19 ms·

Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system

394 points by sampo 13y ago

mattmanser 13y ago
I'm a little disappointed that the article didn't address the obvious question. If he didn't publish any papers after that, what did he actually do? The entire article actually seems to undermine his point.
- cinquemb 13y ago
  …published fewer than 10 papers after his groundbreaking work, which identified the mechanism by which subatomic material acquires mass, was published in 1964. What are you talking about?
  - rpedela 13y ago
    He is asking why only 10 papers in 40+ years. What else was taking up his time? I have the same question.
    - lutorm 13y ago
      Presumably thinking about things that never resulted in papers because they didn't work out, or else working on those 10. Working for 4 years on a paper isn't out of the question if it's totally original work and one is being super careful. Not that doing that is rewarded these days, which I assume was exactly his point.
      - Tarrosion 13y ago
        Even for those of us just learning, far more "productivity" is required. If I wrote a paper every 4 years, my PhD program would be a 10-14 year program.
        lutorm 13y ago
        That's exactly his point. Besides, once upon a time, you could get a PhD for a single paper. It's just that they are a dime a dozen these days.
        001sky 13y ago
        honestly, what is "a paper"? a publication is an atrifact of an idea. says nothing about the quality of that idea. today's system is just geared toward printing out a lot of garbage. one way to understand this is that all subjects have similarly increased publications over the years. does that mean each subject is progressing as a function of the subject's publications? of course not. they are being told to "jump" for money, so those in academy respond: "how high"? Acdemics are truly just rats in a maze at this stage of the game. They are guaranteed a salary by tenure, but not "funding" to actually do their work. Tenure offers no job security, in the broader sense, of having your costs covered.
    - cinquemb 13y ago
      "didn't"… "any" implies none. And wouldn't one be better off being concerned with what is taking up their own time? Higgs probably won't have the same question for you or me…
      - rpedela 13y ago
        Generally yes, but if someone, Higgs in this case, is saying there is something broken with academia's definition of productivity then it begs the question what should that definition be? What was Higgs doing that was more important or more productive than publishing papers? It is a totally fair question given the circumstances. Had Higgs never said anything then I wouldn't be interested in how he spent his time in the office. Nor would it be appropriate to care.
        cinquemb 13y ago
        So you're saying because of his experiences with academia and the status he has from his hard work, he needs to help set new goal posts for the masses to pigeon hole themselves into which could resemble the situation in which he says we have today? It is a fair question if you don't expect any answers from him, but from the question itself, it doesn't seem that way. It seems like a question that would be more apt for the self.
        derefr 13y ago
        I think the question was simply, "what was the standard he was measuring himself by, by which he considers himself to be successful?" It doesn't have to be a yardstick applied to anyone else--but presuming that Higgs doesn't believe himself to have wasted his life after the publication of his famous works, I wonder what he thinks makes that true.
        cinquemb 13y ago
        Asking for definitions of what people should do, when ultimately the individual will be the one who will have a choice to make regardless of the circumstances, seems like yardsticking to me (that's what definitions are used for, right?), though I suppose I could wonder about that too. I also suppose I could wonder about how many aspiring/(non)tenured PHD's spend their entire lives producing publication after publication without an inkling of fame or any major contributions relative to those of the likes of Higgs (or in general, anything any individual decides to do in the spectrum of their peers), who think that they haven't wasted their life.
    - kulkarnic 13y ago
      Not a physicist, but writing one good paper every four years sounds like a very good thing. Would you rather read 40 papers, each of which is a lowest-publishable-unit, or 10 which noticeably move science ahead? Because of his fame, Higgs had the luxury few do--- he could contemplate quietly, and people wouldn't dare say he was doing nothing. If you do that as a mere tenure-track professor, I'd figure the university would think you're too high risk and sack you.
      - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
        >Would you rather read 40 papers // That would depend on whether the atom of scientific knowledge in one of those many published papers was what was needed to progress another's/one's own work or not. I'm not suggesting quantity and regularity are better - I don't think you can force scientific progress to adopt a given release schedule - but neither am I happy to say that publicly funded results should be sat on pending a larger breakthrough.
    - keithpeter 13y ago
      "What else was taking up his time?" Critical listening to others, building and being part of a community of practice, developing and challenging research students. Possibly informal communication, although I'm not sure of that. Teaching. Basically dialogue rather than written papers. Downvoters: please specify your knowledge and experience in academic research. I know what mine is.
- logicallee 13y ago
  who cares? you get tenure for what you did, not for what you're going to do.
  - privong 13y ago
    ... and for the promise of continued production.
    - jckt 13y ago
      Yes but you don't necessarily lose tenure if you don't publish, no? So realistically the promise isn't that important if you don't really suffer from failing to keep it.
      - privong 13y ago
        Promise as in showing the potential for future research, not for your promising to do future research. But yes, it is a gamble, that often fails. But people aren't given tenture just because of what they've done in the past. Yes, it relies on what they've done in the past, but the intent is that past behavior is a predictor of future behavior.
- sampo 13y ago
  This will not answer your question, but at the end of his CV here, there is his list of publications. http://www.ph.ed.ac.uk/higgs/peter-higgs http://www.ph.ed.ac.uk/higgs/peter-higgs
  - hyp0 13y ago
    aha! just as I suspected... during 1951-1964, he published 16 papers, better than one per year. But, after his breakthrough, he eased back to 9, over 1965-2013... and only the first 3 look to be research papers (the remaining 6 seem to be historical recountings). Now, I don't blame him - do something incredible, why not slack off? He's way more accomplished than I could ever hope to be. But if you want an exemplar of doing great work, the pace before his breakthrough, leading up to it, seems the better guide. i.e. one per year.
    - irollboozers 13y ago
      Why is it slacking off? Is it instead not normal for scientists to publish 3 papers over ~40 years? How do we know whether or not this is normal or abnormal? I'm inclined to believe we don't. And that we only assume so because of the incentive structures in place in our grant-first, publish-always system.
      - Anon84 13y ago
        Even 3 papers per year would be below average nowadays.
    - PeterisP 13y ago
      Nowadays his 'prime year' 1 paper per year would be considered an unacceptably low rate and result in him being thrown off long before his breakthrough.
- AimHere 13y ago
