
Academia is fucked-up. So why isn’t anyone doing something about it? (2017) - fouc
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2017/03/academia-is-fucked-up-so-why-isnt.html
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Escapado
Financial uncertainties, publish or parish culture and inappropriate
performance metrics seem like the perfect cocktail for depression and anxiety.
Probably why the rate of mental health issues for academics surges. I just
finished my masters in physics and while I like the romantic idea of
dedicating the next portion of my life to research and aim for a PhD, when I
think about it I also see all the sad, tired and stressed out faces of PhD
students and postdocs in my institute, most of them working well beyond
60hr/week, many of them having mental health issues and somehow everyone is
just accepting it. The companies I worked at part time during my studies,
while also putting some pressure on the workforce, have not shown this level
of dispair. I don't really know what to do and feel a little lost on the
subject. I just wish things were better in academia.

~~~
akvadrako
Why don't you pick up programming and do freelance work half the time, then
physics the rest? You can work on whatever you want with no pressure.

~~~
scottlocklin
That's the worst possible thing you can do. Citation: I did this.

~~~
alephu5
Why was it such a bad experience for you?

~~~
js8
Not OP, but I considered doing something similar.

I believe the problem is that you cannot well concentrate on either, constant
switching of completely different mental tasks will be very taxing.

Also, when you're "in the flow" in one area it's difficult to suddenly switch
to the other. So it's hard to manage that time split.

~~~
akvadrako
I try to do it in big chunks to minimize context switching; so 3 months making
money full-time, 9 months doing my own research.

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snaky
Michael Stonebraker (INGRES, Postgres, Vertica, VoltDB, SciDB - Turing Award
winner for fundamental contributions to the concepts and practices underlying
modern database systems - got a PhD in 1971 with zero publications, tenure
from Berkeley in 1976 with 5) about the same problem,
[https://youtu.be/DJFKl_5JTnA?t=14m17s](https://youtu.be/DJFKl_5JTnA?t=14m17s)

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MathematicalArt
People are doing things about it; it’s just that they are outside of the
system. You see countless articles, blog posts, and so forth about scientists
going rogue, biologists getting certifications to run labs out of their
garages, and individuals self-funding or even starting their own hedge funds
to fund the research they want to do. Most of that isn’t mainstream. The
future of academia is the academics, not the institution itself.

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haffi112
I once received an email from an academic in a field close to my field where
he offered 70$ for every time I would cite one of his papers. I never
responded to the email but I imagine that many would be tempted.

I can only imagine him showing off how influential his work was when he asks
for more grant money... maybe he was even funding this "campaign" of his with
leftover grant money as an investment...

I believe this to be a somewhat clear example of how measuring people can lead
to strange behaviour and rushed work at the cost of quality.

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fouc
This is the blog of theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder, she just
released a new book 'Lost in Math' where she describes just how bad things
have become. She ends up focusing more on Physics than general Academia in the
book due to pressure from her agent/editor. [0]

[0] [https://www.overcomingbias.com/2018/12/can-foundational-
phys...](https://www.overcomingbias.com/2018/12/can-foundational-physics-be-
saved.html#comment-4240946455)

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projectramo
Yes all these objective measures can easily be gamed.

The best solution is for a committee of disinterested objective people to make
a holistic decision based on their intuition and experience.

That way, nothing can go wrong.

~~~
pvarangot
How to maintain a healthy working scientific community that produces output
useful to the society that sustains it is not a black and white binary issue.
Your kind of attitude is what hardens dysfunctional structures because it just
spreads FUD to people who genuinely want to improve things without loosing
what's good of the current system.

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IshKebab
Well the publish or perish thing hasn't improved but there definitely are
improvements to the publishing model itself. There's more opposition to
Elsevier than ever, we have Arxiv, Sci-hub, OpenReview, and even some non-PDF
publications like distill.pub.

Granted, most of that only applies to a few fields. Still kind of sucked if
you are in medicine or engineering or whatever.

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hajderr
Isn't it that when money being the driving force, society shifts to hunters
for 'likes', and people as smart as they are move along the path of least
resistance will then as a consequence cause a disastrous situation? I agree
with the author that the measures should change. Also the method for accepting
new research candidates should be limited.

------
wallace_f
Thinking higher level: Human incentives are a dangerous thing, and it requires
brave people to stand up to them and their socioeconomic complexes, even if
those complexes will fail dramatically or kill people: see the NASA Groupthink
Challenger Disaster. Or how does the Red Cross raise half a billion dollars
for Haiti, and the money disappeared, having only built 6 homes[1]. Or when LA
officials stole tiny homes from the homeless that people gave them. Wouldn't
someone stand up and say 'wait a second, this isn't right, this isn't
acceptable in the modern world' the way we think it should work? Whenever
everyone talks about Nazi Germany, or Nanking, or religiois persecution in
Europe, or British subjugation of the Americans, etc... and we said Never
Again. And so we learn some lessons and make improvements, but then the
circumstances and types of tyrannies change a little bit, but we still keep
falling into these traps of being rotten humans.

But what I wonder about is if it's actually turned around and started getting
worse? We certainly signal a lot that we are _good_ today... but we have
always focused a lot on signalling that we are _good,_ it's just the trends
and fashions of what makes someone _good_ changes... Where are we actually
going?

1 - [https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross-
raised-...](https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross-raised-half-
a-billion-dollars-for-haiti-and-built-6-homes)

------
Fishysoup
It's very sad to see how normal people on the inside think this is. Even at
the Master's level, for many people this is a bragging competition for who
gets to sleep less and generally suffer more. That culture is completely
toxic.

That being said there are still labs where you can enjoy your PhD. You just
need to be very thorough when talking to PIs and people in each lab about what
life there is like.

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briantakita
There are a number of symptoms & causes to these issues. One root cause is the
systematic removal of the Philosophy of Science from scientific discourse.
Philosophy is crucial in correctly interpreting the meaning of truth,
identifying presuppositions, & relating models, results of experiments/studies
within the greater context (e.g. unknown unknowns) of reality.

~~~
jstewartmobile
From the interviews I've seen, Einstein and Feynman spent far more time
discussing philosophy than physics. And going by Newton's papers, every
worked-out fluxion could be accompanied by a dive into theology or the occult.

That being said, I doubt that's the missing element. I'd blame it on the fact
that most researchers are not free. They need the job; their peers also want
the job. The brain only has so many cycles. I don't see how anyone can do
their best work in a state of perpetual vigilance--so much backstabbing!

~~~
briantakita
Newton, Einstein, & Feynman are also dead. All three of these scientists were
connected to the upper echelons of society, had enormous cultural influence, &
designed their models based on a philosophy. I think you are referring to
lower level scientists who have to fit within the hegemonic framework. Same
thing happens in programming (e.g. corporations want React developers instead
of developers who can develop the most innovative & profitable idea).

Scientists used to be natural philosophers. Rigorous philosophical discussion
has been slowly removed from the sciences in favor of consensus & presenting a
unified political front. Pragmatics & predetermined social agendas has taken
over.

The synical side of me says: "this is by design. Science coopted to become a
tool of propaganda."

Giving the practitioners of Science the benefit of the doubt: "science is not
practiced in a cultural vacuum. We build models based on our common
understanding & interpret results based on our models."

~~~
jstewartmobile
Unfortunately, not a new situation. Nearly every insight which falls short of
total incontrovertible victory--from Semelweis to Yudkin--is an invitation to
a knee-capping by your peers.

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legatus
Needs a (2017) tag

