
Don't Become a Scientist (1999) - geekam
http://wuphys.wustl.edu/~katz/scientist.html
======
dnautics
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-
nanopartic...](https://raphazlab.wordpress.com/2012/11/23/stripy-
nanoparticles-revisited/)

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
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.

~~~
dnautics
I don't think its a "social skills selects orthogonally" problem. Its a "to
want this job selects for low intelligence" problem. One of the
counterexamples I have in mind chose to pursue the alternative despite being
brilliant because as a professor she wound up in a place where the red tape
was unbearable and the median quality of postdoc and grad student she was
getting was impossibly low to achieve reasonable results, but like I said, I
think she is an exception and she rails about the difficulties she has as an
administrator (but at least it pays better than professor)

------
philip1209
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-
edito...](http://www.studlife.com/forum/2009/10/28/letter-to-the-editor-
jonathan-katz/)

~~~
michaelochurch
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
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
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.

------
ColinWright
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
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
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
> 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.

------
danieltillett
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
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
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
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.

~~~
amirmc
If I were independently wealthy, an adjunct professorship would be pretty
appealing (in the right institution). Getting frontline access to very smart
people working on potentially world-changing problems while having very few
hard responsibilities/commitments (lectures, committees, etc) seems like a
nice way to work. Being independently wealthy is a pre-requisite as the
institution offers nothing but access.

~~~
danieltillett
I agree - it is a pity I was not born to really wealthy parents.

There was a paper in Science about 15 years ago that was on how the
independently wealthy worked in science that was really interesting (I might
see if I can find it online).

If we go back to the foundations of science all scientist were just wealthy
dilettantes :)

Edit. Found it - actually it was from 16 years ago :P

[http://www.sciencemag.org/content/279/5348/178.summary?sid=7...](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/279/5348/178.summary?sid=7c3cb97a-7522-4cc8-9cb7-ee68c72007c1)

~~~
cli
Thank you very much for linking this article.

------
msvan
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
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.

~~~
eshvk
> Programming leads to some serious concentrated rewards, while science leads
> only to dispersed rewards.

Can you explain what you mean by this?

~~~
UK-AL
He means science is a public good, everybody wins when a scientist discovers
some knowledge/cure/whatever.

~~~
nagrom
But the scientist generally wins less than a programmer who has a moderately
good year making a website to help people find other people who would like to
walk their dog.

~~~
marcosdumay
It's almost impossible to sell a public good. A career that focus on them will
inevitably get less monetary rewards than one that focus on excludable ones.

A scientist gets less money than a programmer because despite creating much
more total wealth on average[1], nobody needs to pay to get a share of the
results, thus nobody has much of an incentive to pay.

As a related concept, life ain't fair.

[1] Does he really? I'm going with the common opinion, but I'd love to see
data on that.

------
dekhn
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
>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
But how would you have determined what projects were worth funding?

------
Balgair
" 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
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
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
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.

~~~
Balgair
Wow, thank you for the advice, I do appreciate it!

I'm going to push back on you though. Having to skip out on your life and
family to satisfy an advisor who "sets expectations so high that they
literally cannot be met" is NOT ok. I have done this to myself and family
before as well, and am old enough now to know that it is WAY unhealthy and
detrimental to the work over the long term of months.

Honestly, it sounds like you are kinda Munchhausen-syndroming here. I mean,
bravo for sticking with it and having the hardihood, but... dude.... wake up.
Your advisor seems to be an ass. If they ride you this hard and trivialize all
the hard work it is not helping you be a scientist, it's helping them further
their career. You are getting screwed here.

Also, you seem to be very confused as to why you are doing this. You claim to
not have a life outside of grad school and yet your life in grad school is
terrible. You claim to love what you are doing but only after years of
struggle and browbeating. From what little data you have shared (and thank you
for doing so, I do appreciate it) you seem resigned. You advisor is not going
to give you a good letter of recommendation. You indicate your science is not
good enough for your advisor and do not refute this. You claim to be selfish
but care about missing out on family and friends. You state your advisor is
trying to make you a better scientist, but only discovered so after 5 years of
their bad treatment. What is your plan? What are you going to do with your
life? If this is what science is doing to you, you might want to reconsider.
You seem miserable.

