

Are You Doing Research? - lispython
http://extravagaria.com/wiki/pages/M7k9z7a/Are_You_Doing_Science.html

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wwalker3
I work in the R&D division of a microprocessor company. Most of what we do, I
would call "research", but not quite "science". We investigate things that are
too risky or time-consuming for our product design groups to look into, with
an eye towards making our company money in the future. We fund Ph.D. students
in electrical engineering and computer science at university labs, and
collaborate with them. But we don't (generally) push back the frontiers of
human knowledge in our day-to-day work.

Things might be different at (say) IBM Research Zürich, doing work on atomic
force microscopy, but that sort of thing seems to be the exception rather than
the rule in industrial R&D. I don't know if I would have expected to see
hardcore science at Sun Labs where the article writer's friend worked.

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kreilly
I like this as a definition of research in a corporate environment: "We
investigate things that are too risky or time-consuming for our product design
groups to look into, with an eye towards making our company money in the
future."

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Major_Grooves
Despite this, I know that a lot of professors in top labs do not like you to
do reading in the laboratory. Yes - they expect you to read academic papers
and know _everything_ \- but that is for your own time. When you are in the
lab you do experiments (my experience was in genetics/biology). In fact I knew
of a lab where you had to leave a note on your bench with your whereabouts if
you were going to be away for longer that 10 minutes. These were very
successful labs.

~~~
madhadron
They are successful in the sense that they get lots of grant money and the
professor has lots of political power in the field. They churn out papers.
Thinking back over my reading, though, I'd say they're underrepresented per
capita in producing really interesting science. What you are describing is
also a peculiarity of biology and some parts of chemistry. It doesn't work
that way in physics or in much of engineering.

However, if you're running a megalab and have lots of political clout, it's
very important to keep anyone from thinking carefully and trying to look for
inconsistencies. Academic empires fall from people doing things like that.

On the other hand, there were only a handful of professors at the Rockefeller
University, where I went to grad school, who I respected as scientists. One of
them had a Nobel prize. The rest didn't. The rest of the Nobel prize winners
in that campus lousy with them you could have defunded and put out to be
homeless on the streets and had no real effect on the advance of science.

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Agathos
A month at the bench can save you an hour in the library.

~~~
rozap
This is definitely a massive overstatement. I think it's true in almost any
industry, that the best results come from a balance of these things.

You don't get anywhere by doing and not thinking. You don't get anywhere by
thinking and not doing. Things like this don't have to be (and are not) black
and white.

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jmmcd
Research is not the same as science. This article is about research. The title
is wrong.

~~~
tferraz
I agree. Also , who starts a research without the faint idea of how and where
to look? Reading a book for me would be pre-research. At least in a company,
where we have r&D.

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babblingdweeb
Outside of a "traditional" lab setting...I don't see a conversation about
research on the "job" here.

I'm curious how some of you in a startup and non-startup handle employees
doing research. I'll give a quick example and then propose a personal problem
for those who want to skip my dribble. ;)

EXAMPLE: I've held various levels of IT positions at various companies. Great.
At times, you need to do more than just read a quick article or blog post, you
need to do some serious reading (and testing) if you are doing some major
changes. At times, this reading was met with dirty looks or snide remarks from
upper management, but I was lucky 90% of the time and my immediate boss would
back me up. For clarification, I would also spend hours reading (and testing)
at home.

I understand the thought of not paying someone in corporate to read, but at
some point, I think it should be reasonable to allow employees to read on the
job. How do you police it? That's a different conversation.

(unless you want to read personal dribble you can stop here)

Personal anecdote: in two different jobs I became the "go to" research person.
In one instance, I stopped coding, but I kept writing algorithms. Nothing at
all fancy. But my teammates loved it. One specific colleague and I worked
together regularly to come up with faster and cleaner ways to do some complex
business logic in our web applications. I'm not much of a sports person, but
everyone else was...my nickname was "special teams" and they would call me in
where there was a problem.

Sure, he could have done this on his own, but I worked better as a generalist,
a problem solver. I do not like coding for work, I love doing it on the side.
I was in heaven, so was he. Clients were happy.

The problem? There are not many jobs, at least that I can find, where I can
say "Yeah, I don't want to code, I just want to be your 'special teams' guy."
I mention this to say, be careful where research takes you. I might suggest
that you let it improve your skills or go full-research route. Sitting in
limbo between the two isn't pretty.

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lifebeyondfife
Based on the conditions listed at the end of the article, I think a lot of
people in academia aren't doing research/science. \--former scientist.

