
Dear Academia, I loved you, but I’m leaving you (2014) - tacon
http://anothersb.blogspot.com/2014/04/dear-academia-i-loved-you-but-im.html
======
aluren
Regarding "literally everyone does it" (fishing for results, removing negative
ones, and so on): it's very true, and much more prevalent than what people
think. Even at top-level universities with big shots. _Especially_ at top-
level universities with big shots. I know someone, upon entering a lab to do
electronic microscopy, who found out that the image data her lab had written
multiple papers on very high-impact journals about (we're talking
Nature/Science here) could have easily been generated by dead cells instead of
living ones, i.e. they had been staring at artifacts for years to draw
conclusions on protein content, mechanisms, and so on. Of course, upon
learning this, her boss quickly set upon contacting the journals in question
to issue an apology and retract the relevant papers, thanked her for noticing
the mistake, and everything went back in order. Just kidding, he told her to
shut up if she wanted to keep her job.

Interesting fact: the majority of the impact factor values of big-name
journals (Nature, Science, Cell and co.) comes from a few select high-impact
papers. Most of the rest goes relatively uncited. The reason is, most of these
papers are not astounding but simply make it through the editorial system
because the big shots in charge of the labs know the editors. Not that these
papers themselves are devoid of merit (though I know my fair share of
Nat/Sci/Cell papers that happen to be 80-100% bunk), but they wouldn't have
made it to such highly selective journals otherwise. These journals also
happen to have an usually high retraction rate. I have friends working in the
aforementioned big-shot labs that are jaded to tte point that they just
dismiss most thing coming out of Science.

And that's just my area and that of people I know. Things go very awry in
medicine or anything related to cancer where the pressure is so high, the
field so competitive, the scientific questions so complicated, the experiments
so hard to reproduce and the incentives to publish so exacerbated (note that
medical journals generally have the highest impact factors). And I can't even
begin to imagine what goes on in psychology.

Plus, the pay is lousy.

~~~
v_lisivka
Science is not when you publish something. Science is when at least two
independent labs can reproduce your published result.

~~~
aldoushuxley001
Why two and not three or one?

~~~
daveguy
The more the better. You'd really need a statistically significant number of
labs repeating it to be sure. If the underlying study is scientifically sound
then a single repeat is good, two repeats is better. 20 repeats is even
better. Good luck getting 1 or 2, unless the study is an important work that
introduces a useful new technique or is the basis for additional studies. Also
good luck knowing whether 2 labs failed for every 1 published. Science is
hard. Reporting needs to be improved and there should be grants available to
fund repeat studies.

------
lgessler
Looks like this poster was in STEM. The situation's even more bleak in the
humanities--see for instance this Reddit thread[1]:

> The humanities PhD is still a vocational degree to prepare students for a
> career teaching in academia, and there are no jobs. Do not get a PhD in
> history.

[1]:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/96yf9h/monda...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/96yf9h/monday_methods_why_you_should_not_get_a_history/)

~~~
pasabagi
Wow, that's hard to read. I thought people who went into Literature had it
bad. It sometimes seems like the education sector is an experiment in how to
create a society with almost unlimited power to do things, and almost total
ignorance about what's a good idea.

~~~
anonymous5133
Academia lives in a world where people are willing to spend hundreds of
thousands to make themselves more knowledgeable in subjects which might have
no economic value in the world. Just look at how much of our undergrad
education consists "general education" type courses. While these courses are
interesting, most of them are pretty useless. I took Chinese history, Asian
american film, music history, art history and so on. All of these courses were
pretty much usless to me from an economic stand point.

I think we need to create two tiers of higher-education: one where people
focus purely on vocational/career skills while another where you can focus on
non-vocational subjects. Let students decide what their general education will
consist of instead of making it some top-down approach. People don't like
authoritarianism.

~~~
pasabagi
I think the problem is, that leads to a society that's a bit like a sports car
being driven by a nine-year-old. STEM and vocational stuff is great for
getting to places fast. It's awful for making a society that can talk
critically about where it's going.

I say talk, and not 'think', because I don't think STEM people are bad at
thinking about problems critically. I just think a lot of humanities is about
developing a common set of reference points, a common vocabulary, so you can
work on social problems together.

