11 ms·

Don't Become a Scientist (1999)

• shoo 12y ago
  There's a rather interesting perspective that touches some of these issues (and covers many more) in the following book: http://www.amazon.com/Disciplined-Minds-Critical-Professionals-Soul-battering/dp/0742516857 http://www.amazon.com/Disciplined-Minds-Critical-Professiona...
• geekam 12y ago
  Would like to know * how true this is, today? * Since I already have an alternative career path (computer science, programmer) can I now pursue my passion of science by going to grad school (physics)?
  • daemonk 12y ago
    I am finishing up a phd in bioinformatics. This is accurate.
    • unmei 12y ago
      I just finished a PhD in Biochemistry. It's accurate (I got a job as a programmer)
      • mshakya 12y ago
        how difficult or easy was for you to change field?
        • unmei 12y ago
          Not bad. I spent a year as a CS major in undergrad and programming is something that I did as a hobby for most of college and grad school, so even without a degree, I had a pretty decent resume for entry-level positions.
  • IvyMike 12y ago
    If anything, the trends outlined in this article have continued in the last 15 years, so it's truer now that it was then. The disparity between PhDs vs. faculty positions is illustrated in this graph: http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v31/n10/fig_tab/nbt.2706_F1.html http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v31/n10/fig_tab/nbt.2706_F... (The last time this was posted here everyone complained about how the annual and cumulative scales are different and make the graph hard to read, so caveat emptor.) Physics could be an outlier, as there is a non-academic career path for certain specialities. But these tend to be the more engineer-like specializations. If your passion is theoretical physics, your job prospects are probably limited to searching for academic roles, and that's a tough place to be these days.
  • Thriptic 12y ago
    I can only speak for the biological sciences (I am a grad student in bioengineering), but from my perspective this is 100% accurate. My PI got his own lab and his first big grant (R01) in his late 20s. My father did the same at 28. In the lab I am currently in, I have personally witnessed 3 brilliant, qualified, 40 year old post-docs with fellow to faculty transition grants be turned down for assistant professorships. If you go into academic science with the idea that you will end up as tenured professor, then you are naive. As a tenured professor, and even as a new PI, you will not perform much, if any science. You will spend your time writing grants, approaching industry for funding (sponsored research, gifts etc), writing and reviewing papers and editorials, managing grad students, complying with regulations, teaching classes, serving on useless committees etc). There is also stiffer competition for grants every year, making it extremely difficult to stay funded. Our lab does alright because we are heavily industry funded, but individual groups in our lab have suffered. I plan to either go into industry, work for a startup, or start something with some colleagues.
    • dekhn 12y ago
      BTW: R01 in late 20s is absurdly early. Your PI is not typical.
      • djao 12y ago
        In 1980, about 2% of R01 recipients were under age 30. So yeah, it's early, but not totally impossible. In 2010, about 0.1% of R01 recipients were under age 30. That's bordering on impossible.
  • nagrom 12y ago
    I got a PhD in particle physics 6 years ago. I did my first postdoc and enjoyed it - I got to travel, and work on relatively interesting things occasionally. Every year since then it's got worse, to the point where I've given up on getting a permanent job and am actively looking elsewhere. If I was offered an tenured academic post tomorrow, I would decline. The other thing that is generally left out of this discussion is that academic excellence does not matter for a permanent job. There's no politics as vicious as academic politics (since so little is at stake), and who your supervisor is for your PhD matters more than how clever you are. If your achievements are first-rate, no-one up the chain will really understand them, and you'll be derided. If what you do is unoriginal, but suits the political landscape fame and riches (60 hour weeks and a starting salary of $75k) may become yours after you've moved city, country or continent a few times. That is scale-independent. If you have tenure, funding committees become the new tenure or interview committees. Collaboration boards and conference boards (which confer status and prestige and therefore opportunity) work who likes whom - not on competency. All the best people (technically and personally) I met during my PhD have left the field and I'm hoping to join them soon...I'm just slightly ashamed of myself for staying in the field this long.
    • deleted 12y ago
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    • kghose 12y ago
      +1d specifically for "There's no politics as vicious as academic politics (since so little is at stake), and who your supervisor is for your PhD matters more than how clever you are." Also, don't be ashamed - if you tried to do good, thorough work despite seeing quick and dirty work being rewarded, in the end you did a great thing!
  • dnautics 12y ago
    I have a PhD in chemistry and now I drive for Lyft. It pays 20% better than a postdoc. I'm seeking to start up my own research program outside of traditional academia to gt away from the broken system.
  • RK 12y ago
    I'm under the impression that it has only gotten worse. Anecdote: A super smart friend of mine from physics grad school finished in 2008 and went on to post-docs at Caltech and Harvard. He was unable to get a tenure track job, primarily because in that 4 year timespan only 1 faculty position opened up in the entire US for his (tiny) field. He now works at Google. In fact I'm not sure that anyone from my cohort is still in academia. Other students used to come ask me questions all of the time, because I had worked in industry before going to grad school. Their questions were always some variation of "what are my options if I get out of physics?". Edit: I'll also add that most grad students I knew gave little thought to their post-grad job prospects before starting grad school. It seems now that the message has trickled along a little better that the outlook is very poor.