  He was a professor of physics at Edinburgh University, and he certainly showed up on the campus there. I saw him around, but I don't recall witnessing him doing any work since I didn't study much physics. I'm guessing what he did was teach classes and supervise graduate students, put out the occasional paper now and again, just like any other professor. Also, his name would allow Edinburgh University to say 'We have that famous Professor Higgs working for OUR Physics department' to any passing Science Funding Authority or Corporate R&D department thinking of handing out a research grant in physics, or to any rich foreign parents looking for somewhere to send their physics-inclined offspring. I'm sure he was pretty good value for money just for his name alone...
  - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
    >I'm sure he was pretty good value for money just for his name alone... // That may be true but it's such a sad indictment of how science funding works if it is true that I sincerely hope it isn't. A professor of physics's value is in research and teaching, it's their capacities and abilities that make them valuable as physicists. Who let the marketeers take over management of scientific progress??
- alan_cx 13y ago
  Sure, but haven't you just made his?
paul 13y ago
I feel like the inability to focus for long periods of time is holding back progress in many areas. If we can't even stay away from email for a few days, how can we clear our minds of conventional thinking?
- kulkarnic 13y ago
  A few days? People get upset if you haven't replied in an hour. Seriously though, long periods of solitude is not what we need. I'd not be productive if I became a hermit, but I'd be a lot more productive if I had periods of quiet time, punctuated by moments of discussion. This is how thinkers and artists (and hackers) worked for a long time, before we wrongly convinced ourselves that being interruptible improves productivity.
  - paul 13y ago
    It's not about solitude so much as the ability to control the contents and direction of our thoughts. Being responsive on email often requires giving up that control, fragmenting our attention and preventing the formation of larger thoughts. It provides short term gains, but we don't see what we're losing.
    - lifeisstillgood 13y ago
      perfectly put
  - wrongc0ntinent 13y ago
    I don't think it's about "quiet" - if you meant it literally - the right kind of distraction can be a sort of mental noise cancellation mechanism. Though this tends to work better in solitude, for obvious control reasons.
  - rtpg 13y ago
    >A few days? People get upset if you haven't replied in an hour. I've solved this problem by always taking forever to answer e-mails. If it's important, people just call me. Whether this is good or not is questionable, however.
Systemic33 13y ago
I loved the ending: "He has never been tempted to buy a television, but was persuaded to watch The Big Bang Theory last year, and said he wasn't impressed." The show is despite what some think, not a celebration of science, but a ridicule of science, and takes the stereotypes to new levels. Edit: I also watch the show, but as the article that GuiA links to mentions, the show wnats you to laugh at the nerds, and not the actual jokes they make. You could argue its a Star Trek vs. Star Wars kinda thing, but i personally liked Community far more, because it really captured the fun in being nerdy, and didn't put nerds in one big collective box. PS. I don't dress up, play fantazy card games, go to cosplays, read comics, etc. I'm an engineering student, i get drunk in the weekends, I code in .NET and Python, I love coffee, wine, cars, motorcycles, etc. Not anywhere near the steretypical hollywood nerd.
- GuiA 13y ago
  Re: Big Bang Theory, I enjoyed this post: http://butmyopinionisright.tumblr.com/post/31079561065/the-problem-with-the-big-bang-theory http://butmyopinionisright.tumblr.com/post/31079561065/the-p...
  - rschmitty 13y ago
    That guy went way overboard. I share some of the "nerds" hobbies and I don't mind the jokes at all
  - Jtsummers 13y ago
    I haven't watched Community, but that is a long form version of my description to others (when asked) of why I don't watch The Big Bang Theory. I gave it a few episodes, I caught more when others watched it. It never clicked for me why I would be considered a part of the target audience when you often don't laugh with the characters, but at them. Thanks for the link.
  - avrilkiki 13y ago
    The purpose of TBBT is not to entertain nerds, it's to acclimatize everyone else to the new normal where nerds hold a form of status. In 2013 nerds can be very rich, their fields can be very influential, and their intelligence can be useful to normals. Normals, however, don't understand how to relate to nerds in a post-high school environment. Their previous social training has been to simply ostracize and bully. TBBT teaches normals a new way of relating to nerds: tolerate them, make friends with them, turn a blind eye to their social awkwardness and weirdness, and trade your cultural capital for the nerd's intellectual and financial capital. Nerds can be useful to normals. Nerds can be good friends if you understand how to handle and bracket their awkwardness. They can even be good boyfriends if you understand how to handle them--Leonard can benefit Penny with his intelligence, devotion, and wealth even if he isn't cool. TBBT isn't aimed at nerds, it's a primetime mainstream TV show. The author is right that the public is laughing at the nerds not with them. However TBBT still represents a sea change in the public representation of nerds--now nerds are not to be ostracized, rather they are to be tolerated.
fargolime 13y ago
> He doubts a similar breakthrough could be achieved in today's academic culture, because of the expectations on academics to collaborate and keep churning out papers. The opposite of an Einstein or Higgs. Academia no longer tolerates deep, unconventional thinking. Physics used to be a hobby, now its an industry to be protected from major change. For example, if you have basic knowledge of relativity you can go to http://finbot.wordpress.com/2008/03/05/dark-energy-obviated/ http://finbot.wordpress.com/2008/03/05/dark-energy-obviated/ and use the steps there in conjunction with generally accepted equations (from the Usenet Physics FAQ) to see that free objects launched upward from Earth at close to the speed of light must accelerate away from us, solving the big mystery of dark energy. But even assuming this idea is valid it couldn't make it into a respected peer-reviewed journal today. Ideas for hunting dark energy particles, however, would be welcomed, since those could lead to lucrative grants.
- jbri 13y ago
  Reading your link, it appears that the author just flatly assumes that space is not expanding, and everything else stems from that assumption. The author provides another article to attempt to support that assumption, but their argument for that is incomplete, and while their alternative appears to offer explanations for some observations, it ignores other things (like cosmological redshift). Add in the fact that that the article appears targeted towards laypeople and there's no scientific paper to be found suggests that it's more psuedoscience and thought experiments than actual scientific investigation. It seems unreasonable to claim that academia would reject the idea out of hand when no-one's even written a paper to attempt to submit to a peer-reviewed journal. I suspect the reason academia ignores the supposition is not commercial interest like you claim.
  - fargolime 13y ago