If you don't have that, you can't really stop malicious actors from drowning
out their opposition, who are isolated by the fact they don't share a common
conceptual toolset. And if that happens for long enough, you end up with a
society that's basically a bunch of amazingly powerful machines operated by
Fox News.

~~~
joefourier
Do the humanities really succeed at accomplishing those goals? In my own
college experience, the humanities courses I took mostly taught me how to
parrot the professor's opinions, how to write long-winded dissertations with
overly complicated language with the goal of appearing intelligent rather than
being understood, and how to insert meaning into literary works that author
likely never intended.

And while I was very successful in those courses, I fail to see how they
prepared me to be a better citizen, or to think critically about the direction
society is going towards. For my daily life, I would probably have been better
off taking a course in plumbing than literary analysis.

~~~
pasabagi
I don't think the humanities departments are particularly successful - but
they've been underfunded and horribly hamstrung by political and
administrative interference for about half a century now.

It's also not that Shakespeare's going to make anybody a better thinker. It's
more that stuff like this sets the tone for the culture in general. If you
don't really teach hard, interesting culture, then all the people who might
have been interested just get the feeling that culture is kinda garbage and go
on to engage with hard interesting ideas in other fields. Which leads to a
public culture that's not in any way healthy - one that's really just people
passing the time, that doesn't really push us or make us grow.

History shows this kind of thing is just incredibly dangerous. If everybody
likes culture that's enjoyable and easy, easy, self-satisfied thinking
predominates. Then suddenly everybody is marching waving big flags and wearing
funny hats, because it's a lot of fun, and makes you feel great to be part of
something.

~~~
im3w1l
> History shows this kind of thing is just incredibly dangerous. If everybody
> likes culture that's enjoyable and easy, easy, self-satisfied thinking
> predominates. Then suddenly everybody is marching waving big flags and
> wearing funny hats, because it's a lot of fun, and makes you feel great to
> be part of something.

Please provide a reference for this. It sounds too much like a just-so story
for me to take that at face value.

~~~
Nasrudith
I'm not sure if a citation would make it any better. That line of logic makes
me think of the opposite pitfall - that it leads to needless hair-shirted
puritanism because anything enjoyable can't possibly be a good thing. "We
can't use anesthesia in surgery because the lack of suffering is detrimental
to character!" By definition it leads to needless suffering.

While knowledge and culture may seem boring or useless in itself (the fine
details of long dead Roman politics) it is possible that there are hidden
great applications to it in the right situation. Just for two surprising
relevance examples Roman gladiatorial archetypes experiencing political
correctness after annexing former foes, gladiatorial endorsements, and after
the extended war had resulted in consolidation of farms in the hand of slave
holding elites past legal limits the idea of land reform or enforcing the
existing laws being called 'unRoman'.

Science alone has a history of finding bizarre peripheral finds that nobody
would have expected. Take an incident that resulted in cattle bleeding to
death after routine mild procedures - the source was eventually traced back to
fungus affecting their feed. Useful in itself but good only for agronomy. Said
fungus was used to produce the first bloodthinner on the market.

~~~
pasabagi
>anything enjoyable can't possibly be a good thing.

I think you're conflating enjoyment, in the sense you enjoy an apple, and
enjoyment in the sense you enjoy a painting. It's a really common conflation,
mainly because in our society, the dominant culture is enjoyable in the sense
an apple is enjoyable. That, for me, is part of the problem. Nobody ever got
inspired by eating an apple. Nobody ever learned new forms of empathy, or
developed, through appetitive enjoyment.

~~~
Nasrudith
I think of it in different frameworks personally - than enjoyment - novelty
exposure and exploration vs sticking with comfortable and familiar -
peripheral to how one receives it (although attitude would influence what and
how much is learned).

Theoretically appreciative enjoyment could be empathic in a "rags to riches"
sense but that could arguably be making the bitterness more palatable while
undermining fundamental aspects say the sense of helplessness - even if it
shows both ends and cycle of grudges and oppression. I guess it is like
Shakespearean "write to please both the groundlings and the noble patrons" \-
hard to do, let alone properly but if done right offers the potential to
create masterpieces.

Anyway I can see some point to the arguement personally even if I would phrase
it radically differently - and it may not be entirely what you wanted.