    • kaybe 12y ago
      Do you have a write-up of your answers lying around somewhere? I'd be interested.. (half a year to go on a Master's)
      • RK 12y ago
        No write-up, but people I know have left physics for: * Quantitative finance * Insurance (working on models that were beyond what the actuaries were trained to do) * Data science * Scientific equipment R&D * Scientific equipment sales * Popular science writing (this is a bit of an outlier!) * Defense contracting (engineering, "scientific" programming, etc) * Programming * Door-to-door insurance sales (no joke) I usually tell people to brush up on their programming skills as much as possible. If you're a theorist who only does pencil + paper or maybe Mathematica, it might be hard to find a decent job. Also, it never hurts to talk to / network with any industry people that are related to your field (software or hardware vendors, etc). I'm now doing data science, but have also done hardware development and electrical engineering related things (signals). When I was transitioning to data science I also did some very specialized consulting related to my PhD. A few people paid me to do simulations and/or help then implement some techniques that I worked on as a grad student. Also: I had a very supportive advisor, who encouraged me to accept a job offer before I graduated.
    • 12y ago
  • analog31 12y ago
    I got a PhD in physics, in 1993. Everything written in Katz's article was widely known to grad students when I was in school. Through a bit of planning and probably a lot of luck, I went to industry after finishing my degree. (Friend of a friend owned a tech business). One "fact" that is apparent by omission in Katz's article rings true today as well: The complete lack of any consideration of industry employment by a physics professor advising grad students. When I told my advisor that I was likely headed towards industry, he gave me his best wishes, but admitted that he had nothing to offer me in the way of guidance towards such a career. There's an amusing aspect of Von Munchausen By Proxy Syndrome in a PhD thesis: You cause the problems that you subsequently solve. I chose a problem, and steered it in a direction that required solution via extensive work in electronics and programming, which then became the basis of my resume. The irony is that those of us who swore up and down that we were in it for the love of science and not money, are now the ones who you must compete with in the job market. As an aside, I observed that a lot of people went into fields like physics to escape the eventuality of confronting the job market, and may not have been any better off in a supposedly more lucrative field.
    • vacri 12y ago
      Munchausen by Proxy is not something you want to do in science - it's explicitly faking data (child injuries) so you get attention that you desire. It's not causing the problem, but faking the problem. MbP definitely is a very serious problem, but it's not the problem that the parent claims is happening. A better semantic fit for the science world for MbP would be faking data to get grant money. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnchausen_syndrome_by_proxy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnchausen_syndrome_by_pro...
      • analog31 12y ago
        Thanks. I realize that my analogy was a stretch, but I didn't realize it was that much of a stretch. ;)
        • vacri 12y ago
          It kind've fit, but not quite. I hadn't heard it in a context other than the literal before, which was interesting to see. :)
  • namocat 12y ago
    I have a PhD in Neuroscience and left the "postdoc treadmill" to be a software engineer. So far I am very happy with my decision and wish I would have read this article before getting my PhD. It's 100% accurate, and everyone in the biological sciences knows it.
  • pedrobeltrao 12y ago
    I started a group leader position (not tenured) since about 1 year ago in bioinformatics (UK). The trend only got worse since this article was written. It is particularly bad in biology but physics and chemistry are not much better off. There is an ongoing debate about what to do about it. A good overview of the debate can be found in this recent perspective published in the PNAS journal (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/04/09/1404402111 http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/04/09/1404402111). If you have a passion for research and have a solid back-up plan that you are sure can always fall back then feel free to try. Keep in mind that your salary will go down. Also, age factors in and there is some bias towards people that have always been on a straight path of high academic success. This should not be a big issue for the PhD but it will start to matter for postdoc and tenure track positions.
  • gone35 12y ago
    To follow-up IvyMike's earlier comment [1]: It was indeed very true then, and it is even worse today. In 1999, there were around 400,000 STEM PhDs in the US, but only 70,000 STEM academic faculty positions available. Today, there are over 800,000 STEM PhDs, but only around 100,000 STEM faculty positions [2]. And the gap will get even worse: in 2013, over 35,000 new STEM PhDs were awarded, but only about 3,000 new STEM faculty positions were open [ibid]. It's just unsustainable. So, anecdotes aside, this is a very real and very serious structural problem. No matter how 'passionate' or how resourceful they are, with current trends, at least 9 out of 10 current first-year PhD students will invariably not get an academic faculty position when they enter the market. The longer this elephant in the room is ignored, the worse it will be [3]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7763857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7763857 [2] http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v31/n10/fig_tab/nbt.2706_F1.html http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v31/n10/fig_tab/nbt.2706_F... [3] See also related discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7764289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7764289 (where I initially saw the chart from).
• deleted 12y ago
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  • 3pt14159 12y ago
    I mean the following to be helpful, not hurtful: More people will understand your ideas if you organize your thoughts, use proper grammar and spelling, and reread your comment before posting it.
    • deleted 12y ago
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• ColinWright 12y ago
  Extensive discussion from 6 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=122106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=122106 Scott Aaronson's reply: http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=312 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=312 That was submitted[0] six years ago, but got no discussion at all. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=123584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=123584 There have been many, many more occasions when this was submitted,
  • dnautics 12y ago
    Scott's quip "many PhD programs even see training students for industry as a fundamental part of their mission." Has long been true for chemistry and biology, and that has possibly staved off the phenomenon for a bit longer than it was for physics (original article, 1999), but it is certainly now true in these fields too. Of course, these are all anecdotes, by which I mean data strongly filtered through confirmation bias. So it's worth thinking about the bias here; we have tons of grad students and postdocs comiserating, and a select few professors. One of which says it's miserable and is trying to warn people in the future, and the other who has had a fabulously successful career saying everything's more or less fine.
    • lutorm 12y ago
      It is really a simple analysis: The number of tenured faculty is not increasing, so to have a long-term sustainable job market, each one can only graduate one PhD. The actual number over their career is probably more like 5-10. Every one except one of them will not get a tenured faculty job, that's just basic numbers.