Back to the quotes; my problem was that he is self selecting out the good
students. You advisor is a person you should trust. Writing an article like
this sends out big red flags to anyone maybe thinking of working with him. I'd
never work with the guy because I know for a fact he is a bad investment. If
he had any students at the time of the writing, he just threw them all under
the bus, along with most of his co-professor's students. He tarnished the
reputations of his lab, department, and school by saying those things. Mostly
he tarnished his own reputation.

~~~
javert
Thanks a lot for your comments. You are insanely good at reading between the
lines.

I don't let it get me down that my adviser doesn't give me that much approval,
because I'm not in it to get his approval. I also don't let it get me down
that he doesn't think my work is that much of a contribution, because I
genuinely do believe it is.

I did let that stuff get me down for a long time, so I have been miserable
part of the time, but I have learned an important life lesson about not
letting your own self-esteem come from other people's standards. You have to
set your own standards and do your own thinking and evaluation. This is true
in all areas of life, but it's super important for self-esteem.

I don't think my adviser is just using me to help his career. He's too
established to need that. It's just not a factor. That is definitely something
to look out for in academia but not all professors are that
hardcore/machiavellian.

Your questions may have been purely rhetorical, but in case not, my plan is to
finish my doctorate and then most likely go on to become a practicing (i.e.
non-academic) computer scientist.

I do think all this is worth it in terms of not spending much time with my
family (I mean my parents' generation, as I'm not married and have no kids) on
holidays. It would have been a much larger tradeoff if I had had much social
(friends/romantic) prospects, but I don't think I really would have done much
better outside of grad school (my best years are still ahead of me in all that
kind of stuff). And I do have some really good colleagues that basically are
friends, AND I get to do real computer science full time, which is basically a
dream come true.

~~~
Balgair
" You have to set your own standards and do your own thinking and evaluation.
This is true in all areas of life, but it's super important for self-esteem."

I agree and also struggle with this. Many times I put others opinions of me in
front of my own. I need to work on it, but I don't have any clue where to
start. If you know of any strategies, I'm all ears.

Do remember to watch out for recommendations though. Having an advisor that
thinks little of you can and does hurt your chances at jobs. Especially for a
PhD candidate, they will be looking to you as a senior role and likely will
ask for recommendations. Make sure to have friends that can vouch for you that
make sense to a hiring manager. You need to weave a good reason you are using
some friend and not your advisor. I know it seems silly, considering what I
just said about external self-esteem, but cover your bases.

I am envious of you a bit. I wish I could love programming as much as you seem
to. I struggle a lot with the logic and basic concepts. I hate doing it, but
since I am willing to, I get the job a lot. Also, the dyslexia makes bug
finding an impossibly frustrating job. ';' and ':' look just the same to me.

Lastly, thank you for the compliment. "You are insanely good at reading
between the lines." At least, I hope it was. Wait, I'll keep my self-esteem
and think of it only as such.

~~~
javert
I think when we are little children we learn that when our parents or other
adults tell us we are good, we are good, and when they tell us we are bad, we
are bad.

For the kinds of things that a child deals with, they were possibly or
probably accurate most of the time (unless your parents were alcoholics or
something---and one of mine was; then you get told or treated as "bad" all the
time).

So your brain just learns to operate this way, until you retrain it.

And retrain it, you must. Because the kinds of things adults deal with are
much more complicated, plus some adults take advantage of others, are
dishonest, don't think things through thoroughly, make mistakes, etc. So if
you don't retrain your brain in this regard, you will constantly get
"punished" by other adults judging you negatively.

The question is, how to retrain it? In a nutshell, I think the answer is: it
just happens automatically by consciously thinking about this issue every time
it is relevant. e.g. when my adviser says something that threatens my self-
esteem, I remember the principle that his judgement may not be correct, and
that it should not affect my self-esteem, and then come up with my own honest,
meticulous judgement, which should and does affect my self-esteem. (If you
aren't "honest" and "meticulous", you won't really trust your own judgement,
so it won't sink in and the whole technique won't work.)

Those are my thouhgts/strategies, hope it's helpful.

I appreciate your point about recommendations. My adviser's judgement _does_
matter for that, just not for my self-esteem, and you have to separate the
two, because they _are_ different things. I think I'll probably be OK on the
merit of eventually publishing the code I am working on (plus some more
papers), which will mean more than anything my adviser could say for the kind
of work I want to potentially do (though I might actually just totally change
fields after I graduate [1]).

And don't worry, if you keep looking and refuse to give up, changes are very,
very high that you will find something as fulfilling as programming could have
been, had you actually enjoyed it more. I guess you've already figured this
out though since you mentioned planning to study neurosci.

[1] Because the kind of programming I like doing is really cutitng edge and
research-y. I like solving really challenging problems slowly and carefully
and thoroughly. Not sure I'll find this in industry and not sure I could live
with "just normal" programming.

------
swuecho
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.

------
jonathansizz
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
I don't think it works like that because public grants are not a free-market
phenomenon.

~~~
patkai
Key observation.

------
frik
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)

------
marc0
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 ...

------
geekam
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)?

~~~
RK
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.