------
yodsanklai
This is a recurring topic on HN.

My (European) experience is that academia provides a great work environment.
_If_ you have tenure, you're free to work on whatever you want, you have very
low pressure (beside the pressure you decide to inflict on yourself), you're
basically paid to learn new things and teach them to others. You can easily
visit other institutes abroad. You get to meet interesting people. Age
discrimination isn't an issue. The salary isn't on par with what you could
make working for a company but it's enough. If you're ambitious and talented
you can easily earn money on the side (consulting, starting your own company,
taking a leave) and you can have the best of both worlds.

~~~
aluren
Yes, I believe we have it easier in Europe. I realize my other post sounds
rantish but the reason I'm still in academia, beyond the very valid points
you've mentioned, is that I don't believe the nepotism and dishonesty issues
are specific to academia.

>You get to meet interesting people.

I want to stress that part because I don't feel it does the environment
justice. You get to meet _fantastic_ and very intelligent people from all
countries in the world. During gathering events, meetings, parties, etc. I've
been to, it's not rare to see eight different nationalities out of eight
people around a dining table. You talk about science at first but very quickly
discussions derail into comparisons between such and such country's
perspective, differences in culture, jokes about the language, and so on. And
it happens every time. Not all environments provide this.

Of course, you may argue that this diversity of culture and insights is
counterbalanced by the community's homogeneity in many other aspects (e.g. the
overwhelming majority of scientists are very liberal, even by European
standards), and it's pretty obvious that your view of, say, Iranian or Russian
people is going to be skewed if the only ones you've talked to are very
educated and liberal 20- or 30-somethings working as expats. Scientists are
known for their insularity, and while they're a demographic that's among the
most susceptible to date outside their country, they're also very prone to
date _inside_ the community. The 'ivory tower' stereotype is not _completely_
wrong.

~~~
gdy
What is special about "Iranian or Russian people"?

~~~
aluren
The sensibilities of expats from these countries tend to be quite misaligned
with that of their governments and a large chunk of their fellow countrymen.
It is of course the case with almost every country but the divide can be
markedly stronger in some countries.

~~~
gdy
Do you have any evidence allowing you to single out these two countries?

~~~
aluren
Well no, I don't have 'evidence'. I just report what the expats in question
tell me. I'm not singling them out, they just came to my mind due to recent
conversations. I'm not trying to make a grander point or anything, and not
every remark has to be completely exhaustive and evidenced to be 'allowed'
into a casual conversation. If you want me to source every statement I make,
you're going to have to pay me, just like my boss does when I write papers.

~~~
gdy
>I'm not singling them out

But you did it and you did it with the "it's pretty obvious" qualifier.

This casual bias needs to be corrected.

------
alpineidyll3
Quit my professorship about four months ago, and I've Never been happier.
Academia works for some people, but is systemically twisted and has become
terribly corrupt in most places.

There's a life outside people. Not just life but intellectual life. I'm so
much happier not contributing to a system I hate.

------
petermcneeley
obligatory "Dont become a Scientist"
[http://katz.fastmail.us/scientist.html](http://katz.fastmail.us/scientist.html)

------
zyxzevn
I had this same problem when I did projects in different disciplines of the
university. As an outsider, with the same skill-set, you can look through some
of the wrong ideas of other departments.

And it is hard to discuss some of those ideas, as they are often established
within the specialization. The reasons why those wrong ideas have become
established have more to do with tradition than actual science. And the reason
why they were accepted, is because they matched some observations. Afterwards
they were coincidence or cherry-picked, but often not recognized as such. And
alternative theories were not needed nor supported, due to the internal
culture.

It is easy to compare it with programming problems. You can claim that your
program works when you tested it for certain problems. But if no-one else is
allowed to test your code, your program probably still has a lot of bugs.

In some cases there is even a fundamental problem. They started with the wrong
models in the first place, and/or misinterpreted certain observations. And
from there they started growing new models on top of it. It is like
programming code that started with the wrong abstractions.

Most problems occur from theories that are developed without much practical
experience. Sometimes even without any practical experience. A friend of mine
is a computer-scientist who has almost no computer experience. I have heard
many wrong ideas from him.