      • carlob 12y ago
        > The actual number over their career is probably more like 5-10 Where did you get that number? I think that number is actually closer to the number of PhD's in training at any given time. The number over a career is probably 10x that. Heck, I can name one professor who whas 25 PhD students at any given time.
  • 12y ago
• Balgair 12y ago
  " I have known more people whose lives have been ruined by getting a Ph.D. in physics than by drugs." and "The result is that the best young people, who should go into science, sensibly refuse to do so, and the graduate schools are filled with weak American students and with foreigners lured by the American student visa." Well, I'm sure glad I don't work with this professor. Yeesh! Talk about confirmation bias.
  • javert 12y ago
    I don't think it's fair to assert a confirmation bias. The first quote: That is probably a factually true quote. He did not say, "Therefore, more people's lives are ruined by physics than drugs." The second quote is also probably factually true, and jives with my experience in graduate school. Of course, many of the foreigners are also weak, but he leaves that out.
    • Balgair 12y ago
      Ok, I used my list of logical errors incorrectly, my bad. Still, yes, for him, maybe he does in fact know more 'failed' physicists than junkies. However, there are many many many more junkies with much much worse lives than almost all PhDs. I'm going into neurosci this fall, so I don't know yet personally. However, the attitude expressed in that sentence is so very toxic. If that's what the professor publishes, then I'd never want to hear what he gossips to the other professors. Maybe, just maybe, the professor is a jerk. And maybe, just maybe, the only people that are left near him are the ones not smart enough to avoid him in the first place. I don't remember what bias that is.
      • javert 12y ago
        I'm finishing my 5th year of grad school now. My adviser constantly sets expectations so high that they literally cannot be met. I have had to skip holidays and neglect my family and I have still often had my work trivialized. My work is not appreciated, the fact that I have given up almost everything else in my life is not appreciated. Most people do not even make it to their 5th year in our group. I spent a lot of time being really bitter about all this. But I have realized that you have to do this to be a good scientist. My adviser only wants to train good scientists. So I'm not even upset about it any more. I have to look beyond my adviser, and look at the actual science I am doing, and realize that he is irrelevant, but that I still have to behave in this way (i.e. giving up much else in my life) to make progress. I don't know if you'll encounter this in neurosci. Perhaps good neurosci research can be done without this level of commitment. I'm sure it would depend on your exact specialty. But I'm telling you all this so that you don't end up being really bitter towards your adviser if you get into a situation like many aspiring scientists face. It's not his fault. I'm not exactly sure what your problem was with the quotes you posted. I guess it was that he was calling his students weak? My point is: in school, what your adviser says is fundamentally irrelevant. Don't let it affect your self-esteem. But science itself has a way of absolutely kicking your butt. And that is why professors say things like that in the first place. It takes massive virtue to be a good scientist. It also takes a particular set of life circumstances in order for it to be a rational choice. What I do would not have been a rational choice if I had considered it mandatory (for me) to have a girlfriend or start a family, for example (at this stage in life). That said, I haven't left because what I do truly is rewarding. I can't think of anything I'd rather be doing. I am a purely selfish person. I don't do science for the greater good. So my point here is: it can be worth it.
• msvan 12y ago
  I wonder if/when this will happen to programmers. I keep thinking that the job market for programmers will be radically different in ten years, what with the enormous amount of people "learning to code" these days. He did however suggest people to become programmers in 1999, and if you followed his advice then, you would probably still be quite happy with that decision today.
  • marcosdumay 12y ago
    It's a completely different situation. Programming leads to some serious concentrated rewards, while science leads only to dispersed rewards. As a result, there are plenty of people wanting to invest in programming, but mostly governments want to touch sciences. That of course does not mean that the job market for programmers will always be good, only that when it stops being, it will be for very different reasons.
    • UK-AL 12y ago
      I'm guessing massive oversupply will be the reason, as it is here.
      • gcp 12y ago
        Demand for faculty positions is pretty stable. Demand for programmers much less so.
        • 001sky 12y ago
          There is a huge imbalance in new phd/new tenure-job openings. also, the proportion of faculty jobs with tenure is shrinking. both of these are massive 'caveats' to the use of 'stable'.
          • gcp 12y ago
            I actually meant that the demand for programmers matches and evolves with the supply, and has certainly room to grow for a while, whereas academia has been completely mismatched for years.
• swuecho 12y ago
  I read this article 2 years ago and translated it to chinese http://article.yeeyan.org/view/160173/332716 http://article.yeeyan.org/view/160173/332716. After I got a MS degree in Entomology, I found a job as a Software Developer. "the graduate schools are filled with weak American students and with foreigners lured by the American student visa." not sure about the first part, but the second part is true. a lot of foreigners know this is no way out after you get Phd, but no other choices. My advice to students who are doing a Phd in Biology or Chemistry is to learn coding by yourself and then you can find a job to live a better life.
• yaketysax 12y ago
  "Leave graduate school to people from India and China, for whom the prospects at home are even worse." Even worse in terms of what?
  • geekam 12y ago
    I believe worse in terms of quality of research, education while having a good stipend. I understand there might be exceptions on either side.
  • swuecho 12y ago
    find a job.
  • IvyMike 12y ago
    It's been 15 years since this article was originally written, which doesn't seem like a long time. But China's GDP was $1T in 1999, and was $9T in 2013. I confess near-absolute ignorance but the job prospects for advanced degrees in China probably have gotten at least a little better in that time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_GDP_of_the_People's_Republic_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_GDP_of_the_People's...