~~~
xaa
Truth. Real scientists spend most of their time writing grants.

~~~
lifebeyondfife
One of the reasons I left immediately after finishing my PhD. If I wanted to
jump endlessly from platform to platform, I had Sonic the Hedgehog for that.

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DigitalJack
Look at me still talking while there's science to do.

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Atrag
As someone that does research full time in an academic setting, I am happy to
hear someone talking about (and refuting) what I can imagine some companies
calling a "research" position. I agree with him on his points, and I hope this
drives home a point to some people who may be in a similar situation.

And, for the record, Richard Feynman did not do very much paper reading. I
know, I know, a very special case, but I had to say it...

~~~
lepacheco
Paper reading is one of the ways of learning what else is out there. You can
substitute that with talking to other people. Which Feynman did a lot, judging
from the stories in his books.

Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, it seems to actually be MUCH more
efficient (if you have smart people to talk to): trying to find the good
papers in the middle of the sea of publications/noise is a very time consuming
task.

~~~
ank286
Publications from reputable journals are easier to find than to find smart
people firsthand who are experts in the field.

~~~
imgabe
Unless of course you're Richard Feynman, and you happen to know them because
you all worked on the Manhattan Project together.

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ank286
A lot of research time is spent on finding that "aha!" moment, where you
everything you have thought of coalesces into a force that makes pursuing your
educated guess worthwhile.

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tehwalrus
this post IS my PhD. it feels very unproductive compared to my old real job,
but I wouldn't have written the piece of code I've just bashed out without all
the reading (often incomprehensible) books and coding the broken things I have
over the past 6 months.

I'm at my most "research productive" with a pen and paper in the cafeteria
after about a month of the right stimuli!

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javert
Does anybody know of a realistic way to pursue research (by this definition)
as a career, _without_ becoming a grant-seeking professor (I have moral qualms
about taking taxpayer money)?

For background, I'm getting a PhD in CS.

It seems like research labs are few and far between, and (unfortunately) I
can't stay a grad student forever.

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forinti
"I have moral qualms about taking taxpayer money"

That's strange. If you do your job properly, why shouldn't you get paid even
if it is by the taxpayer?

~~~
lifebeyondfife
Doing research for a company has the end goal of benefitting that companies'
shareholders. Doing research for a publicly funded institution has the end
goal of benefitting society.

Look at the decoding of the human genome. No company has a patent on that
because public institutions did it first.

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wwwtyro
Arguably, though, goals and results are two different things. "The road to
hell is paved with good intentions", and all that. What does the evidence say
about which benefits society more?

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HarryHirsch
A company works for its shareholders, which are a very restricted group, and
public funds work for society. Intuitively, the outcome is clear. It's also
supported by actual data: wages stopped rising in the US in the 1970s, while
productivity kept going up; this is correlated with the introduction of
concepts like "shareholder value".

~~~
wwwtyro
Google is a company that has produced tremendous benefit to society, in spite
of having shareholders.

~~~
javert
To add to the above: Pretty much all companies benefit society; it's hard to
think of counter-examples.

Sure, oil companies spill oil sometimes; but they (should) have to pay for
that.

Big telcos tend to have monopoly status, and exploit consumers, but they do
that not because they are companies, but because they are in a patron-client
relationship with the government.

Some companies produce tremendous benefit to society; others produce small
benefits, which matter a lot in the aggregate.

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philprx
not supporting unknown browsers by blocking just suck. Baaad website ;-)

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derleth
I'm interested in how they managed to cleanly remove the entire meat of the
blog post without damaging any other aspect of the site. Is JavaScript really
that ... _petty_ ... or did they have to work hard to achieve that effect?

Judging by what w3m and lynx show me, they're doing User-Agent sniffing to
serve up pages. Isn't that a violation of the Geneva Convention at this point?

~~~
solox3
"Your browser is not supported. The latest version of Safari, Chrome, Firefox
or Internet Explorer is required ..."

They have no good reason behind whitelisting browsers.

~~~
derleth
Also:

> The latest version of Safari, Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer is
> required

I see two browsers on a fairly fast release schedule. Do they really update
their User-Agent filter on Firefox's release cycle? On _Chrome's_ release
cycle? At that point, they might as well be specifying patch levels; pick a
minimum version and keep with it.

Or, you know, design a site up to modern standards, because if you absolutely
_need_ everything in the HTML5 spec to host a blog you might as well actually
_listen_ to a web dev once in a while.

