4 ms·

Yes I must have been living under a rock while academic research (we are not talking about corporate R&D) became completely dominated by the persuit of funding.

by spikels 14y ago

Yes I must have been living under a rock while academic research (we are not talking about corporate R&D) became completely dominated by the persuit of funding. Yes I've heard that grant writing has become a key "research" skill. And I know about all the academic scandals, the frequent inability to reproduce published results, the bias against publishing negative results and general abuse of statistics. However as a non-academic science lover I still held on to the ideal that science was mostly about the pursuit of knowledge. I certainly got that impression from the few great researchers in medicine, economics, physics and math I happened to get to know. I guess they were just exceptions. Thanks for opening my eyes. Science is a business. And academic research is just as corrupt as every other human activity. Why should I have ever though anything else.

roel_v 14y ago
Look man, I don't mean to rag on you. It's just - how do people think academics make a living? They're normal people just like the rest of us, with grocery bills and mortgages, and daydreams of having enough time to watch their kids grow up. Money is tight everywhere, and has been before the crisis, because so little research can be shown to have actual uses. Dreary-eyed grad students flock to academia hoping to not have to think about such mundane things as gasp money, full of youthful idealism about Advancing Human Knowledge(tm) only to find out that their contributions, in all likelihood, will not matter at all, and after 10 years in their university coming to terms with the fact that they'd rather find other ways to give meaning to their life rather than wasting it on more of the same publish-or-perish grind. Obviously this is exaggerating things - some research is genuinely useful, and overall the state of the art advances in all fields, even if in very small increments; and very few academics (at least of the ones I know, which is a considerable number) drag themselves to their desks every day thinking about shooting themselves in the head. But the core point that academia isn't the romantic ideal that some have of it are undeniable, and won't be denied by anyone living the life (because that's what it is - a lifestyle, with advantages and drawbacks like any other).

by spikels 14y ago

roel_v 14y ago

Look man, I don't mean to rag on you. It's just - how do people think academics make a living? They're normal people just like the rest of us, with grocery bills and mortgages, and daydreams of having enough time to watch their kids grow up. Money is tight everywhere, and has been before the crisis, because so little research can be shown to have actual uses. Dreary-eyed grad students flock to academia hoping to not have to think about such mundane things as gasp money, full of youthful idealism about Advancing Human Knowledge(tm) only to find out that their contributions, in all likelihood, will not matter at all, and after 10 years in their university coming to terms with the fact that they'd rather find other ways to give meaning to their life rather than wasting it on more of the same publish-or-perish grind. Obviously this is exaggerating things - some research is genuinely useful, and overall the state of the art advances in all fields, even if in very small increments; and very few academics (at least of the ones I know, which is a considerable number) drag themselves to their desks every day thinking about shooting themselves in the head. But the core point that academia isn't the romantic ideal that some have of it are undeniable, and won't be denied by anyone living the life (because that's what it is - a lifestyle, with advantages and drawbacks like any other).