
Something Deeply Wrong with Chemistry (2010) - andrewdon
http://www.chemistry-blog.com/2010/06/22/something-deeply-wrong-with-chemistry/
======
pjlegato
The root problem is shown in this graph[1]. Simply put, since the 1960s,
expanded funding for higher education in the US has vastly increased the
supply of PhDs, while the number of job positions open for professors has not
significantly increased.

"PhDs issued" grows exponentially (since each professor can issue PhDs to
multiple students), but "job offers" grows only linearly.

This supply and demand imbalance tilts the power balance almost 100% in favor
of the professor in any interaction with grad students. Professors have
acquired essentially unlimited and arbitrary power to dictate conditions, and
grad students have no choice but to comply or leave academia -- throwing away
a lifetime of work and preparation.

More at
[http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v31/n10/full/nbt.2706.html](http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v31/n10/full/nbt.2706.html)

[1]
[http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v31/n10/images/nbt.2706-F1...](http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v31/n10/images/nbt.2706-F1.jpg)

~~~
benwr
I agree with your first paragraph, but the second one doesn't make sense: Only
professors with jobs can be PhD advisors, therefore the jobless PhD's don't
increase the rate of PhD granting.

~~~
anbende
True, it's merely a much faster rate, rather that a compounding effect.

------
yomly
The problem with academic science is threefold:

1: you are expected to feel privileged for doing something you vaguely enjoy.
(how many people actually enjoy running columns and NMRs at 12am?)

2: you are expected to be altruistic in your ambitions. Curse those vaguely
better paid lizard people who are working in industry to forward some
profiteering enterprise rather than "science"

3: there are huge barriers to entry (tech excluded) so you will not do
something entrepreneurial and make a name for yourself without the university.
To make sure of this, we will name claim on anything you do for the next 10+
years anyway.

It's no wonder to me that many of the talented people. Leave to go do banking
or consulting - they work less for more!!

~~~
cshimmin
1\. That's like saying you couldn't possibly be passionate about cooking a big
fancy meal because nobody really enjoys doing the dishes afterwards. If you're
not passionate enough about chemistry/cooking to run NMR/do dishes, you're in
the wrong place anyways. So you shouldn't worry about "feeling privileged",
you should just do yourself a favor and get out.

2\. Many forms of basic science cannot be done in industry. Take my field,
high energy physics for example... there's only one supergiant particle
smasher in the world and it's not owned by IBM. Anyways doing public science
may or may not be altruistic, but I don't see that as a problem of science. In
my case I just _actually_ enjoy what I'm doing (see 1) any benefits for the
public good are just a bonus.

3\. Entrepreneurial options vary pretty widely depending on the field.
Regardless, I don't think most people get into science with the master plan
that they will make a magical new discovery and then sell it and become a
billionaire. If that's your plan, again you're doing it wrong.

Also a lot of people you find in the sciences simply aren't that motivated by
money. Many of the ones who go into banking either found out along the way
that they weren't into it. Or regrettably often, they just got forced out of
their field by competition so had to take a fat paycheck and boring job as a
consolation prize.

~~~
rayiner
You've accurately described the status quo, but I'm not sure you've presented
a good justification for it. There is no reason to believe the folks motivated
by money are any less talented than the folks that aren't motivated by money.
If science excludes people who don't want to work long hours for low pay,
that's probably detrimental to society.

~~~
cshimmin
Hey, as a scientist, if you want to throw more money at science (to attract
the population of talented people who are also money-motivated), I'm all for
it! It would be interesting to see if it would "trickle down" and make the
research better.

It would also be interesting to see if you get an influx of grifters chasing
after a piece of the pie, resulting in lower-quality science ("Trump
laboratories! We have the best tubes, and we have the best numbers! You're
gonna really love our science, buh-lieve me.").

Not saying I really think that's what would happen. But at least with the way
things are right now, the only cheaters in science are usually after some kind
of bizarre notion of obscure fame/glory (see e.g. [1]). And they are rather
rare.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%B6n_scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%B6n_scandal)

~~~
yomly
10/10 times I would rather scientists conducting nebulous research than
crunching spreadsheets for a bank.

The point is you have a pool of people who are talented and can do things that
other people can't, they're contributing more to society than most and they're
expected to do this for free.

~~~
sseagull
I've always thought of it as the economy will always take advantage of people
who enjoy doing something like this. Ie, If you love science, you may be
willing to take a lower wage. Eventually, it becomes very exploitative, with
long hours and lower wages "just because" it's something you enjoy (even
though it is quite beneficial to society).

I wonder if there is a term/concept for this in economics or sociology. I've
been looking to nail down the idea a bit.