If I want to talk about the problems, I will probably step on someone's toes.
Causing anger and the belief that I am just misinformed or under educated.

We like to project these problems onto psychology and such, but I can also
find them in hard sciences.

Let me pick one in hard physics. There are some theories in physics that model
field-lines as real. While in reality, fields are always continuous. There are
clearly some mistakes in one (or more) of the underlying theories.

------
hn_throwaway_99
With apologies for the snark, don't they teach the use of paragraphs in
academia?

~~~
andyv
It's indicative of how far gone he is.

------
account2
Can anyone speak to what it's like doing a post doc in CS?

~~~
PAClearner
you should be more specific-what part of CS?

all the CS postdocs I know see a) pretty happy b) have a really easy back up
of a high paying industry gig that they can pivot to because of currently
insanely inflated demand for academics to make deep learning on the blockchain
on the cloud on embedded devices doing quantum backprop

-these are ML/theory postdocs

~~~
account2
I am primarily interested in the experience of ML post-docs that forgo going
into industry. Can you elaborate a bit more about their experience? Salaries
look a bit lower for post docs vs industry work. Some I've seen start in the
mid-40k to 70k range. Could be different based on geography.

~~~
PAClearner
are you already a grad student or are you considering it?

in my department [we are an outlier probably] post doc wages are actually
pretty comparable to industry i.e. >= 100k. 40k to 70k seems low to me.

I would expect the range to be more like 60-100k.

I haven't been on the real job market yet-but the key to getting a TT or
postdoc position seems to be a) collaborators who want to hire you b) people
who have heard you give a talk in person and are familiar with your research.

~~~
account2
I am considering going into a CS PhD focusing in ML. The mid 40k-70k range was
from quick google search I did for CS post docs in ML in lower cost of living
areas where the cost of living is much lower than on the West Coast. I am
trying to look at career prospects and weigh whether it makes sense to stay in
academia or jump to industry (after I complete a PhD). If wages are closer to
60k-100k for post docs, then I may consider staying in academia for some time
after completing a PhD depending on whether my career interest shift.

~~~
PAClearner
Well I would be happy to provide some context. I just finished my first year
of CS Phd in ML (more on the theory side) and I really like it. I think most
of the places you would want to do a post doc in CS are probably going to be
moderately high CoL. My phd is in a place with pretty low CoL (but a still a
top 10-top 20 school (depending on who you ask) ) so the graduate stipend goes
reasonably far.

The other thing to note in ML is that it seems like a few people go to
industry research labs for a few years i.e MSR/FAiR/google brain and then come
back to the academy since there are industry roles that involve research and
publication. for instance moritz hardt.

my personal plan for the first 3 years of grad school is to work really hard
and try to keep both academia and industry open and after year 3 evaluate the
number of publications I have and my current skill set to see if I can make it
in the academy or shift more towards industry.

I think the biggest factor I would comment on is look very closely about what
jobs the graduated students from the department you matriculate at AND more
importantly the professor you want to work with go on to do post Phd. There
are a lot of naysayers in this thread about the risks of an academic career
and I share those concerns but I felt a lot more comfortable taking the plunge
after I looked at the career record of the graduated students of my advisor.
They were all either tenure track or had good industry positions.

edit: if your advisor has collaborators in industry groups I think it is
pretty straight forward to get an industry gig.

~~~
foobarian
When evaluating the warnings from naysayers you have to keep in mind that CS
is quite an outlier as far as backup career prospects go. I made it all the
way to CS postdoc and every step of the way I had to keep swatting away
industry recruiters waving wads of cash at me. I finally made the leap for
other reasons but it was effortless. I think this is absolutely not how it
works in other disciplines.

One exception I can think of is what I call "closet programmers," which are
folks that work in various areas which rely on software such as experimental
physics, astronomy, molecular biology. and end up mostly doing programming
because they love it. We have a bunch of engineers like that and they are all
excellent :-)

~~~
PAClearner
100% correct. I think we are both very lucky in that we are able to do fun
science and chase our intellectual interests with a realistic and still fun
safety net.

Also those closet programmers are always really fun to talk to since their
problems and culture are breath of fresh air.

------
graycat
For the OP, sure. Of course. He expected something else? After all that time
as a student, he didn't see what he saw as a post-doc?

