4 ms·

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

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 2y 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 2y 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…

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 2y 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 2y 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…