~~~
projektir
That doesn't make sense. Science can have huge contributions, and any decent
capitalistic system must reward that. If you have people working for poor
wages while doing important things, it means the wrong group of people got too
much power.

~~~
throw_away_777
People get paid for work they do that generates profit for the people paying
them to do the work. Science, by its very nature, benefits society as a whole
as opposed to the people who pay for the science. Patents are designed to
correct this somewhat, but often aren't really enforceable. Most companies
also don't have the lifetime to benefit from long-term moon-shot projects.
When companies do promote science, they usually have a monopoly (for example
Bell Labs).

Also, the supply-side of the equation is very important. There are plenty of
people willing to be graduate students and post-docs for low pay, so they
won't get paid much even if the work they do is important. This is made worse
by the huge number of foreign workers who are willing to work for peanuts as
postdocs and graduate students, see: [https://psmag.com/the-real-science-
gap-f00edae57ba1#.pbo4crt...](https://psmag.com/the-real-science-
gap-f00edae57ba1#.pbo4crti7).

------
guelo
It's a violation of labor laws. Universities argue that they can bypass labor
laws by calling it education but there have been some recent rulings against
that argument in postdoc unionization cases.

~~~
dnautics
Sure, this kind of pressure from an advisor breaks labor laws, but a postdoc
is going to do this _anyways_ because their contract is short-term, and if
they don't rack up an achivement in that time, they're either have to be 1)
lucky 2) a superstar, or 3) going to be kicked to the curb in terms of finding
future employment.

Science is often not something you can arbitrarily knock down into a 9-5. E.G:
The enzyme assay has to get done after you prep, and the prep is an 8 hour
block of time after your cells are ready, and you have to do 10 hours of
enzyme kinetic work... So you stay up all night. And it took you 10 months to
figure out that this is the correct procedure, and now you have one year left
in your contract, and you probably ought to be publishing and getting ready to
give lectures for academic positions... So that's a straight month of 6 nights
a week 100 hour a week work.

You hold postdocs strictly to labor laws, and they are going to be at a
disadvantage to the postdocs that are crazy enough to do _what needs to be
done_. You hold all postdocs strictly to labor laws, and hard science _simply
doesn 't happen_.

~~~
sndean
> You hold postdocs strictly to labor laws, and they are going to be at a
> disadvantage to the postdocs that are crazy enough to do what needs to be
> done. You hold all postdocs strictly to labor laws, and hard science simply
> doesn't happen.

I experienced this as a grad student, too. You essentially were at a
disadvantage if you had a social life.

But you can extend this all the way down to high schoolers (or before?), where
the kids out partying/socializing would be at a disadvantage to the kid
studying alone in his room.

~~~
Someone
All the way down to kindergarten. [http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-
china-schools-6ccb...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-china-
schools-6ccb7bea-5fe2-11e6-8e45-477372e89d78-20160811-story.html):

 _" When Doudou Wong from Shanghai was four, she began attending additional
math, Chinese, and English classes outside of her weekday kindergarten"_

~~~
pjlegato
And the worst part: This sort of draconian training regimen doesn't even work.
If it did, China would have far more Nobel Prizes than it does.

~~~
yyhhsj0521
It works [1]. The problem is that Nobel Prize has little to do with
kindergarten and average people.

[1]
[https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/dec/03/pisa-r...](https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/dec/03/pisa-
results-country-best-reading-maths-science)

~~~
Noseshine
Test scores are a strange definition of "it works" in the given context.

------
akiselev
I'm not surprised in the slightest. Caltech has a reputation as one of the
best research universities in the world and getting a degree or doing research
there requires a lot of work because it's so competitive. I've spent many
nights as a kid running around Caltech in the dark while my mother worked on
her experiments till midnight or later (all of the turtles come out at
night!). Publish or perish goes tenfold for the elite schools which have a
never ending supply of talented postdocs.

Though I'm not surprised that this letter came from someone in the chemistry
department. ChemE especially has a reputation within Caltech as one of the
most difficult paths for both undergraduate and graduate work. The ChemE
specific classes usually require a much bigger time commitment and the tests
are notoriously difficult.

~~~
saryant
I used to be in a long-term relationship with a chem undergrad at Caltech. I
saw her all-nighters and stress first-hand. The workload drove her to
attempted suicide (and had she gone through with it, hardly would've been the
first suicide at Caltech).

We split up and it took years for both of us to recover.

------
jostmey
Hacker news has seen a lot of posts on this subject. The usual advice is to
work in industry, where people are apparently treated like human beings. I am
sure this is true, but the advice isn't helpful to me.

Society benefits from scientific research. Dismiss its wage problems at your
own peril. Sadly, a lot of research is outsourced to universities because
labor is cheap. Why pay someone loads of money when you can contract with a
university lab? It might be good in the short term, but the talent is leaving
research in search of greener pastures.

~~~
arcanus
> Dismiss its wage problems at your own peril.

It's far worse than this. In my field, even in industry I have had _far_ more
lucrative offers from quantitative hedge funds than any industrial research
labor. Let alone staying in academia, where it literally starts to become a
factor of four (or more) difference in salary between a postdoc and finance.

The only reason I did not bite is because I am fortunate enough to have no
college debt even after undergrad and phd. Most are not in a position to be so
picky.