    I've been a student of that blog. It doesn't ignore cosmological redshift. Rather, the dark energy solution notes that space measurably expands, but in a relative (it depends on the observer) way as opposed to the absolute (observed by all observers) way that is generally accepted today. When space measurably expands (whether relative or absolute) you have cosmological redshift. Space itself not expanding is the absence of an assumption. Today it's generally accepted that space itself expands, an assumption. > Add in the fact that that the article appears targeted towards laypeople and there's no scientific paper to be found suggests that it's more psuedoscience and thought experiments than actual scientific investigation. Thought experiments are scientific investigation. Nothing in the rest of your point actually suggests pseudoscience.
anaphor 13y ago
On the other hand, with total freedom to think, most of us might not get much done, see: http://www.pitt.edu/~druzdzel/feynman.html http://www.pitt.edu/~druzdzel/feynman.html
amerika_blog 13y ago
School is an obedience/memorization test, the exact opposite of the real-world applied thinking skills that are needed. Private schooling is bad; public schooling is even worse. That's where ideology substitutes for academics as well. Memorizing 20 ways to do something, and then finding a way to cram in each one on a test in an "applied" situation, leads to indiscriminate use of technique and poor debugging skills.
- purringmeow 13y ago
  I am interested in what kind of alternative are you offering? How do you give basic knowledge to the majority of people?
  - visakanv 13y ago
    I anticipate that a lot of it will come through other means. Check out http://www.youtube.com/crashcourse http://www.youtube.com/crashcourse, it's doing a fantastic job of making knowledge fun, interesting, engaging and cool.
  - adamnemecek 13y ago
    Because you can criticize things only if you have a better alternative.
    - drdeca 13y ago
      No, but I would think that it is often useful to indicate when one does not know of a better option than the one one is criticizing. Because "this is a bad choice" has a connotation that that is not the one that should be made, but that a different known one should be made instead, I think. Of course, the indication can be implicit, or from context, etc. And there might be exceptions, But I think this generally holds?
      - purringmeow 13y ago
        Exactly. And I really want to hear his/her opinion, because it interests me. My goal isn't to attack in a passive-aggressive manner.
3327 13y ago
Stagnation is not only a manifestation of economy but every other field such as science. We have seen rapid growth in the past century and some forces be it policy, or expectation and pressure for faster growth will ultimately contribute to a stagnant period in terms of growth vs growth to the prior.
a3voices 13y ago
We're not genetically different from early Man, who got nothing done except for basic survival and raising a family. Being unproductive is the default.
tokenadult 13y ago
Thanks for submitting this. This was a good introduction to Higgs. It was reading the comments here after reading the article that reminded me of a paper by Leif D. Nelson, Joseph P. Simmons, and Uri Simonsohn, "Let's Publish Fewer Papers," http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/~uws/papers/fewer.pdf http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/~uws/papers/fewer.pdf suggesting that psychology, and maybe other disciplines, could be improved if scholars published less often than they now do. "We agree that it is impractical, but it is just a thought experiment. Still, we stand behind the notion that the ideal is much closer to 'a paper a year' than to 'publish as many papers as you can.'"
ChristianMarks 13y ago
Higgs isn't alone in remarking that he would not have had the time today to conduct the kind of work he did in the 1960s. Brian Greene has remarked that today’s grant-driven academia would not have allowed Einstein the luxury of a decade in which to develop his General Theory of Relativity. Eric Weinstein wrote that, "We have spent the last decades inhibiting such socially marginal individuals or chasing them to drop out of our research enterprise and into startups and hedge funds. As a result our universities are increasingly populated by the over-vetted specialist to become the dreaded centers of excellence that infantilize and uniformize the promising minds of greatest agency." [1] Weinstein's "deviants and delinquents" include "von Neumann [skirt chasing], Gamow [hard drinking], Shockley [bigoted], Watson [misogynistic], Einstein [childish], Curie [slutty], Smale [lazy], Oppenheimer [politically treacherous], Crick [incompetent], Ehrenfest [murderous], Lang [meddlesome], Teller [monstrous] and Grothendieck [mentally unstable]." Higgs's observation suggests that the systematic stamping out of non-conscientious non-conformists is a byproduct of over-scheduling them. (Scheduling has to be considered independently of effort, ability and experience. [2]) Weinstein's deviants benefited from a historical period during which they had sufficient time and freedom to pursue their greatest work (von Neumann, who didn't need any time, is an exception). But I imagine that time is a luxury even for the deviants and delinquents who find themselves displaced from academia into startups. So what is really needed is a startup culture that provides for years of uninterrupted development and focus. (Not to mention a hiring process that actively selects for displaced deviants, but that's another post.) [1] http://www.edge.org/responses/q2013 http://www.edge.org/responses/q2013 Edge 2013 : WHAT SHOULD WE BE WORRIED ABOUT? [2] http://www.nber.org/papers/w16502 http://www.nber.org/papers/w16502 Don't Spread Yourself Too Thin: The Impact of Task Juggling on Workers' Speed of Job Completion. Decio Coviello, Andrea Ichino, Nicola Persico. NBER Working Paper No. 16502
- cvet 13y ago
  As a student in a Ph.D. program, I can't help but think I'm caught in the grant-driven world and am being steered away from deeper consideration of big ideas. It's an easy track to get stuck on, mostly because grant-proposing is a game, identifying a minor unexplored area is relatively simple, and there are short-term rewards for doing so. What's really getting at me is the arrogance of established "experts." It's kind of baffling (because it should be about curiosity, not certainty), and when you come across someone who has made it through the academic system and still retained curiosity, independent-mindedness, etc., it's a really refreshing sight. That being said, a lot of what I do is unfulfilling and I've discussed several times leaving the academic world for some kind of tech startup life, although I'm not sure if that is a pipe dream or grounded in reality.
spikels 13y ago
The issue is Volume versus Quality. The conservatives (not political but professional) administering our research infrastructure find it much easier to greenlight an incremental (or inconsequential) project versus anything truly revolutionary. We need more Higgs and less incremental academic researchers - industry can do that better.
- sushirain 13y ago
  Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety nine percent perspiration. -- Thomas Edison If smart people are not expected to get incremental results we may lose both incremental progress and ingenious leaps.
AKifer 13y ago
Something I noticed 'An atheist since the age of 10, he fears the nickname "reinforces confused thinking in the heads of people who are already thinking in a confused way. If they believe that story about creation in seven days, are they being intelligent?"' How someone [intelligent enough to get the Nobel prize] who knows relativist equations better than the average could argue that creating the universe in 7 days is stupid ? Didn't we know since Einstein discovered it that time can expand and compress depending of the environment ? And who can say that Earth local time is the norm ? Better back to pre-Gallileo time then, when everyone though Earth is the center of the Universe.
