4 ms·

My wife is prof at a decent uni in the states teaching big stuff™ and I got into a conversation about this with her recently, where we landed was "will academia

by neom 2y ago

My wife is prof at a decent uni in the states teaching big stuff™ and I got into a conversation about this with her recently, where we landed was "will academia ever trust plebs like me?" and after an hr or so of back and forth it was evident to me on average: it will not. I'm still thinking about what I think about that, but it was certainly my resolve, at least within my wifes institution (will remain unnamed).

zdragnar 2y ago
Academia is a walled garden protected by paper degrees and the cost of tuition and time. Anyone who can achieve results without suffering the same tribulations to join the ranks of professors is a threat at best, a charlatan at worst, and to be dismissed regardless.
- thelaxiankey 2y ago
  uh... maybe in your field. personally i've never seen good physics on Vixra or good biology anywhere except in biorxiv or journals.
  - odyssey7 2y ago
    Ever heard of an engineering firm?
    - thelaxiankey 2y ago
      I mean, for like, some ML research, sure. For certain, even most, aspects of electrical engineering, absolutely. But for biology? Absolutely not. And even in more computer-adjacent fields, this is still ridiculously reductive. Geoff Hinton is an academic through-and-through, and he changed the world even for computer scientists. What about someone like Don Knuth? I mean, even google's pagerank started as an academic project. Engineering firms do great research too, but this is not the only way.
      - odyssey7 2y ago
        You'll be disappointed to learn that most new medication approvals are obtained by pharmaceutical companies, rather than academia.
        thelaxiankey 1y ago
        i'm well aware of how medications are developed. i'm talking about biology, not medicine. there is a world of difference. pharma companies combine tech that gets developed in academic labs in clever ways to treat diseases. but make no mistake, most of these techniques come out of academia. if you think CRISPR or P1 transduction were discovered outside academia, you are wrong. and this isn't even discussing stuff with no immediate clinical applications that is nonetheless important (jumbo phages, asgard archaea are hot rn)
        odyssey7 1y ago
        Okay this is a fair rebuttal.
- etrautmann 2y ago
  That’s not at all what this article is about. It’s a piece of published work by an established scientist who used data collected by users of birding apps. The non credentialed bird app users did not publish this paper…
bananalychee 2y ago
My disillusion with credentialism reached its peak when I published my first paper as an undergraduate student. That paper was based on a project I'd worked on part-time for maybe half of a semester. After my professor pushed for me to write a paper about it, I obscured the subject matter with the adequate specialist jargon and convoluted technical style and it was accepted by a fairly well-regarded publication uneventfully. I was on an accelerated curriculum planning to pursue a Master's degree and had much higher expectations for academia. I ended up dropping out after earning my Bachelor's. I'm much more sympathetic to independent researchers than to academics these days, and if I were to engage in serious research again, I would probably publish it independently rather than going through academic channels.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
odyssey7 2y ago
Good news, or just deserts, the feeling is mutual. A large part of the electorate distrusts academics and is in turn dismissive of academics’ priorities and recommendations. It’s correct for members of the public to distrust institutions that are not earnest. The casualties are, of course, enormous.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
gus_massa 2y ago
> will academia ever trust plebs like me? What do you want to do? Get a billion dollar to get a new particle collider? Buy 1000 lab rats and try some experiment? Get 3 graduate students to expand your personal theory? -> The answer is no. But even someone with credentials will have a hard time getting that unless they have a good team and track record in similar task. A position as a collaborator in a research group? -> Perhaps. As a full researcher is difficult but not impossible. The main problem is to ensure you know everything that "everyone" already know. You must start with a small collaboration in a side task. Also, there are many positions in helper task, like sysadmin or lathe expert or ... that don't require a Ph.D. but they require someone who really knows what is doing and can understand both the requirements of the team and the tools. Publish your own research? -> Possible, if you pay for the 1000 rats yourself. The main problem is that what is "useful", "interesting" and "interesting for academia" may have a weird intersection. So you may get something that is useful or interesting but nobody in academia may care about it. Or you may reinvent the wheel with another name. Or the theory is "obviously wrong". Do you have a control group? There is a finite time to read new ideas, so people in academia has to filter too weird theories (even weird theories published in papers). Sometimes the theory that is obviously wrong is correct, but most of the time is just wrong. Does the new theory has at least one experimental prediction? In some cases is like wanting to be a F1 racer. Nobody will give you a position unless you are an expert F2 racer (or something). On the other hand, pg published "A plan for spam" in a blog post. No new academic research. No new weird structure. Nothing new. Just useful when nobody knew how to deal with spam. Also, cperciva made a comment a few weeks ago telling that his most cited "paper" is only a "preprint" that was never accepted for publication, because nobody care about a weird side channel timing attack (or something like that, I can't find the comment). There is definitively a problem, but a few years ago got we got in our university like 5 independent persons that solved the Goldbach conjeture. Each one got a voluntary graduate student to talk and explain the ideas. After a few month of meetings, the conclusion was that none of them had good ideas to prove the Goldbach conjeture. What do you want to do?