~~~
jostmey
Don't count on your research job in industry remaining stable if it can be
outsourced to a university lab. The ceiling on your pay is that of a postdoc's
plus university overhead.

~~~
arcanus
> if it can be outsourced to a university lab

Thankfully, my work is sufficiently specialized and my background is strong
enough I am not easily replaced. However, like many on HN I'm not
representative of the general population and am certainly in a fortunate
position. I am on a 'tenure track' in an organization where proprietary work
and intellectual property I develop is legitimately valued.

But broadly, I agree. And I've seen some pretty horrific results along the
lines you alluded occur to several of my colleagues.

------
throw_away_777
This problem is very much prevalent in physics too. The mentioned article
[https://psmag.com/the-real-science-
gap-f00edae57ba1#.tlnbcqb...](https://psmag.com/the-real-science-
gap-f00edae57ba1#.tlnbcqbco) is well worth reading.

I am currently transitioning from academia to industry, having just recently
finished a PhD in high energy physics (looking for a job in data science).
When I mention the lack of a job market in academia as a reason I am
transitioning, people don't understand and look at me funny. If anyone is
young and thinking of going into high energy physics, do yourself a favor and
just don't. The glut of postdocs needed by the LHC, combined with the terrible
failure of the SSC, has created a particularly terrible job market for high
energy physicists in the US.

------
rdtsc
My friend quit his postdoc in biochemistry over this shit. The head of the lab
was abusive toward him, but mostly toward international students. Was treating
them terribly, similar expectations regarding work "ethics", combined with
threats regarding deportation and so on.

~~~
IndianAstronaut
>combined with threats regarding deportation and so on.

People complain about H1Bs, but the situation faced by international postdocs
is far worse.

------
x1798DE
From what I can tell, this is much more common in synthetic labs than physical
or analytical labs. I think most of the physical chemists I knew in two
different universities worked fairly normal hours, the labs were mostly empty
on nights and weekends.

~~~
sseagull
Computational chemist here: I agree. I still put in long hours sometimes, but
my "lab" is just one ssh away, so hours actually in the office are a bit
flexible.

~~~
x1798DE
That may certainly be true, but I wasn't just talking about in-office hours -
the labs I'm talking about were hardware type labs (instrumentation, laser
labs, that sort of thing). It's possible everyone was just going home to do
data processing, but I got the impression that people worked maybe 40-60
hours/week mostly depending on what their teaching load was like and whether
there were unusal time-sensitive demands on their experiments.

------
jknoepfler
This reads like someone complaining about the time requirements to be a member
of a top athletic club or top kitchen or top theatre or any other highly
demanding discipline.

The only way this behaviour would be "wrong" is if candidates were mislead
when they entered about what would be expected of them.

If you aren't willing to sacrifice, then don't. You can make a rational choice
and walk away with your pride and future intact. But don't pretend someone was
wronging you by asking you to sacrifice.

~~~
pjlegato
It is indeed partially true that doing high level work simply requires
extended hours and unusual dedication to achieve anything. However, that is
not what is primarily at work here.

The main factor is a sort of culturally normative and ingrained rite of
passage / hazing ritual / bullying / dominance effect, which primarily serves
to inflate the boss professor's ego at the expense of the grad students.
Getting a PhD was difficult and grueling for the professor, so they are damn
sure going to make sure it's difficult and grueling for their own students.

The only way they themselves got through it was internalizing the attitude
that a grueling work and study schedule is simply normal and simply the price
of success.

This exercise of extreme and essentially arbitrary power over how the students
live their lives, far beyond what any normal job could remotely require, is
very gratifying to many professors. They've worked so hard, suffered
themselves, and now THEY have this absurd power over others.. It makes them
feel important and powerful at a very primal level to tell their students they
have to live under these extraordinary conditions, and then see them obey.

They can literally choose whose career will live and whose will die, whose
dreams will happen and whose will be broken and swept away without a thought.

To fix this, the professors need to have a lot less arbitrary power over their
students. There needs to be another route to a PhD besides enduring poverty
and years of ritual self-humiliation and long form ass-kissing. Only then will
the culture shift, as the "grind mode" professors are replaced by new
professors who didn't have to grind.

------
WhoBeI
Isn't this involuntary servitude? That's how I see it anyways. Whenever you
are expected, and in this case required, to work against your will and for,
I'm assuming, no pay under the threat of losing your livelihood it's
involuntary servitude.

Maybe I'm wrong about the "no pay" but even then I would still consider it
involuntary.

~~~
anbende
Except that it is in no way involuntary. It's never against your will, and its
generally not for no pay. It's just long hours for low pay.

It's hard to see what you mean by involuntary here. It's a work for education
arrangement, and the amount of work is large, but people are free to leave.
It's a bad deal in a bad system, but its hardly involuntary.

~~~
pmoriarty
There's another term for it: wage slavery.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery)

~~~
icebraining
Wage slavery is about all waged labour, not just those which involve low pay
for long hours.

------
x1798DE
Headline should say [2010], though the thing the post is about is from 1996.