    • swuecho 12y ago
      the problem is far more people getting a advanced degree. In 1999, if you hold a Phd degree from US, it is easy to find a faculty position in China. However, Even you hold a PhD degree from Top Univ in US today, you can hardly find a faculty position in China. You have to do postdoc to publish more papers in top journal.
      • geekam 12y ago
        I agree with you. I see the same pattern with Indian science landscape. Unless you have nice and strong connections, landing an academic position in India is tough too, even with a PhD from some ace university in the US.
    • gone35 12y ago
• lumberjack 12y ago
  Does anyone know how the situation in Europe compares for post grads in Math, Physics and CS?
  • sprash 12y ago
    It is pretty simple to get a permanent position in Physics here. All you need is a vagina.
    • dang 12y ago
      All: When you see a comment that is truly bad for HN, you can flag it by clicking "link" to go to the item page and then "flag" at the top. We monitor those flags and take action based on them.
  • Natriceus 12y ago
    I wonder about this too. Especially regarding Maths and CS.
  • agarttha 12y ago
    As an American physics PhD who is continuing his career in academia in France, the situation is comparable to that in the US: the number of tenure openings (French CR1/CR2) is declining while the number of PhDs is growing.
• jonathansizz 12y ago
  To be successful in science, as in most other professions, requires a combination of direct skills (ability, knowledge, industriousness, perseverance, etc.), indirect skills (e.g. connections, political ability, salesmanship) and luck. As a field gets more overcrowded, the job itself becomes less attractive (lower pay, more hours, less interesting work) and the relative importance of the indirect skills and luck becomes much greater, leading to a lower average quality of practitioners. Presumably, the demand to enter the profession should subsequently decrease and eventually lead to some sort of equilibrium.
  • dnautics 12y ago
    I don't think it works like that because public grants are not a free-market phenomenon.
    • patkai 12y ago
      Key observation.
• javert 12y ago
  I was thinking about trying to become a computer science professor. I think I could potentially get more top-quality research done living an impoverished lifestyle and working at something else part time, than I could in academia, where you have to focus on pleasing the "powers that be" (program committees, grant committees, tenure committees).
  • drhodes 12y ago
    This reminds of something Feynman said something in "You Must Be Joking..." "When I was at Princeton in the 1940s I could see what happened to those great minds at the Institute for Advanced Study, who had been specially selected for their tremendous brains and were now given this opportunity to sit in this lovely house by the woods there, with no classes to teach, with no obligations whatsoever. These poor bastards could now sit and think clearly all by themselves, OK? So they don't get any ideas for a while: They have every opportunity to do something, and they're not getting any ideas. I believe that in a situation like this a kind of guilt or depression worms inside of you, and you begin to worry about not getting any ideas. And nothing happens. Still no ideas come. Nothing happens because there's not enough real activity and challenge: You're not in contact with the experimental guys. You don't have to think how to answer questions from the students. Nothing!" The internet has probably nullified this effect to some extent.
    • danieltillett 12y ago
      I think Feynman was just jealous :) When you consider that von Neumann was at IAS and he managed a huge amount of collaboration of vast importance I think it had more to do with the individual than the environment.
      • navanit 12y ago
        Feynman had an offer from IAS which he declined for the reasons discussed above.
        • danieltillett 12y ago
• dydx 12y ago
  This guy also wrote an essay titled "In Defense of Homophobia": http://wuphys.wustl.edu/~katz/defense.html http://wuphys.wustl.edu/~katz/defense.html
  • tehf0x 12y ago
    Well that was enough crazy for today. I'm always impressed by the logical flaws someone can have when they are emotionally passionate about something. I'm pretty sure that his final analogy between homosexuality and belonging to the klu klux klan was definitely worth putting in post-scriptum to absolutely confirm he hasn't thought any of this out.
  • ben1040 12y ago
    Of note is that this 1999 essay came back around in 2010 when Katz was tapped by the DoE for a scientific task force evaluating options for the Deepwater Horizon cleanup. He was removed from the group in fairly short order, after people found this essay and put the heat on him for it. Shortly afterwards, Katz' son came out to his father. http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/son-of-homophobic-father-says-life-gets-better/article_d629ecf2-2f92-56ad-868e-5510eff8ef20.html http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/son-of-homophobic-f...
    • GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
      "After coming out, Katz persuaded his father to remove from his website the "In Defense of Homophobia" essay, written in 1999, when Isaac was 11." The essay appears to be back up, I guess Katz pere doubled down.
      • ben1040 12y ago
        From this article from the Washington University student newspaper, it looks like Katz reposted the essay within days after that Post-Dispatch article ran. http://www.studlife.com/news/2010/10/13/students-come-out-as-katz-re-posts/ http://www.studlife.com/news/2010/10/13/students-come-out-as...
  • deleted 12y ago
• XorNot 12y ago
  The exact advice I'd give to people today, having done just that.
• frik 12y ago
  Mr Katz, please remove the third party link to the "German" translation (http://uhrenstore.de/blog/seikeinwissenschaftler http://uhrenstore.de/blog/seikeinwissenschaftler ). The translation is completely off - probably done using machine translation. e.g. first two sentences: Don't Become a Scientist! wrong: Sei kein Wissenschaftler! correct: Werde kein Wissenschaftler! Are you thinking of becoming a scientist? wrong: Denken Sie an einen Wissenschaftler zu werden? correct: Spielen Sie mit dem Gedanken ein Wissenschaftler zu werden? or: Möchten Sie eine wissenschaftliche Karriere einschlagen? (the uhrenstore.de website is a fake website - all blog articles are machine translated and makes no sense, probably part of a SEO link farm network)
• lvs 12y ago
  i don't totally disagree with the article, but it's probably worth pointing out that this guy is apparently a "proud homophobe." great. one might question his judgement after reading this drivel. http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyrft/2010/05/washington_university_jonathan_katz_deepwater_horizon_gulf_oil_spill_obama.php http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyrft/2010/05/washington... http://wuphys.wustl.edu/~katz/defense.html http://wuphys.wustl.edu/~katz/defense.html
  • doomrobo 12y ago
    I understand your point and I'm in no way advocating homophobia, but isn't your point still ad hominem?