by neom 2y ago

zdragnar 2y ago

Academia is a walled garden protected by paper degrees and the cost of tuition and time. Anyone who can achieve results without suffering the same tribulations to join the ranks of professors is a threat at best, a charlatan at worst, and to be dismissed regardless.

thelaxiankey 2y ago
uh... maybe in your field. personally i've never seen good physics on Vixra or good biology anywhere except in biorxiv or journals.
- odyssey7 2y ago
  Ever heard of an engineering firm?
  - thelaxiankey 2y ago
    I mean, for like, some ML research, sure. For certain, even most, aspects of electrical engineering, absolutely. But for biology? Absolutely not. And even in more computer-adjacent fields, this is still ridiculously reductive. Geoff Hinton is an academic through-and-through, and he changed the world even for computer scientists. What about someone like Don Knuth? I mean, even google's pagerank started as an academic project. Engineering firms do great research too, but this is not the only way.
    - odyssey7 2y ago
      You'll be disappointed to learn that most new medication approvals are obtained by pharmaceutical companies, rather than academia.
      - thelaxiankey 1y ago
        i'm well aware of how medications are developed. i'm talking about biology, not medicine. there is a world of difference. pharma companies combine tech that gets developed in academic labs in clever ways to treat diseases. but make no mistake, most of these techniques come out of academia. if you think CRISPR or P1 transduction were discovered outside academia, you are wrong. and this isn't even discussing stuff with no immediate clinical applications that is nonetheless important (jumbo phages, asgard archaea are hot rn)
        odyssey7 1y ago
        Okay this is a fair rebuttal.
etrautmann 2y ago
That’s not at all what this article is about. It’s a piece of published work by an established scientist who used data collected by users of birding apps. The non credentialed bird app users did not publish this paper…

bananalychee 2y ago

My disillusion with credentialism reached its peak when I published my first paper as an undergraduate student. That paper was based on a project I'd worked on part-time for maybe half of a semester. After my professor pushed for me to write a paper about it, I obscured the subject matter with the adequate specialist jargon and convoluted technical style and it was accepted by a fairly well-regarded publication uneventfully. I was on an accelerated curriculum planning to pursue a Master's degree and had much higher expectations for academia. I ended up dropping out after earning my Bachelor's. I'm much more sympathetic to independent researchers than to academics these days, and if I were to engage in serious research again, I would probably publish it independently rather than going through academic channels.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

odyssey7 2y ago

Good news, or just deserts, the feeling is mutual. A large part of the electorate distrusts academics and is in turn dismissive of academics’ priorities and recommendations. It’s correct for members of the public to distrust institutions that are not earnest. The casualties are, of course, enormous.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

gus_massa 2y ago

> will academia ever trust plebs like me? What do you want to do? Get a billion dollar to get a new particle collider? Buy 1000 lab rats and try some experiment? Get 3 graduate students to expand your personal theory? -> The answer is no. But even someone with credentials will have a hard time getting that unless they have a good team and track record in similar task. A position as a collaborator in a research group? -> Perhaps. As a full researcher is difficult but not impossible. The main problem is to ensure you know everything that "everyone" already know. You must start with a small collaboration in a side task. Also, there are many positions in helper task, like sysadmin or lathe expert or ... that don't require a Ph.D. but they require someone who really knows what is doing and can understand both the requirements of the team and the tools. Publish your own research? -> Possible, if you pay for the 1000 rats yourself. The main problem is that what is "useful", "interesting" and "interesting for academia" may have a weird intersection. So you may get something that is useful or interesting but nobody in academia may care about it. Or you may reinvent the wheel with another name. Or the theory is "obviously wrong". Do you have a control group? There is a finite time to read new ideas, so people in academia has to filter too weird theories (even weird theories published in papers). Sometimes the theory that is obviously wrong is correct, but most of the time is just wrong. Does the new theory has at least one experimental prediction? In some cases is like wanting to be a F1 racer. Nobody will give you a position unless you are an expert F2 racer (or something). On the other hand, pg published "A plan for spam" in a blog post. No new academic research. No new weird structure. Nothing new. Just useful when nobody knew how to deal with spam. Also, cperciva made a comment a few weeks ago telling that his most cited "paper" is only a "preprint" that was never accepted for publication, because nobody care about a weird side channel timing attack (or something like that, I can't find the comment). There is definitively a problem, but a few years ago got we got in our university like 5 independent persons that solved the Goldbach conjeture. Each one got a voluntary graduate student to talk and explain the ideas. After a few month of meetings, the conclusion was that none of them had good ideas to prove the Goldbach conjeture. What do you want to do?