess what? He's still a professor there, his lab still publishes dubious, unreproducible research. No recourse was to be had at the university (all of the PhDs went to the head of the department and were told to f*ck off). Academia is on a death spiral at many schools, and I worry that it's up to the industry to carry the torch of research in the future.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

antegamisou 2y ago

Yes it's horrifying indeed. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that there are many that fall into this rat race and treat it as another type of MSc credential.

3abiton 2y ago

> - people choose venues that maximises their chances of getting published (and pay for publication sometimes, I'm looking at you, APC); > > - little concern given to excellence, rigour, and impact; It's because the kpis of assessment are built like this. Goodhard's law. I know lots of good researchers who get frustrated with the system and end up giving up and faltering to those 2 points. If within a uni 2 research groups are putting out research at different rate at different quality, the one with higher quality, lower frequency, and higher standard and ambition gets heavily penalized. Seen it in action.

graycat 2y ago
Yes, in the STEM fields, for published papers, it's easy just to count them; much harder to read them; to evaluate them, some people just count awards, etc. So, the hard work that makes the good material in the paper may never be noticed. There is, "You get what you pay for." So, want papers, you will get papers, and you can count them. It goes, did Haydn write 101 symphonies or 1 symphony 101 times? Early on, had a good career going in computing but where occasionally some math made a lot of difference. So, to help that career got a Ph.D. in applied math. Never had any intention of being a professor but for a while did to try to help my seriously, fatally, stressed out wife (Valedictorian, PBK, Woodrow Wilson, NSF, Summa Cum Laude, Ph.D.) -- took a professor job near her family home and farm. In my little Ph.D department, saw the Chair and four professors get fired and one more leave, fired or not. The career I had before grad school was a lot better than the one those professors had. Had to conclude that, tenure or not, being a professor is, on average, a poor way to even reasonable financial security. Generally there is low pay, e.g., too little to buy a house, keep cars running, support a wife and family. There's a LOT of dirty politics, infighting, higher-ups who don't want you to be successful. Bluntly, a research university takes in money that a lot of people care about and puts out papers that only a few people care about: Net, there is no very strong reason to pay professors enough for even reasonable financial security. Key sources of the money are short term grants from the usual suspects, NSF, DOE, DARPA, NIH ("too many for them all to be turned off at once" -- JB Conant?), but that is essentially just contract work and not steady employment, with little promise that when a Professor's baby is ready for college there will be money enough for them to go. It's a house built on paper that can be blown away by any thunder storm. Now, for a career, e.g., financial security, to leave something for the kids in the family tree, regard business, e.g., now involving the Internet, as the best approach, and there regard computing and math as important tools but only tools. Research? Did some, and it is a key to the business. Academic research? Did some, published, on my own dime, still waiting for the checks. History, how'd we get here? Used to be that some guy built a valuable business and had several sons. One of the sons inherited the business, and the rest went to the military as an officer, academics as a professor, or to politics. Then WWII showed that the STEM fields can be crucial for national security, and some related funding started, e.g., summer math programs for selected high school students, research grants. "If you are so smart, why aren't you rich?" Ah, "The business of America is business."
- EvgeniyZh 2y ago
  > that is essentially just contract work and not steady employment, That's not true, the university pays you salary. Depending on details you may be able to increase your salary using grants, but you won't lose your salary if you don't. And when you hit tenure it is very hard to fire you
  - graycat 2y ago
    Tenure or not, the university doesn't have to have the salary keep up with inflation. Really, bottom line, a prof has to continue to please their department colleagues, chair, and dean.
    - EvgeniyZh 2y ago
      Even in US public universities have salary scales that are indexed. Moving to a different place while keeping tenure is possible too. Anyway I don't see how it's different from any other job, including the fact that having good relationships with colleagues is not a bad idea anyway.
eloisant 2y ago
Yep. I also know researchers who refuse to play this game, but their career plateau'd and they have to work with little fundings.

knolan 2y ago

I’ve seen this with a PhD student publishing several rapid fire papers in MDPI journals. They are repeating well understood physics work done 50 years ago using off the shelf commercial simulation software. They don’t cite any papers older than a decade and claim without irony that the work is “significant” while none of their papers are cited. They will go to events where no one is an expert in the field and win prizes for showing lots of pretty pictures but nothing that isn’t already well understood. When I, an expert in the field, tell them they need to produce something novel at their research panels I’m told I’m wrong. When I list all the work they are ripping off I’m told it’s somehow different without explanation. When I question the obvious sloppiness in their work (the simulation data showing major artefacts) they blow up at me screaming and shouting. I’ve never experienced arrogance like this before. It’s shocking. Their supervisors tell me that they are close to firing them but then also celebrate all the publications they are getting. The mind boggles.

Over2Chars 2y ago
This isn't new, and academia has been rewarding behavior that wouldn't survive elsewhere for a long time. Maybe it's time we unshackled ourselves from these 'prestigious institutions'?
- knolan 2y ago
  Your anti intellectual bias is showing. There are problems in all domains. I’ve seen plenty of arrogant fools in industry too. They’re using an industry tool to do well trodden industry problems that were solved by academics decades ago. I’m not tolerating his behaviour and I’ve made my views clear to my colleagues. He’s going to burn every bridge possible with this behaviour.
  - Over2Chars 2y ago
    I'm all in favor of intellectuals, it's academic bureaucracies I'm not fond of. I think Socrates was a hoot, and he taught in a cave or something like that. Priests teaching rural peasants to read in their monasteries, and collegial colleges for the public benefit are definitely meritorious. But,I mean, there is enormous corruption going on. How did Ren Youzai get into MIT? He was a body guard. Just because you've married into a billionaire's family MIT says "hey, send anyone you want in"? And I'm sure MIT isn't alone in mysteriously average students who not only get in but graduate when linked to massively rich and powerful families. A recent US president comes to mind. Is that anti-intellectual?

enum 2y ago

Any evidence that this approach works? Are people who do this able to move from the PhD to a solid position afterward that they could not have had without the PhD?

carlosjobim 2y ago

> Perhaps something changes, I am waiting for this to happen for some time now (10y and counting). What will change is that PhD will become an inherited title. If your parents were/are PhDs, you will ceremoniously be granted the title when coming of age. That title can then be rented out to people or organizations (such as companies) who are required to have a PhD by government regulation for the activity that they are in. You can of course also mortgage this title to a bank or other company that will take care of the process.

y-curious 2y ago

Chiming in with my own experience. I was with a new PI that was a charlatan; I am grateful for the experience because I now know how to recognize these sorts of people and avoid them. "There is no journal of negative results." he would say at our weekly meetings. In order to secure his future, he set ablaze the dreams of 5 PhDs in my lab (all of which took their masters and went into industry; One developed severe OCD). Data was massaged, lies were told to his bosses. Guess what? He's still a professor there, his lab still publishes dubious, unreproducible research. No recourse was to be had at the university (all of the PhDs went to the head of the department and were told to f*ck off). Academia is on a death spiral at many schools, and I worry that it's up to the industry to carry the torch of research in the future.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]