  • tcheard 12y ago
    How is that relevant??? Just because you have very extremist and incorrect views about something outside your profession, doesn't mean that you are automatically incorrect when talking about your profession.
    • lvs 12y ago
      I didn't say he's automatically incorrect, and I think if you reread my comment, that should be clear. I do think a person's subjective judgement on serious issues are relevant to their subjective judgement on any one issue.
  • marvin 12y ago
    This is a textbook ad hominem attack. Although I have very little respect for homophobes, this doesn't automatically torpedo every other argument a person makes. (Especially when it is on a completely unrelated subject).
    • lvs 12y ago
      Both of these are questions of judgement and rational thinking. Should one take career advice from a bigot? I leave it up to you.
  • 12y ago
• dnautics 12y ago
  The only thing missing is that the grants administrators are very often (I can think of two, dear to me counterexamples) people who got into science and couldn't hack it, making for sort of a bureaucratic dunning-kruger effect. I remember meeting DOE bureaucrats coming to visit our site, and being in awe at their complete lack of basic scientific concepts, and thinking, "these idiots probably get paid six figures to sit around pushing paper and get nice paid junkets to pretty places like San Diego while I'm struggling trying to push innovation and deal with failure as a postdoc on 30k". Of course you can't say that to their face, because you won't get your grant continued. In one particular egregious example, I remember a grants administrator who came to our facility, got a ride in the boss' tesla roadster, and for whom a cocktail party was thrown. Several years later, this administrator's PhD research came to light as being very likely artefactual. https://raphazlab.wordpress.com/2012/11/23/stripy-nanoparticles-revisited/ https://raphazlab.wordpress.com/2012/11/23/stripy-nanopartic... The uncharitable interpretation is that this person escaped academic science to administration because they knew they couldn't hack it, because the data are willfully overinterpreted and that wouldn't fly for too long. And of course wound up in the position of managing hundreds of millions of dollars in grant moneys. I can't accuse this particular person of that particular motivation; but isn't it evident that science funding positions would disproportionately attract such people, and is that a situation we want to be in?
  • bjelkeman-again 12y ago
    I am sadly unimpressed by a lot of people who end up managing investment or research funds. I wonder if it is similar to politicians? It takes some specific social skill to get there, but it doesn't mean you are any good in that position when you get it.
    • danieltillett 12y ago
      This is true of all fields where social skills are critical for the acquisition of the position. The problem is that people with good social skills are also really skilled at avoiding being removed from a position that they can't do - often the only way to get them out is to promote them and hope they don't cause more damage.
• philip1209 12y ago
  As an alum of the physics department at WUSTL - the author of this piece has quite a negative reputation on campus due to his outspoken beliefs on various political matters. It has led to his removal from many important projects and nearly cost him his tenure Removal from Obama commission during BP oil spill: http://archive.ksdk.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=202393 http://archive.ksdk.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=202393 One of his other essays, "In Defense of Homophobia": http://wuphys.wustl.edu/~katz/defense.html http://wuphys.wustl.edu/~katz/defense.html Essay "Why Terrorism Matters": http://wuphys.wustl.edu/~katz/terror.html http://wuphys.wustl.edu/~katz/terror.html Letter to school newspaper about global warming evidence: http://www.studlife.com/forum/2009/10/28/letter-to-the-editor-jonathan-katz/ http://www.studlife.com/forum/2009/10/28/letter-to-the-edito...
  • michaelochurch 12y ago
    Even though I find his political beliefs repulsive, and am sure that his beliefs have put him afoul of the academic groupthink (which leaves me in a weird place, because I dislike his beliefs but also dislike the leftist conformity being brandished against him and breaking his career) I don't think any of this stuff is relevant. Standing alone, everything he says in this essay is correct and insightful. So I'd rather discuss that than him.
    • jjoonathan 12y ago
      Did you actually read what he wrote? The views he expressed are much closer to what you so derisively call "leftist conformity" than his titles would seem to indicate.
      • Myrmornis 12y ago
        Huh? Modern "Leftist conformity" involves placing homosexuality and heterosexuality in a scientifically and sociologically spurious equivalence. His piece on homosexuality is extremely far from leftist conformity.
    • Myrmornis 12y ago
• danieltillett 12y ago
  I feel rather conflicted by any advice given to anyone to not become as scientist. I have been through the whole science treadmill all they way up to tenured professor, but I have recently given up tenure to work on my original start-up full time. I loved everything about being an professor except the pointless committee work and paper shuffling, but I reached the point where I felt I could do more good science outside of academia than inside. My advice for what it is worth is do science if that is what you are passionate about, but work on side skills like programming, business and networking (yes networking is a skill) so that when you reach a point where science is not the way forward anymore you can do something else without feeling like you are a failure.
  • cli 12y ago
    What field are you working in? I am a prospective physics graduate student, and I want to do physics research as a career. However, I am uninterested in going into academia after attaining my PhD, and I am also financially independent due to inheritance.