When I was in K-12, I got strong messages that education was generally good
and, in particular, good preparation for a good career, e.g., financially
secure, enough to be a good family provider and more, and a Ph.D. was the best
degree.

Okay, around DC, with only a BS in math, I quickly had a good career going in
applied math and computing. Often I could have done better if I'd known more
about math and physics; so I did a lot of study on/off the job and learned a
lot. Then I went for a Ph.D. in applied math and did well with it.

But, no way, not a chance, never, not even for a milli, micro, nano, pico
second did I ever want to be a college prof. Instead I wanted to return to the
career I had before grad school and, then, just do better at THAT career.

But my wife's Ph.D. program nearly killed her. So, to try to help her get
well, I took a slot as a prof in an MBA program in a B-school near her family
farm.

She didn't get well; that academic slot was as in the OP: The B-school wasn't
much about business. The students were putting in time, money, and effort and
learning next to nothing useful for career in business. For me, as in the OP,
I was being financially irresponsible.

So, I left for business, an AI project at IBM's Watson lab.

Publishing? The OP claims that some of the publishing was unethical. Actually,
in the papers I wrote as sole author, I didn't encounter that. My papers were
fully _honest, honorable, ethical_ , etc. Some co-authored papers were nearly
all about hype and PR (public relations, getting known, pretending to have
some good, leading edge research); the papers weren't actually wrong or
unethical, and hype and PR are more common in business than in those co-
authored papers!

Looking back, here's what's wrong generally with B-school: It has _physics
envy_ , wants to see itself as doing high end, pure research. E.g., too many
B-schools are much more interested in the question P versus NP than anything
having to do with being successful in business. B-schools are not _clinical_
like medicine, law, dentistry, pharmacy. Except for some courses in accounting
and maybe business law, B-schools are not vocational training or much help for
a business career.

More generally in US research university education, the big push is for
research that can get research grants, and helping the students do well
outside academics is a low priority. Really, at a good research university,
the students will be able to learn from the best sources the best theoretical
foundations of some field; that foundation might, maybe a long shot but might,
help for some work in the field, even in business. Yes, one really good
application might be a strong pillar for a whole career. Fine. But day by day
those research university foundations are not very good information about how
to be successful in business, might be like teaching about the details of
photosynthesis and the chemistry and thermodynamics of internal combustion
engines as a foundation for running a lawn mowing service!

Since the OP is about psychology, my brother tried that. He got his Masters.
He concluded that psychology knew a lot about rats that was next to useless
for people and otherwise next to nothing useful about people, was good at what
was not of interest and not much good at what was of interest. He changed to
political science and got his Ph.D. there. He has never used the degree for
his career!

What happened? At the high end US research universities, ballpark 60% of the
university budgets is from the university's 60% or so off the top of research
grants to the profs. The research grants are heavily for (A) the STEM fields,
e.g., from NSF, and (B) bio-medical science, e.g., from NIH. (A) is mostly for
US national security and got started during the Cold War after The Bomb and
more in the STEM fields were so important in WWII. As a secondary effect, the
research funding AND the DoD funding for systems has helped US progress in
information technology, e.g, the early days of Silicon Valley. For (B), that
is, bluntly, because Congress has to vote the money and a lot of members of
Congress are old enough to care about progress in medicine. As a secondary
effect, the technology in US medicine is likely the best in the world. Still,
as in the OP, commonly trying to be a college prof is financially
irresponsible and possibly objectionable ethically, etc. But, again, there are
some really big bucks involved, both to run a university and to get research
grants.

Some good news, for the taxpayers, about the research grants, especially from
NSF and NIH, (A) the grant applications commonly get expert reviews and (B)
generally the grants are quite competitive.

For the students, learning is MUCH easier now than ever before: We are awash
in books, often in PDF and for free, video lectures, e.g., quantum mechanics
at MIT, etc. And, especially in practical computing, the US workforce does a
LOT of independent study and self teaching, e.g., commonly knows MUCH more
about practical computing than research university computer science profs.

So, in short, we can leave the research universities to do far out research
and for the STEM fields, even for theoretical purposes (e.g., do research with
a day job as reviewing patents in Switzerland!), i.e., there's no law going to
sleep at night for an hour thinking about how to resolve P versus NP, and
especially for practical purposes, be largely self-taught.

