
Excellence R Us: University Research and the Fetishisation of Excellence - brahmwg
https://figshare.com/articles/Excellence_R_Us_University_Research_and_the_Fetishisation_of_Excellence/3413821
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curveship
Gotta love footnote 1, about the ordering of author names :)

> 1\. In keeping with our argument, and following in an extensive tradition of
> subverting traditional scarce markers of prestige, the authors have adopted
> a redistributive approach to the order of their names in the byline. As an
> international collaboration of uniformly nice people (cf. Moran, Hoover, and
> Bestiale 2016; Hoover, Posch, and Bestiale 1987; Hoover et al. 1988; see
> Tartamelia 2014 for an explanation), lacking access to a croquet field (cf.
> Hassell and May 1974), and not identifying any excellent pun to be made from
> ordering our names (cf. Alpher, Bethe, and Gamow 1948; Lord, de Vader, and
> Alliger 1986), we elected to assign index numbers based on alphabetical
> ordering by surname and to randomise these using an online tool. For the
> avoidance of doubt, while several of the authors have pets none of them are
> included as authors (cf. Matzinger and Mirkwood 1978). None of us are
> approaching a tenure decision (cf. Roderick and Gillespie 1998). And none of
> us are fictional entities who generate their papers algorithmically using
> SciGen (see Labbé 2010 for the contrasting case of Ike Antkare nevertheless
> greatly outranked all of the authors on several formal measures of
> excellence before he [it?] was outed).

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jboggan
This reminds me of the time in my doctoral program when I turned in a draft
journal article to my advisor. He returned it a week later with no marks or
written commentary whatsoever, other than telling me "do it again." I asked
what was wrong with it and what I needed to do differently on the next draft.
He replied "this isn't excellent. Don't give it back to me until it's
excellent." I asked what excellence entailed and he said "you just know."

People ask me if I learned anything in grad school.

~~~
robotresearcher
So did you? I'm not endorsing that minimal feedback technique, but it would
certainly make me think pretty hard about how to improve the paper. Bang-bang
control can work.

If you're the boss of any enterprise, and you want to make things good
('excellent') the first time, you only have your instincts and experience to
go on.

~~~
gwbas1c
But in the poster's context, "excellent" is a non-objective undefined term. In
an enterprise, the incentive is for you to define how your subordinates do
their jobs.

So, it's a different subject altogether.

This actually gets at what the paper describes as the problem with defining
what "excellence" means. (I read about half the paper.) Everyone defines it
differently, so excellence basically just means that it's judged well by
whoever is doing the judging.

~~~
robotresearcher
This is an old chestnut of a philosophical problem that many youngsters of my
generation first experienced in the form of 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance'.

There's no solving it. And yet we all know that differences in quality are
real. This is not an argument I want to engage in.

My question was, did the GP learn anything from being told 'not good enough,
do it again'? They imply not, but I bet they did.

I've learned lots of things that way. Grant proposals, job applications,
asking someone out on a date: lots of things you try out and don't get
feedback beyond 'nope'.

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beloch
An unfortunate fact about academia is that you do tend to be punished for
being overly honest. e.g. "Our lab is #1 in the world at X." usually
translates roughly to, "Our lab is doing X, and it's so bloody obscure and
masochistic that nobody else has bothered. Although what we're doing seems a
bit pointless, We hope it will prove useful for something eventually." Saying
the latter is honest, but won't get your grants renewed.

The really frustrating thing is when your lab is doing something that another
lab is doing better because you're trying to get into what looks like a really
interesting and useful area. Then you have to justify why you're the worst in
the world at Y but still deserve funding vs a lab that's #1 in the world at X.

~~~
throwawaysocks
_> The really frustrating thing is when your lab is doing something that
another lab is doing better because you're trying to get into what looks like
a really interesting and useful area. Then you have to justify why you're the
worst in the world at Y but still deserve funding vs a lab that's #1 in the
world at X._

...which more often than not leads to copious amounts of bullshit.