    • danieltillett 12y ago
      I develop genomics software - my company is in my profile. If you are financially independent then you should look at becoming an adjunct professor as a long term goal. If you don't cost the university any money and you generate papers and grants then you will not have too much trouble finding a position. You should use this freedom to work on areas that other less fortunate scientist can't like project that may not generate any results for 3 or more years. No grant funded scientist, or even tenured staff member, can afford to tackle projects that don't generate publications within a relatively short timeframe as any breaks in publication output is career killing.
      • chubot 12y ago
        Hm this is an interesting thought but I'm having trouble parsing it. Isn't there a contradiction there? If you generate grants and papers, you can find a job, but then you should tackle stuff that doesn't produce any results for awhile and doesn't get grants? Long term I am curious about going back to academia, and finances aren't a big issue. But being forced to do short term work is a dealbreaker. I have done some original research outside of academia (mostly in the form of source code, some semi-published), and I'm curious about thoughts on how to "work the system". EDIT: I looked at what an adjunct professor actually is, and it sounds sorta horrible? You don't even get benefits? I assumed low pay, but at least with benefits, but apparently that's not the case. What do you get out of it, other than a title? Access to facilities? Since I am in software I don't really need facilities.... Or do you get students to do work for your pet project? I imagine the good ones would want to work for a "real" professor.
• logicallee 12y ago
  The facts presented here are OK, but the facts would be even stronger if they were about: "Don't build a hundred million dollar company; don't get traction or leave an indelible imprint on humanity." (i.e. many of us here are doing far less justified things, statistically speaking, regarding career choices as entrepreneurs. Rather like the physicists discussed in the article.) Maybe none of us should be building anything. The facts are pretty strong toward that one, as well, and most readers building a company would have a much safer path coding at Microsoft. It just doesn't matter. Did you know Fermat was an "amateur mathematician" and Wikipedia introduces him as such, after giving his introduction as "a French lawyer." So what? Was mathematics a waste of his time - certainly. Would you have advised him not to squander it doing that? Would you have told him not to actually study mathematics formally and devote his profession to it? Who knows what we could have gotten. Thankfully these arguments are never going to affect the bright minds of our or any generation, and people will go and do whatever fascinates them. Planck, too, was discouraged from studying physics: "The university's professor of physics, Philip von Jolly, discouraged the young student from studying physics because—as Jolly told him—it was very nearly a closed subject with little left to discover. Luckily, Planck disregarded his professor's advice." [1] Basically that's all you need to know about the current blog post as well :) :) [1] http://www.chemistryexplained.com/Pl-Pr/Planck-Max.html http://www.chemistryexplained.com/Pl-Pr/Planck-Max.html
  • logicallee 12y ago
    I should clarify that I mean that the argument and facts that the article uses are OK. It starts: >Are you thinking of becoming a scientist? Do you want to uncover the mysteries of nature, perform experiments or carry out calculations to learn how the world works? Forget it! and ends >What can be done? The first thing for any young person (which means anyone who does not have a permanent job in science) to do is to pursue another career. But the very same argument would apply to: "Are you thinking of founding a company? Do you want to build value and change the lives of millions of people, getting rich in the process? Forget it!" We could then go on to state why entrepreneurship has an even lower success rate than that talked about in the article. For every one hundred people who set out to change the world by founding a company, how many succeed? The truth is that the average founder's prospects are, rationally, miserable. That does not stop the best and brightest from going into entrepreneurship, building companies and actually changing the world. In the exact same sense that Planck was not discouraged by his university's professor of physics stating that he should not study physics, and should concentrate on something else. Likewise Von Neuman's father insisted he study chemistry (which he did, along with mathematics.) The facts presented in the article just don't matter to those who have a true passion for science, just as the statistics don't matter for those of us building companies. They will study mathematics, or physics, or start companies, regardless of the odds. It's not a rational decision so much as a passionate one. If I've missed something please do tell me.
• dekhn 12y ago
  I think a more nuanced article would instead explain to students how to gain competitive advantage, and work with the system, while simultaneously fulfilling the desire to work on one's own problems of interest. I still don't know for sure if I made the right choice in 1995, sticking to bio grad school, instead of trying to get a job at Yahoo! I mean, had I done the latter, I would likely be independently weathy and able to fund any science project I wish. On the other hand, I really did learn a lot about politics trying to be a scientist. And how to write prose that gets funded. And how to tell a good story. Same story for 2001, when I did a couple postdocs instead of dedicating all my time trying to get a job at Google. Again, would be wealthy instead of having to work, and could contract out to answer any scientific questions I cared about... The process of becoming a scientist was painful. The vast majority of being a scientist seems to be doing work that ensures you are free to pursue something of interest... but not having enough time to pursue it, due to bureaucracy. However, spending well over 10,000 hours laboring on interesting problems, and being able to apply the skills gained from that (without having to apply for funding) is very satisfying.
  • AndrewKemendo 12y ago
    >I would likely be independently weathy and able to fund any science project I wish That is what I determined would be the best way to ensure that I could get the research projects I wanted to do actually funded.
    • crdb 12y ago
      But how would you have determined what projects were worth funding?