For how to run a successful lawn mowing service, bath and kitchen renovation
service, auto repair and body repair shop, ..., building supply company, fast
food restaurant, Web site, software house, etc., people get to learn from
their parents, early jobs, what they can read, and especially what they can
figure out for themselves. For using some algorithms for the traveling
salesman problem to find a route over some ground to minimize mowing time,
that might, but I doubt it, be okay for some farms but not for mowing suburban
lawns!

------
libeclipse
The cause of the problems in academia is hinted at near the end:

> the truth is I understand why they have to do things that way, if they don't
> get published, they don't get money to continue work that should
> theoretically be beneficial down the road!

Scientists optimizing for what is likely to be published (read: what is likely
to earn money), sacrificing elsewhere. Maybe if we payed them enough so that
they don't have to do this to survive, then we wouldn't have this issue.

~~~
munin
> Scientists optimizing for what is likely to be published (read: what is
> likely to earn money), sacrificing elsewhere. Maybe if we payed them enough
> so that they don't have to do this to survive, then we wouldn't have this
> issue.

How do you do this in a society with scarce resources? With scarcity, you need
to have a measure of success, otherwise everyone could just say they were a
scientist and get a six figure salary to do nothing. Any metric you choose
will be gamed.

This worked hundreds of years ago because the only people that could get
educated were the wealthy, so we didn't need to worry about supporting
scientists with public funds, they supported themselves.

~~~
tonysdg
> With scarcity, you need to have a measure of success, otherwise everyone
> could just say they were a scientist and get a six figure salary to do
> nothing. Any metric you choose will be gamed.

As a current grad studrnt, I'm calling BS. We (meaning academics, even the
ones gaming the system) _know_ what strong, reproducible, well-designed
research projects look like. It doesn't take a genius to develop an
experiment, run it, document what happened, and publish _all_ of the results.
Hell, you learned the basics in middle school -- pick an independent variable,
tweak it, then see what happens to the dependent variables.

Now it's obviously not that simple -- isolating just one independent variable
is practically impossible much of the time -- but the concept of documenting
EVERYTHING that you tried should be obvious. There's absolutely zero impetus
to share all of that information, however, especially when you only have 12
pages in a conference paper to write up everything. So instead you go fishing,
and you run a boatload of tests, and you see which ones "solve" the problem,
and you write up just those tests, ignoring all the failures and the false
starts.

It pisses me off, to be honest, and it's just one of the many reasons I'm
trying to get out of here as soon as I can.

~~~
munin
I'm also a grad student.

We do know what good research looks like, that's not the problem, at least not
directly. We're both told "go do good research" and then we go and each write
one paper. The government then says "okay this is fine, but next year, I can
only fund one of you, so, now whoever brings me the most papers next year will
keep their job, and the other will hit the bricks." This is where the problem
starts.

------
stretchwithme
Tracking what actually happens in scientific studies and how many don't get
published would be a good idea. And a blockchain would be a way to do it.
Knowing the whole truth could make science better.

~~~
v_lisivka
Can you explain why it cannot be done with Web2.0 and Object Oriented
Programming in ACID Cloud?

~~~
laurentl
Well, it’s well-known [citation needed] that to be taken seriously, any vague
business idea proposal must exhibit Proof of Buzzword. Just like in the
Bitcoin protocol, when a Buzzword has successfully been mined enough times its
reward value halves and one must add new, previously unexploited buzzwords to
the proposal to maintain its credibility.

By this token web2.0, ACID, Cloud et al. have almost no buzzword value left.
Even Bitcoin is very 2017. Which is why the only logical solution is nano-
engineered quantum genetic algorithms with dark matter entanglement in
P-space.

------
yosefzeev
Money corrupts everything including academics.

------
shawn
_It 's just how it goes in those fields...remove all of the negative results,
don't actually report the ridiculous number of fishing expeditions you went on
(especially in fMRI research), make it sound like you mostly knew what you
were going to find in the first place, make it a nice clean story._

This has always bugged me about our implementation of the scientific method.
There's no reason it has to be this way; it's just convention.