Create 13y ago
"How should we make it attractive for them [young people] to spend 5,6,7 years in our field, be satisfied, learn about excitement, but finally be qualified to find other possibilities?" -- H. Schopper The numbers make the problem clear. In 2007, the year before CERN first powered up the LHC, the lab produced 142 master's and Ph.D. theses, according to the lab's document server. Last year it produced 327. (Fermilab chipped in 54.) That abundance seems unlikely to vanish anytime soon, as last year ATLAS had 1000 grad students and CMS had 900. In contrast, the INSPIRE Web site, a database for particle physics, currently lists 124 postdocs worldwide in experimental high-energy physics, the sort of work LHC grads have trained for. The situation is equally difficult for postdocs trying to make the jump to a junior faculty position or a permanent job at a national lab. The Snowmass Young Physicists survey received responses from 956 early-career researchers, including 343 postdocs. But INSPIRE currently lists just 152 "junior" positions, including 61 in North America. And the supply of jobs isn't likely to increase, says John Finley, an astrophysicist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, who is leading a search to replace two senior particle physicists. "For the most part, I don't think departments are looking to grow their particle physics programs," he says. http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2013_08_29/caredit.a1300185 http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previou... A warning to non-western members about values at CERN: "The cost [...] has been evaluated, taking into account realistic labor prices in different countries. The total cost is X (with a western equivalent value of Y)" [where Y>X] source: LHCb calorimeters : Technical Design Report ISBN: 9290831693 http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/494264 http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/494264
spintongue 13y ago
Its a tourism short story about the city of munich. www.thescreechersworld.blogspot.com/2013/07/up-from-drought.html?m=1
scotth 13y ago
Sounds like he was taking advantage of the system. I think I would've felt the same as the university: sack him if he doesn't win the Nobel.
_of 13y ago
He seems to be such a humble person.
dekhn 13y ago
I attended grad school at one of the most prestigious institutions that exists. After I finished my PhD, I mentioned to somebody I had attended there and it had taught me to do science well. THe person I was speaking to looked at me funny and said, "Oh no. You went there to learn how to write grants that get funded, so that you can manage a lab that carries out the next set of experiments, so you can write grants that get funded.". They were right: the value of my training program was in how to get funded, so I could do research. Some of us saw the writing on the wall (grant funding for biomedical sciences doubled in a short period of time in the early to mid 90s, which greatly increased the rate of minted PhDs, which dramatically increased competition for slowly growing faculty positions). I looked around, evaluated my options, and left for industry. I never regretted it. i still collaborate with academia, and write papers and do research, but my compensation structure and the options I have vastly outweigh those has I stayed in academia and become a soft-funded researcher. Ultimately if your goal is to do blue-sky theoretical research you're going to have to work very hard to succeed. Maybe it's possible to do good theory and also be good at grantsmanship. I honestly don't know. But I decided not to play that game: there are LOTS of options out there. Don't be stubborn and insist on your blue-sky theory job. Instead, be realistic and figure out what you want to do, and how to obtain the time to do it.
- dominotw 13y ago
  >i still collaborate with academia, and write papers and do research May I ask what you do for living?
  - dekhn 13y ago
    software engineer for google. I built Exacycle: http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2012/12/millions-of-core-hours-awarded-to.html http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2012/12/millions-of-core-... http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2011/04/1-billion-core-hours-of-computational.html http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2011/04/1-billion-core-ho... some of those projects have papers on their way to print.
alan_cx 13y ago
I think this sort of problem starts at the top, with our time limited democracies. Democratic governments find it hard to implement long term thinking because its unlikely the current government will ever get credit for it. This results in policies which are short term enough to promote re-election. This bleeds down to the rest of society. Where it does happen, it tends to be compromised because one side has to make sure the other side carries the project on. This leads to committee style compromises. So, in general, from what I can see, long term thinking in western democracies is rare, and where it exists, compromised. Implication being that Chinese long term strength lies in its ability to plan in the very long term, which they do. I think the west needs to find a way in which we can also effectively and flexibly plan long term.
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  Can we please stop promoting the "democracy sucks" meme? It's not as if the Chinese are actually planning in that long a term; they're using markets now like everyone else.
  - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
    >It's not as if the Chinese are actually planning in that long a term; they're using markets now like everyone else. // So, how long term are they planning, in years? In the UK we get [a few] plans that encompass maybe the next 10-15 years at most. So presumably they've got that at least.
    - PeterisP 13y ago
      The problem is not with doing planning, the problem is with implementing tradeoffs after such planning - in democracy, you can't take actions that hurt you in this year but will benefit 10 years afterward, if it is not completely obvious to uninformed laymen. If you do, they get reversed after the next elections anyway.
indigent 13y ago
I feel slightly validated for leaving academia after reading this article. When I was in grad school I was working with an adviser who was in the final phase of applying for tenure. She was under immense pressure to publish, and she totally passed all that pressure on to me and her other grad student at the time. It was the worst two years of my life. Ultimately we both left her charge, and she was denied tenure. The "publish or perish" atmosphere at most institutions is toxic. I remember running some in-vivo experiments using our system and looking for data that validated our hypothesis, but when I found none I was ordered to "find anything" and rewrite the hypothesis to match it. This was so that we had something positive to submit to journals, regardless of what it was. The papers were utter trash, and I was ashamed to put my name on them. The absolute focus on publishing ends up creating what is essentially "journal spam." I don't want to say that research is dead, but it's definitely in the doldrums at this point.
hacknat 13y ago
I think the reality is that more and more bright people avoid the Academy these days. I'm not saying I'm particularly bright, but I started out thinking I was going to be an Academic, but when I saw that I would have to deal with the same BS, politics, and hoop jumping that people in business deal with, I went with the option that was the same, but offered more money. I think that's what the majority of the Academy has become for people now. If two jobs are pretty much equal, except in pay, which one will you take?