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neurotech1
I think "excellence" is about owning mistakes, not being 100% perfect 100% of
the time. Here is an interview with a former Blue Angel #8

 _One of the tenets we are taught as a Blue Angel is the ability to admit when
we 've made a mistake, or have not "achieved perfection." This is done in the
form of "Safeties." Each debrief is started by an around the room tally of
"safeties", starting with the Boss and working down to the supply officer in
order. For example when it was my turn I might say "I'll take a safety for
late hits on the Low Break Cross and Fortus and an additional safety for an
early hit on the Delta Roll. I'll also pay $5 for not shaving before I went
downstairs for a coffee and I'll pay $5 for a zipper. I'll fix it tomorrow,
Glad to Be Here." This is essentially telling the Team that I made mistakes on
3 maneuvers and also recognize I violated policy by being in public unshaven
and for having a zipper on my flight suit unzipped. Since the latter two are
policy violations, they cost me $5. The essence of my mistakes is not
important, that will come out during the meat of the tape review during the
debrief, but the fact that I recognized them and owned up to them IS
important._

[http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/confessions-of-a-us-navy-
bl...](http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/confessions-of-a-us-navy-blue-
angel-1689568343)

~~~
gwbas1c
Did you read the paper? The first section deals with the fact that
"excellence" essentially has no definition, because every group, or every
evaluator, has a different opinion of what "excellence" means.

In this paper, "excellence" is specifically defined as a "Boundary Object."

From
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_object](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_object),
"In sociology, a boundary object is information, such as specimens, field
notes, and maps, used in different ways by different communities. Boundary
objects are plastic, interpreted differently across communities but with
enough immutable content to maintain integrity."

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jimmytidey
When I worked at the BBC we were told that the new motto was "Putting quality
first".

Someone asked what we were putting first before, and what we should be putting
second in future.

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rubidium
I'll admit I started skimming after pg. 15, but this paper is mainly an
argument for using "excellence" in academia (and particularly publishing
articles).

While I don't disagree, the paper falls flat to me because:

1) Journals are usually judging by first "interest to the broader academic
community" and then "technical accuracy" not "excellence".

2) There wasn't any new data presented. Citations to prior work, but even then
it was just an argument of statements not fact.

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lovemenot
>> “Excellence” is not excellent, it is a pernicious and dangerous rhetoric
that undermines the very foundations of good research and scholarship.

That's one person's opinion: one that I happen to agree with. Yet the faux-
objectivity in the style and language of this paper ironically apes usage of
the term; exactly in the manner they purport to condemn.

You did not come close to proving that "excellence" is pernicious. So don't
write like this is science. It is just (in my opinion) a sound and interesting
opinion

~~~
astazangasta
I like this comment, and I'd like to deplore the ongoing charade that science
is uncovering truth through an objective process (the purpose of the aseptic,
toneless writing style of scientific publication), rather than just creating
more stupid, boring human idealizations of reality. For fuck's sake, why did
we spend all of the twentieth century tearing down God, dogma, and the notion
of a unitary truth only to conduct the same debased worship in the church of
Science?

~~~
marcosdumay
> rather than just creating more stupid, boring human idealizations of
> reality.

stupid, boring, _useful_ idealizations of reality.

Let's not forget the one feature that makes it powerful and molded our current
society.

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astazangasta
This is along the lines of a train I have been on for the past week or so,
fulminating about institutionalization of authority. Reification is death - so
much of what we do is taking organic, living masses dripping with pus and
nutrients and clean them down to bone. "This is the essence!" we say, holding
up this dead thing. Then we get surprised that our dead system has all sorts
of deficiencies - abuse of power, incompetent dunderheadedness, fraud, deceit.

------
kingkawn
Any word made to embody an ideal quickly won't.

------
cameronneylon
Hi, I'm one of the authors of this piece. This is just a note to say thanks
for the comments. For some context this is what we call a "preprint" (terrible
term) of an article which has been submitted for peer review at a research
journal. That means that we'll be able to make changes based on comments from
reviews by appointed researchers as well as in response to the comments here.
In particular your comments are useful in suggesting some changes in how we
signpost our argument to make it clearer.

The article is in "academic-ese" and that's deliberate, if understandably
irritating to a more general audience. We're targeting a specific audience,
and we'll have a shorter and snappier version as well for the final version.
As people here know well, the pitch has to be shaped to fit the audience and
here we trying to change (a specific kind of) researchers' minds.

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rspeer
Direct link to the PDF, in case you don't want to scroll a letterboxed view
across pages that are swaying for some reason:
[https://ndownloader.figshare.com/files/5344417](https://ndownloader.figshare.com/files/5344417)

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lardo
Thirty-eight pages and the phrase "most excellent" does not make a single
appearance.

~~~
cameronneylon
As one of the authors of this I can confirm that this terrible oversight will
be fixed in the final published version.

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lewis500
Is it a coincidence that none of the authors has a prestigious academic
position?