• michaelochurch 12y ago
  The result is that the best young people, who should go into science, sensibly refuse to do so, and the graduate schools are filled with weak American students and with foreigners lured by the American student visa. Not quite true, but what I have noticed is that, at the graduate-school level, there's a very low correlation between the quality of the program and the students. If you go to a top-5 PhD program, you'll be surprised by how many of these supposedly "best in the generation" people just aren't that good. Many are, and the talented outnumber the talentless, but you'd expect there to be zero talentless schmucks at the top programs, and it just ain't so. This is where the OP's perception that PhD programs are "full of weak students" probably comes from; the fact that even top PhD programs can't keep the schmucks out. It's not hard, even for a total mediocrity, for a 22-year-old packing socioeconomic advantages, and already coming from an elite college, to appear smart. Drop down to the #10 or #20 or even #35 department, and the talent distribution isn't much different. The difference, in raw intelligence, between the students isn't that strong. There are some really good students and some terrible ones, at any of them. The change is barely perceptible. You wouldn't be able to tell the difference except by the reputation of their advisors. If you go in to a top school and expect its students to be the best of the best, you'll be disappointed when only 75-85% of them are halfway intelligent, and you might conclude that the #30 school has no intelligent students. In fact, it has almost as many. There are probably 20-100 times as many people (probably 3-5% of the general population) with the talent for academia as actually put themselves anywhere near contention for the positions. What we now have, and it's not new, is evidence of a sorting system that doesn't really work. We can't sort talent from well-positioned mediocrity (read: socioeconomic status) before college, we certainly can't do it in college, and we don't do it for graduate school (George W. Bush is a Harvard Business School graduate). At all levels, we do a terrible job. We're actually talent-rich as a society, because we've had the smartest people coming here for generations. We just haven't a clue what to do with it.
  • eli_gottlieb 12y ago
    Why are you so surprised that a metric like GPA (or undergrad accomplishment in general), with a hard ceiling, loses its correlation with actual talent at the top end of the scale? That is, most undergrads will simply never get the opportunity to publish one paper in undergrad, let alone two or three, so if you admit them to grad-school based on maybe a publication, good grades, and maybe some internship/REU experience, you should expect to admit some highly talented students and some students who were very talented at optimizing the capped metrics on their resume to the maximum but not at actual research. Hell, in a way, it's basic reinforcement learning, is it not? What sort of rational agent or system will "go above and beyond" when the reward signal is capped at a maximum value? When you look at it that way, every single step of the selection, sorting, and filtering process we call academic meritocracy is optimizing for irrational devotion to careerist signaling, which has only a weak correlation to real devotion to science.
• abawany 12y ago
  I hope I don't get too many downvotes: I see people wanting to make a change from academia to technology and I think I may have something for you. If you are interested in working on interesting data problems, Golang, and living in Austin, TX, please message me.
• agentultra 12y ago
  I rather dislike these essays that deter young, intelligent and motivated young people from a career they might otherwise enjoy and be passionate about. There are legitimate problems with the career track as established and outlined in this essay. It is even wise to inform young people of those problems so they know what they're getting into. However it is discouraging to hear from tenured professors that they should give up their passion and dreams and be a lawyer. I can think of no greater torture, save complete isolation, than eternal boredom. It's disingenuous to deter the curious on account of your cynicism, is it not?
  • maxerickson 12y ago
    I don't think disingenuous fits for what you are saying. In particular, the author seems quite sincere in his belief that the job market for PHDs has lots and lots of candidates and that this creates disadvantages for it as a career path. I also don't think that young, intelligent, motivated, passionate and curious individuals are especially fragile.
• nutate 12y ago
  Read this in 1999. Still went to grad school in 2004 after working in .coms of that era. No regrets.
• bitwize 12y ago
  Part of the problem is that Murkans are inherently fearful/distrustful of science and scientists, so it's hard to get any respect -- and the attendant pay raises -- unless you work in defense or "national security". The situation is different in Europe or Asia, though, so if you do want to become a scientist, you'd have a much better time of it outside the USA.
• sytelus 12y ago
  Getting PhD and trained as scientist has a HUGE value counter to the arguments in this article. First, as Guy Kawasaki puts it, you want to be in school as long as possible. Getting a job means life long working on your bosses orders whether you like it or not. Going to graduate school allows you to work on your favorite area, become master at something and gives you an opportunity to add that little bump in the human knowledge with your name. After you get PhD, you should also realize that not everyone is cut out becoming next Einstein or Feynman. If you can get good postdoc with interesting challenges then fine but otherwise you can always go to industry and get a job. You enjoyed your years in graduate school unlike spending those years trying to make some company little bit more profit and that's what counts. Today, having a PhD in any field is invaluable if you want to enter the software industry. Most PhD work today involves some level of data science and software work anyway. When you apply for a job, at least in software industry, you will get better offer faster. The correct way to look at this not how much money you would have made if you weren't doing PhD and straight went to industry but rather how much fun you would have missed out on your favorite area of work and possibly childhood passion if you didn't. Software is eating academia. Concern for not getting tenure positions should be minimal today. There has never been better time to get PhD and get trained as scientist.
  • tiatia 12y ago
    How old are you if I may ask?
  • sagichmal 12y ago
    This is a very... optimistic view of the value that a Ph.D. confers.