394 points by sampo 13y ago

I'm a little disappointed that the article didn't address the obvious question. If he didn't publish any papers after that, what did he actually do? The entire article actually seems to undermine his point.

cinquemb 13y ago
…published fewer than 10 papers after his groundbreaking work, which identified the mechanism by which subatomic material acquires mass, was published in 1964. What are you talking about?
- rpedela 13y ago
  He is asking why only 10 papers in 40+ years. What else was taking up his time? I have the same question.
  - lutorm 13y ago
    Presumably thinking about things that never resulted in papers because they didn't work out, or else working on those 10. Working for 4 years on a paper isn't out of the question if it's totally original work and one is being super careful. Not that doing that is rewarded these days, which I assume was exactly his point.
    - Tarrosion 13y ago
      Even for those of us just learning, far more "productivity" is required. If I wrote a paper every 4 years, my PhD program would be a 10-14 year program.
      - lutorm 13y ago
        That's exactly his point. Besides, once upon a time, you could get a PhD for a single paper. It's just that they are a dime a dozen these days.
      - 001sky 13y ago
        honestly, what is "a paper"? a publication is an atrifact of an idea. says nothing about the quality of that idea. today's system is just geared toward printing out a lot of garbage. one way to understand this is that all subjects have similarly increased publications over the years. does that mean each subject is progressing as a function of the subject's publications? of course not. they are being told to "jump" for money, so those in academy respond: "how high"? Acdemics are truly just rats in a maze at this stage of the game. They are guaranteed a salary by tenure, but not "funding" to actually do their work. Tenure offers no job security, in the broader sense, of having your costs covered.
  - cinquemb 13y ago
    "didn't"… "any" implies none. And wouldn't one be better off being concerned with what is taking up their own time? Higgs probably won't have the same question for you or me…
    - rpedela 13y ago
      Generally yes, but if someone, Higgs in this case, is saying there is something broken with academia's definition of productivity then it begs the question what should that definition be? What was Higgs doing that was more important or more productive than publishing papers? It is a totally fair question given the circumstances. Had Higgs never said anything then I wouldn't be interested in how he spent his time in the office. Nor would it be appropriate to care.
      - cinquemb 13y ago
        So you're saying because of his experiences with academia and the status he has from his hard work, he needs to help set new goal posts for the masses to pigeon hole themselves into which could resemble the situation in which he says we have today? It is a fair question if you don't expect any answers from him, but from the question itself, it doesn't seem that way. It seems like a question that would be more apt for the self.
        derefr 13y ago
        I think the question was simply, "what was the standard he was measuring himself by, by which he considers himself to be successful?" It doesn't have to be a yardstick applied to anyone else--but presuming that Higgs doesn't believe himself to have wasted his life after the publication of his famous works, I wonder what he thinks makes that true.
        cinquemb 13y ago
        Asking for definitions of what people should do, when ultimately the individual will be the one who will have a choice to make regardless of the circumstances, seems like yardsticking to me (that's what definitions are used for, right?), though I suppose I could wonder about that too. I also suppose I could wonder about how many aspiring/(non)tenured PHD's spend their entire lives producing publication after publication without an inkling of fame or any major contributions relative to those of the likes of Higgs (or in general, anything any individual decides to do in the spectrum of their peers), who think that they haven't wasted their life.
  - kulkarnic 13y ago
    Not a physicist, but writing one good paper every four years sounds like a very good thing. Would you rather read 40 papers, each of which is a lowest-publishable-unit, or 10 which noticeably move science ahead? Because of his fame, Higgs had the luxury few do--- he could contemplate quietly, and people wouldn't dare say he was doing nothing. If you do that as a mere tenure-track professor, I'd figure the university would think you're too high risk and sack you.
    - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
      >Would you rather read 40 papers // That would depend on whether the atom of scientific knowledge in one of those many published papers was what was needed to progress another's/one's own work or not. I'm not suggesting quantity and regularity are better - I don't think you can force scientific progress to adopt a given release schedule - but neither am I happy to say that publicly funded results should be sat on pending a larger breakthrough.
  - keithpeter 13y ago
    "What else was taking up his time?" Critical listening to others, building and being part of a community of practice, developing and challenging research students. Possibly informal communication, although I'm not sure of that. Teaching. Basically dialogue rather than written papers. Downvoters: please specify your knowledge and experience in academic research. I know what mine is.
logicallee 13y ago
who cares? you get tenure for what you did, not for what you're going to do.
- privong 13y ago
  ... and for the promise of continued production.
  - jckt 13y ago
    Yes but you don't necessarily lose tenure if you don't publish, no? So realistically the promise isn't that important if you don't really suffer from failing to keep it.
    - privong 13y ago
      Promise as in showing the potential for future research, not for your promising to do future research. But yes, it is a gamble, that often fails. But people aren't given tenture just because of what they've done in the past. Yes, it relies on what they've done in the past, but the intent is that past behavior is a predictor of future behavior.
sampo 13y ago
This will not answer your question, but at the end of his CV here, there is his list of publications. http://www.ph.ed.ac.uk/higgs/peter-higgs http://www.ph.ed.ac.uk/higgs/peter-higgs
- hyp0 13y ago
  aha! just as I suspected... during 1951-1964, he published 16 papers, better than one per year. But, after his breakthrough, he eased back to 9, over 1965-2013... and only the first 3 look to be research papers (the remaining 6 seem to be historical recountings). Now, I don't blame him - do something incredible, why not slack off? He's way more accomplished than I could ever hope to be. But if you want an exemplar of doing great work, the pace before his breakthrough, leading up to it, seems the better guide. i.e. one per year.
  - irollboozers 13y ago
    Why is it slacking off? Is it instead not normal for scientists to publish 3 papers over ~40 years? How do we know whether or not this is normal or abnormal? I'm inclined to believe we don't. And that we only assume so because of the incentive structures in place in our grant-first, publish-always system.
    - Anon84 13y ago
      Even 3 papers per year would be below average nowadays.
  - PeterisP 13y ago
    Nowadays his 'prime year' 1 paper per year would be considered an unacceptably low rate and result in him being thrown off long before his breakthrough.
AimHere 13y ago
He was a professor of physics at Edinburgh University, and he certainly showed up on the campus there. I saw him around, but I don't recall witnessing him doing any work since I didn't study much physics. I'm guessing what he did was teach classes and supervise graduate students, put out the occasional paper now and again, just like any other professor. Also, his name would allow Edinburgh University to say 'We have that famous Professor Higgs working for OUR Physics department' to any passing Science Funding Authority or Corporate R&D department thinking of handing out a research grant in physics, or to any rich foreign parents looking for somewhere to send their physics-inclined offspring. I'm sure he was pretty good value for money just for his name alone...
- pbhjpbhj 13y ago
  >I'm sure he was pretty good value for money just for his name alone... // That may be true but it's such a sad indictment of how science funding works if it is true that I sincerely hope it isn't. A professor of physics's value is in research and teaching, it's their capacities and abilities that make them valuable as physicists. Who let the marketeers take over management of scientific progress??
alan_cx 13y ago
Sure, but haven't you just made his?