~~~
pavanred
I interviewed recently for a Data Engineer position in Chicago and was
surprised when 2 interviewers from the data team introduced themselves as
astrophysicists. They reasoned that they weren't happy with the career path in
academia and so found a way out.

~~~
Bahamut
It's becoming more common as far as I can tell - I also left academia
(mathematics) since academia is less about the work you do now. My brother
stuck it out and finished his PhD in chemistry, but he too bolted from
academia since he hated it as well (and that is with the fortune of having a
high reputation thesis advisor, but who milked him for as many papers as he
could before my brother threatened to just up and leave) - he's now a senior
engineer at Samsung.

The academic landscape is just poor these days - it is a pretty brutal world
to operate in.

------
Create
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-
stud...](http://ombuds.web.cern.ch/blog/2013/06/lets-not-confuse-students-and-
fellows-missing-staff)

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-...](http://staff-
association.web.cern.ch/content/unsatisfactory-contract-policy)

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-
rese...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/04/is-us-biomedical-research-
heading-for-a-breakdown/)

------
gambiting
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.

~~~
waltherg
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
[http://digitalinstitute.ncl.ac.uk/centre-for-doctoral-
traini...](http://digitalinstitute.ncl.ac.uk/centre-for-doctoral-training-in-
cloud-computing-for-big-data-announced/)

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.

------
lumberjack
Does anyone know how the situation in Europe compares for post grads in Math,
Physics and CS?

~~~
sprash
It is pretty simple to get a permanent position in Physics here. All you need
is a vagina.

~~~
dang
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.

------
agentultra
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
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.

------
javert
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
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
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
Feynman had an offer from IAS which he declined for the reasons discussed
above.

~~~
danieltillett
I am aware of this - hence the :)

I do think it is more of an issue with the individual than the nature of IAS
as great collaborative work was done by people there.

------
yaketysax
"Leave graduate school to people from India and China, for whom the prospects
at home are even worse."

Even worse in terms of what?

~~~
IvyMike
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...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_GDP_of_the_People's_Republic_of_China)

~~~
swuecho
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
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.

------
shoo
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-
Professiona...](http://www.amazon.com/Disciplined-Minds-Critical-
Professionals-Soul-battering/dp/0742516857)

------
logicallee
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
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.

------
dydx
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)

~~~
bpodgursky
Let's please evaluate the current article on its own merits. I'm really tired
of the new witch-hunt-as-acceptable mentality on here and the news.

It's frustrating reading the comments and seeing it filled with complaints
about unrelated articles by the same author.

~~~
foldr
I don't think it's entirely inappropriate in this case because this kind of
article is only of value if the author is basically trustworthy and sane. He's
not really reporting facts or making an argument so much as just reporting his
own experiences and opinions. That's fine but it does make his personal
credibility relevant.

------
XorNot
The exact advice I'd give to people today, having done just that.

------
totmann
Here's another similar article.
[http://rense.com/general88/cold.htm](http://rense.com/general88/cold.htm)

------
harmonicon
So the constant cry by the government for better STEM programs is just a sham?
It should be just renamed to TEM.

------
nutate
Read this in 1999. Still went to grad school in 2004 after working in .coms of
that era. No regrets.

------
abawany
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.

------
michaelochurch
_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
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.

~~~
hga
Well, one thing you can do is admit everyone who a colleague you know and
trust says can do research (what I've heard, quite logically, is the #1 way to
get into a good graduate program, after of course convincing a professor in
one to demand your admittance).

So the "schmucks" ... and I've known of one MIT professor who didn't get
tenure who was in that category (a friend tried to do research in her
laboratory and found it impossible, it was so badly run, something subsequent
events proved) ... are either false positives from the above metric or from
the cohort of department's best guesses after running out of them.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>Well, one thing you can do is admit everyone who a colleague you know and
trust says can do research

I always thought this was simply how you get into grad-school: do research in
undergrad, and have your research mentors write you letters of recommendation,
trusting their reputation to carry information the admissions committee will
understand and care about where grades and awards won't.

>So the "schmucks" ... and I've known of one MIT professor who didn't get
tenure who was in that category (a friend tried to do research in her
laboratory and found it impossible, it was so badly run, something subsequent
events proved) ... are either false positives from the above metric or from
the cohort of department's best guesses after running out of them.

Kinda. Politics become a problem, but it _is_ true that once you actually get
to the point of publishing papers, the _cap_ on your achievements disappears,
so you do, in some way, get career credit for doing more.

------
lvs
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...](http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyrft/2010/05/washington_university_jonathan_katz_deepwater_horizon_gulf_oil_spill_obama.php)

[http://wuphys.wustl.edu/~katz/defense.html](http://wuphys.wustl.edu/~katz/defense.html)

~~~
marvin
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
Both of these are questions of judgement and rational thinking. Should one
take career advice from a bigot? I leave it up to you.

------
bitwize
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
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.

~~~
sagichmal
This is a very... optimistic view of the value that a Ph.D. confers.