• Create 12y ago
  Given that cheap and disposable trainees — PhD students and postdocs — fuel the entire scientific research enterprise, it is not surprising that few inside the system seem interested in change. A system complicit in this sort of exploitation is at best indifferent and at worst cruel. http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110302/full/471007a.html http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110302/full/471007a.html Potential missing staff in some areas is a separate issue, and educational programmes are not designed to make up for it. On-the-job learning and training are not separated but dynamically linked together, benefiting to both parties. In my three years of operation, I have unfortunately witnessed cases where CERN duties and educational training became contradictory and even conflicting. http://ombuds.web.cern.ch/blog/2013/06/lets-not-confuse-students-and-fellows-missing-staff http://ombuds.web.cern.ch/blog/2013/06/lets-not-confuse-stud... 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. "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 Indeed, even while giving complete satisfaction, they have no forward vision about the possibility of pursuing a career at CERN. This lack of an element of social responsibility in the contract policy is unacceptable. Rather than serve as a cushion of laziness for supervisors, who often have only a limited and utilitarian view when defining the opening of an IC post, the contract policy must ensure the inclusion of an element of social justice, which is cruelly absent today. http://staff-association.web.cern.ch/content/unsatisfactory-contract-policy http://staff-association.web.cern.ch/content/unsatisfactory-... The long-held but erroneous assumption of never-ending rapid growth in biomedical science has created an unsustainable hypercompetitive system that is discouraging even the most outstanding prospective students from entering our profession—and making it difficult for seasoned investigators to produce their best work. This is a recipe for long-term decline, and the problems cannot be solved with simplistic approaches. Instead, it is time to confront the dangers at hand and rethink some fundamental features of the US biomedical research ecosystem. http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/04/09/1404402111 http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/04/09/1404402111 Since 1982, almost 800,000 PhDs were awarded in science and engineering (S&E) fields, whereas only about 100,000 academic faculty positions were created in those fields within the same time frame. The number of S&E PhDs awarded annually has also increased over this time frame, from ~19,000 in 1982 to ~36,000 in 2011. The number of faculty positions created each year, however, has not changed, with roughly 3,000 new positions created annually. http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v31/n10/full/nbt.2706.html http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v31/n10/full/nbt.2706.html One is simply that graduate students represent the cheapest form of labor, and so graduate programs have expanded to keep researchers well supplied. The end result is that 8,000 people get a PhD in the biological sciences each year, far more than can ever hope to find faculty positions. Only about 20 percent of them end up staying in research positions, yet graduate education generally provides training in nothing but research. The problem is that everybody who would actually implement these reforms at the institutional level won't like them. Successful researchers will have to accept smaller and more focused labs and see their smaller pool of grad students distracted by training in areas other than research. University administrators will see their departments and incoming money both shrink. You can count on many of them to resist. http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/04/is-us-biomedical-research-heading-for-a-breakdown/ http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/04/is-us-biomedical-rese...
• gambiting 12y ago
  I don't know about America, but our university here in UK just received a huge, 15 million pound grant to open another 11 PhD positions in Big Data Analysis, fully funded by Red Hat - and they practically guarantee a job afterwards, a well paid job. I am doing something completely unrelated, but I have to say that a prospect of job security for 4 years and then a good job afterwards is very enticing.
  • paolomaffei 12y ago
    then again finding a job with a software engineering related PhD (in UK or US) is not that hard at all, is it?
  • waltherg 12y ago
    Do you have a link to this program? I think the piece this prof wrote targets classical PhD programs and does not take into account industry-sponsored PhD programs like the one you mention.
    • gambiting 12y ago
      http://digitalinstitute.ncl.ac.uk/centre-for-doctoral-training-in-cloud-computing-for-big-data-announced/ http://digitalinstitute.ncl.ac.uk/centre-for-doctoral-traini... And also the email we've been sent directly by the university: We’re delighted to announce that we have been awarded an EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Cloud Computing for Big Data. This new multi-million pound initiative will train the next generation of experts in the analysis of "big data" using the latest cloud computing technologies and statistical techniques. People with these skills are in such demand that the Centre is being heavily backed by industry worldwide (including Microsoft, Red Hat and IBM); companies will work with us on the training, and provide placements during the PhD. Some additional details are included in the University Press Release: http://t.co/5HvBUhhZ1t http://t.co/5HvBUhhZ1t We have eleven fully funded, four year PhD studentships available for home (including EU) students to start in October 2014. These fully cover both the fees, and living expenses (no loans or debts are needed). We are recruiting students from both Computing Science and Mathematics/Statistics backgrounds and providing an intensive course of interdisciplinary training during Year 1 of the four year PhD programme. Students from a CS background will be trained in advanced cloud computing and statistical skills during year 1, beginning with a crash course in "Statistics for Computer Scientists" in October. Students will then work on a PhD research project. As well as working with closely with industry, the course will also teach and support students interested in setting up their own company. We can provide full funding (fees plus living expenses) for students expected to gain a II(i) or First who meet the usual Home fee status regulations (contact us if you are not sure). If you would like to register an interest in this programme, or ask any questions, please send an email to bigdata-cdt-enquiries@ncl.ac.uk containing your full name, stage, degree programme, fee status and predicted degree classification. In the case of a predicted degree classification of II(i), please also include a predicted final average. Students registering an interest will be sent further details about the programme, including information on how to apply, as soon as applications formally opens.
• marc0 12y ago
  Scientist here who managed to get out of the science trap: Prof Katz is totally right. I started a great career as string theorist, postoc at several elite universities, international lectures and talks, wrote a book, appeared on TV etc etc ... and then didn't get a professorship (at least not on a reasonable time scale). Tried scientific management for a while, but that was too depressing. So, in my late thirties (!) I went into automotive industry, working on self-driving cars, having a fantastic and cool job with a salary I could only dream of a few years ago. I wouldn't have wanted to miss large parts of my scientific career. But I really regret my excursion into scientific management. I should have switched careers five years earlier. My advise to young scientists: define some aims and a time scale, and if you don't meet them (i.e. get a tenured job), say good-bye. There is nothing to regret. Don't believe those professors, friends of yours, who promise you a position next year or in two or in three ...
• deleted 12y ago
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• harmonicon 12y ago
  So the constant cry by the government for better STEM programs is just a sham? It should be just renamed to TEM.
• totmann 12y ago
  Here's another similar article. http://rense.com/general88/cold.htm http://rense.com/general88/cold.htm