paul 13y ago

I feel like the inability to focus for long periods of time is holding back progress in many areas. If we can't even stay away from email for a few days, how can we clear our minds of conventional thinking?

kulkarnic 13y ago
A few days? People get upset if you haven't replied in an hour. Seriously though, long periods of solitude is not what we need. I'd not be productive if I became a hermit, but I'd be a lot more productive if I had periods of quiet time, punctuated by moments of discussion. This is how thinkers and artists (and hackers) worked for a long time, before we wrongly convinced ourselves that being interruptible improves productivity.
- paul 13y ago
  It's not about solitude so much as the ability to control the contents and direction of our thoughts. Being responsive on email often requires giving up that control, fragmenting our attention and preventing the formation of larger thoughts. It provides short term gains, but we don't see what we're losing.
  - lifeisstillgood 13y ago
    perfectly put
- wrongc0ntinent 13y ago
  I don't think it's about "quiet" - if you meant it literally - the right kind of distraction can be a sort of mental noise cancellation mechanism. Though this tends to work better in solitude, for obvious control reasons.
- rtpg 13y ago
  >A few days? People get upset if you haven't replied in an hour. I've solved this problem by always taking forever to answer e-mails. If it's important, people just call me. Whether this is good or not is questionable, however.

Systemic33 13y ago

I loved the ending: "He has never been tempted to buy a television, but was persuaded to watch The Big Bang Theory last year, and said he wasn't impressed." The show is despite what some think, not a celebration of science, but a ridicule of science, and takes the stereotypes to new levels. Edit: I also watch the show, but as the article that GuiA links to mentions, the show wnats you to laugh at the nerds, and not the actual jokes they make. You could argue its a Star Trek vs. Star Wars kinda thing, but i personally liked Community far more, because it really captured the fun in being nerdy, and didn't put nerds in one big collective box. PS. I don't dress up, play fantazy card games, go to cosplays, read comics, etc. I'm an engineering student, i get drunk in the weekends, I code in .NET and Python, I love coffee, wine, cars, motorcycles, etc. Not anywhere near the steretypical hollywood nerd.

GuiA 13y ago
Re: Big Bang Theory, I enjoyed this post: http://butmyopinionisright.tumblr.com/post/31079561065/the-problem-with-the-big-bang-theory http://butmyopinionisright.tumblr.com/post/31079561065/the-p...
- rschmitty 13y ago
  That guy went way overboard. I share some of the "nerds" hobbies and I don't mind the jokes at all
- Jtsummers 13y ago
  I haven't watched Community, but that is a long form version of my description to others (when asked) of why I don't watch The Big Bang Theory. I gave it a few episodes, I caught more when others watched it. It never clicked for me why I would be considered a part of the target audience when you often don't laugh with the characters, but at them. Thanks for the link.
- avrilkiki 13y ago
  The purpose of TBBT is not to entertain nerds, it's to acclimatize everyone else to the new normal where nerds hold a form of status. In 2013 nerds can be very rich, their fields can be very influential, and their intelligence can be useful to normals. Normals, however, don't understand how to relate to nerds in a post-high school environment. Their previous social training has been to simply ostracize and bully. TBBT teaches normals a new way of relating to nerds: tolerate them, make friends with them, turn a blind eye to their social awkwardness and weirdness, and trade your cultural capital for the nerd's intellectual and financial capital. Nerds can be useful to normals. Nerds can be good friends if you understand how to handle and bracket their awkwardness. They can even be good boyfriends if you understand how to handle them--Leonard can benefit Penny with his intelligence, devotion, and wealth even if he isn't cool. TBBT isn't aimed at nerds, it's a primetime mainstream TV show. The author is right that the public is laughing at the nerds not with them. However TBBT still represents a sea change in the public representation of nerds--now nerds are not to be ostracized, rather they are to be tolerated.

fargolime 13y ago

> He doubts a similar breakthrough could be achieved in today's academic culture, because of the expectations on academics to collaborate and keep churning out papers. The opposite of an Einstein or Higgs. Academia no longer tolerates deep, unconventional thinking. Physics used to be a hobby, now its an industry to be protected from major change. For example, if you have basic knowledge of relativity you can go to http://finbot.wordpress.com/2008/03/05/dark-energy-obviated/ http://finbot.wordpress.com/2008/03/05/dark-energy-obviated/ and use the steps there in conjunction with generally accepted equations (from the Usenet Physics FAQ) to see that free objects launched upward from Earth at close to the speed of light must accelerate away from us, solving the big mystery of dark energy. But even assuming this idea is valid it couldn't make it into a respected peer-reviewed journal today. Ideas for hunting dark energy particles, however, would be welcomed, since those could lead to lucrative grants.

jbri 13y ago
Reading your link, it appears that the author just flatly assumes that space is not expanding, and everything else stems from that assumption. The author provides another article to attempt to support that assumption, but their argument for that is incomplete, and while their alternative appears to offer explanations for some observations, it ignores other things (like cosmological redshift). Add in the fact that that the article appears targeted towards laypeople and there's no scientific paper to be found suggests that it's more psuedoscience and thought experiments than actual scientific investigation. It seems unreasonable to claim that academia would reject the idea out of hand when no-one's even written a paper to attempt to submit to a peer-reviewed journal. I suspect the reason academia ignores the supposition is not commercial interest like you claim.
- fargolime 13y ago
  I've been a student of that blog. It doesn't ignore cosmological redshift. Rather, the dark energy solution notes that space measurably expands, but in a relative (it depends on the observer) way as opposed to the absolute (observed by all observers) way that is generally accepted today. When space measurably expands (whether relative or absolute) you have cosmological redshift. Space itself not expanding is the absence of an assumption. Today it's generally accepted that space itself expands, an assumption. > Add in the fact that that the article appears targeted towards laypeople and there's no scientific paper to be found suggests that it's more psuedoscience and thought experiments than actual scientific investigation. Thought experiments are scientific investigation. Nothing in the rest of your point actually suggests pseudoscience.

anaphor 13y ago

On the other hand, with total freedom to think, most of us might not get much done, see: http://www.pitt.edu/~druzdzel/feynman.html http://www.pitt.edu/~druzdzel/feynman.html

amerika_blog 13y ago

School is an obedience/memorization test, the exact opposite of the real-world applied thinking skills that are needed. Private schooling is bad; public schooling is even worse. That's where ideology substitutes for academics as well. Memorizing 20 ways to do something, and then finding a way to cram in each one on a test in an "applied" situation, leads to indiscriminate use of technique and poor debugging skills.

purringmeow 13y ago
I am interested in what kind of alternative are you offering? How do you give basic knowledge to the majority of people?
- visakanv 13y ago
  I anticipate that a lot of it will come through other means. Check out http://www.youtube.com/crashcourse http://www.youtube.com/crashcourse, it's doing a fantastic job of making knowledge fun, interesting, engaging and cool.
- adamnemecek 13y ago
  Because you can criticize things only if you have a better alternative.
  - drdeca 13y ago
    No, but I would think that it is often useful to indicate when one does not know of a better option than the one one is criticizing. Because "this is a bad choice" has a connotation that that is not the one that should be made, but that a different known one should be made instead, I think. Of course, the indication can be implicit, or from context, etc. And there might be exceptions, But I think this generally holds?
    - purringmeow 13y ago
      Exactly. And I really want to hear his/her opinion, because it interests me. My goal isn't to attack in a passive-aggressive manner.

3327 13y ago

Stagnation is not only a manifestation of economy but every other field such as science. We have seen rapid growth in the past century and some forces be it policy, or expectation and pressure for faster growth will ultimately contribute to a stagnant period in terms of growth vs growth to the prior.

a3voices 13y ago

We're not genetically different from early Man, who got nothing done except for basic survival and raising a family. Being unproductive is the default.

tokenadult 13y ago

Thanks for submitting this. This was a good introduction to Higgs. It was reading the comments here after reading the article that reminded me of a paper by Leif D. Nelson, Joseph P. Simmons, and Uri Simonsohn, "Let's Publish Fewer Papers," http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/~uws/papers/fewer.pdf http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/~uws/papers/fewer.pdf suggesting that psychology, and maybe other disciplines, could be improved if scholars published less often than they now do. "We agree that it is impractical, but it is just a thought experiment. Still, we stand behind the notion that the ideal is much closer to 'a paper a year' than to 'publish as many papers as you can.'"

ChristianMarks 13y ago

Higgs isn't alone in remarking that he would not have had the time today to conduct the kind of work he did in the 1960s. Brian Greene has remarked that today’s grant-driven academia would not have allowed Einstein the luxury of a decade in which to develop his General Theory of Relativity. Eric Weinstein wrote that, "We have spent the last decades inhibiting such socially marginal individuals or chasing them to drop out of our research enterprise and into startups and hedge funds. As a result our universities are increasingly populated by the over-vetted specialist to become the dreaded centers of excellence that infantilize and uniformize the promising minds of greatest agency." [1] Weinstein's "deviants and delinquents" include "von Neumann [skirt chasing], Gamow [hard drinking], Shockley [bigoted], Watson [misogynistic], Einstein [childish], Curie [slutty], Smale [lazy], Oppenheimer [politically treacherous], Crick [incompetent], Ehrenfest [murderous], Lang [meddlesome], Teller [monstrous] and Grothendieck [mentally unstable]." Higgs's observation suggests that the systematic stamping out of non-conscientious non-conformists is a byproduct of over-scheduling them. (Scheduling has to be considered independently of effort, ability and experience. [2]) Weinstein's deviants benefited from a historical period during which they had sufficient time and freedom to pursue their greatest work (von Neumann, who didn't need any time, is an exception). But I imagine that time is a luxury even for the deviants and delinquents who find themselves displaced from academia into startups. So what is really needed is a startup culture that provides for years of uninterrupted development and focus. (Not to mention a hiring process that actively selects for displaced deviants, but that's another post.) [1] http://www.edge.org/responses/q2013 http://www.edge.org/responses/q2013 Edge 2013 : WHAT SHOULD WE BE WORRIED ABOUT? [2] http://www.nber.org/papers/w16502 http://www.nber.org/papers/w16502 Don't Spread Yourself Too Thin: The Impact of Task Juggling on Workers' Speed of Job Completion. Decio Coviello, Andrea Ichino, Nicola Persico. NBER Working Paper No. 16502

cvet 13y ago
As a student in a Ph.D. program, I can't help but think I'm caught in the grant-driven world and am being steered away from deeper consideration of big ideas. It's an easy track to get stuck on, mostly because grant-proposing is a game, identifying a minor unexplored area is relatively simple, and there are short-term rewards for doing so. What's really getting at me is the arrogance of established "experts." It's kind of baffling (because it should be about curiosity, not certainty), and when you come across someone who has made it through the academic system and still retained curiosity, independent-mindedness, etc., it's a really refreshing sight. That being said, a lot of what I do is unfulfilling and I've discussed several times leaving the academic world for some kind of tech startup life, although I'm not sure if that is a pipe dream or grounded in reality.

spikels 13y ago

The issue is Volume versus Quality. The conservatives (not political but professional) administering our research infrastructure find it much easier to greenlight an incremental (or inconsequential) project versus anything truly revolutionary. We need more Higgs and less incremental academic researchers - industry can do that better.

sushirain 13y ago
Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety nine percent perspiration. -- Thomas Edison If smart people are not expected to get incremental results we may lose both incremental progress and ingenious leaps.

AKifer 13y ago

Something I noticed 'An atheist since the age of 10, he fears the nickname "reinforces confused thinking in the heads of people who are already thinking in a confused way. If they believe that story about creation in seven days, are they being intelligent?"' How someone [intelligent enough to get the Nobel prize] who knows relativist equations better than the average could argue that creating the universe in 7 days is stupid ? Didn't we know since Einstein discovered it that time can expand and compress depending of the environment ? And who can say that Earth local time is the norm ? Better back to pre-Gallileo time then, when everyone though Earth is the center of the Universe.

Create 13y ago

"How should we make it attractive for them [young people] to spend 5,6,7 years in our field, be satisfied, learn about excitement, but finally be qualified to find other possibilities?" -- H. Schopper The numbers make the problem clear. In 2007, the year before CERN first powered up the LHC, the lab produced 142 master's and Ph.D. theses, according to the lab's document server. Last year it produced 327. (Fermilab chipped in 54.) That abundance seems unlikely to vanish anytime soon, as last year ATLAS had 1000 grad students and CMS had 900. In contrast, the INSPIRE Web site, a database for particle physics, currently lists 124 postdocs worldwide in experimental high-energy physics, the sort of work LHC grads have trained for. The situation is equally difficult for postdocs trying to make the jump to a junior faculty position or a permanent job at a national lab. The Snowmass Young Physicists survey received responses from 956 early-career researchers, including 343 postdocs. But INSPIRE currently lists just 152 "junior" positions, including 61 in North America. And the supply of jobs isn't likely to increase, says John Finley, an astrophysicist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, who is leading a search to replace two senior particle physicists. "For the most part, I don't think departments are looking to grow their particle physics programs," he says. http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2013_08_29/caredit.a1300185 http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previou... A warning to non-western members about values at CERN: "The cost [...] has been evaluated, taking into account realistic labor prices in different countries. The total cost is X (with a western equivalent value of Y)" [where Y>X] source: LHCb calorimeters : Technical Design Report ISBN: 9290831693 http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/494264 http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/494264

spintongue 13y ago

Its a tourism short story about the city of munich. www.thescreechersworld.blogspot.com/2013/07/up-from-drought.html?m=1

scotth 13y ago

Sounds like he was taking advantage of the system. I think I would've felt the same as the university: sack him if he doesn't win the Nobel.

_of 13y ago

He seems to be such a humble person.

dekhn 13y ago

I attended grad school at one of the most prestigious institutions that exists. After I finished my PhD, I mentioned to somebody I had attended there and it had taught me to do science well. THe person I was speaking to looked at me funny and said, "Oh no. You went there to learn how to write grants that get funded, so that you can manage a lab that carries out the next set of experiments, so you can write grants that get funded.". They were right: the value of my training program was in how to get funded, so I could do research. Some of us saw the writing on the wall (grant funding for biomedical sciences doubled in a short period of time in the early to mid 90s, which greatly increased the rate of minted PhDs, which dramatically increased competition for slowly growing faculty positions). I looked around, evaluated my options, and left for industry. I never regretted it. i still collaborate with academia, and write papers and do research, but my compensation structure and the options I have vastly outweigh those has I stayed in academia and become a soft-funded researcher. Ultimately if your goal is to do blue-sky theoretical research you're going to have to work very hard to succeed. Maybe it's possible to do good theory and also be good at grantsmanship. I honestly don't know. But I decided not to play that game: there are LOTS of options out there. Don't be stubborn and insist on your blue-sky theory job. Instead, be realistic and figure out what you want to do, and how to obtain the time to do it.

dominotw 13y ago
>i still collaborate with academia, and write papers and do research May I ask what you do for living?
- dekhn 13y ago
  software engineer for google. I built Exacycle: http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2012/12/millions-of-core-hours-awarded-to.html http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2012/12/millions-of-core-... http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2011/04/1-billion-core-hours-of-computational.html http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2011/04/1-billion-core-ho... some of those projects have papers on their way to print.

alan_cx 13y ago

I think this sort of problem starts at the top, with our time limited democracies. Democratic governments find it hard to implement long term thinking because its unlikely the current government will ever get credit for it. This results in policies which are short term enough to promote re-election. This bleeds down to the rest of society. Where it does happen, it tends to be compromised because one side has to make sure the other side carries the project on. This leads to committee style compromises. So, in general, from what I can see, long term thinking in western democracies is rare, and where it exists, compromised. Implication being that Chinese long term strength lies in its ability to plan in the very long term, which they do. I think the west needs to find a way in which we can also effectively and flexibly plan long term.

eli_gottlieb 13y ago
Can we please stop promoting the "democracy sucks" meme? It's not as if the Chinese are actually planning in that long a term; they're using markets now like everyone else.
- pbhjpbhj 13y ago
  >It's not as if the Chinese are actually planning in that long a term; they're using markets now like everyone else. // So, how long term are they planning, in years? In the UK we get [a few] plans that encompass maybe the next 10-15 years at most. So presumably they've got that at least.
  - PeterisP 13y ago
    The problem is not with doing planning, the problem is with implementing tradeoffs after such planning - in democracy, you can't take actions that hurt you in this year but will benefit 10 years afterward, if it is not completely obvious to uninformed laymen. If you do, they get reversed after the next elections anyway.

indigent 13y ago

I feel slightly validated for leaving academia after reading this article. When I was in grad school I was working with an adviser who was in the final phase of applying for tenure. She was under immense pressure to publish, and she totally passed all that pressure on to me and her other grad student at the time. It was the worst two years of my life. Ultimately we both left her charge, and she was denied tenure. The "publish or perish" atmosphere at most institutions is toxic. I remember running some in-vivo experiments using our system and looking for data that validated our hypothesis, but when I found none I was ordered to "find anything" and rewrite the hypothesis to match it. This was so that we had something positive to submit to journals, regardless of what it was. The papers were utter trash, and I was ashamed to put my name on them. The absolute focus on publishing ends up creating what is essentially "journal spam." I don't want to say that research is dead, but it's definitely in the doldrums at this point.

hacknat 13y ago

I think the reality is that more and more bright people avoid the Academy these days. I'm not saying I'm particularly bright, but I started out thinking I was going to be an Academic, but when I saw that I would have to deal with the same BS, politics, and hoop jumping that people in business deal with, I went with the option that was the same, but offered more money. I think that's what the majority of the Academy has become for people now. If two jobs are pretty much equal, except in pay, which one will you take?