
Academia is a cult? - petethomas
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/academia-is-a-cult/2018/10/31/eea787a0-bd08-11e8-b7d2-0773aa1e33da_story.html?noredirect=on
======
ilovecaching
As a counter to this article I found my time as a grad student exceedingly
productive and gave me great faith in the scientific institution. I definitely
believe academics are underpaid; when most of the people in my department
could have easy made 500k doing ML in the valley, they were making less than
100k as post docs or 30k as grad students.

Otherwise my advisors were always incredibly proud of their students, passing
on their knowledge, and actively pushing them to succeed like proud parents. A
lot of my colleagues went on to join other labs or even open labs of their own
as PIs.

~~~
T-A
I see this coming up on HN from time to time: happy current or recent CS grad
student implicitly generalizing their experience to academia at large. The
thing to keep in mind is that CS is a rare exception: it's relatively well
funded and there is real demand for it from outside academia (the two things
are not unrelated, of course). ML in particular is often said to have a "brain
drain" problem. So obviously you can't treat people like serfs; if you try to,
they'll just leave for a better private sector job.

Most academic fields are nothing like that. As a rule of thumb, cultism ~ 1 /
(external demand).

~~~
ilovecaching
I wasn't a CS student I was a bioinformatics student in the health sciences
department.

------
village-idiot
Something that David Graeber said that opened my eyes.

Until the 1970s or so, Universities were actually a guild for academics geared
towards the production of knowledge. They had self rules, titles,
apprenticeship systems, and to some degree the backing and protection of the
state. Plus like a true medieval guild, they were run by the masters of the
guild itself. Sure, they did not call themselves guilds, but in form and
function they behaved like one.

The reason why this arrangement was allowed to stay from ancient days is that
the universities performed a useful function for local and federal
governments, unlike craft guilds. Governments need a _lot_ of trained clerks,
always have. Universities however only need professors to replace the dying
batch, as the production of knowledge really wasn't tied to markets or social
whims per-se. So a large part of the educated students were turned towards
government jobs, a useful arrangement for both parties.

This setup appears to have broken down pretty recently, although exactly why
is left as an exercise for the reader.

~~~
tracker1
"... to replace the dying batch, ..."

I would speculate that longer lifespans may well have a lot to do with at
least some of the shifts.

~~~
wolfgke
> "... to replace the dying batch, ..."

> I would speculate that longer lifespans may well have a lot to do with at
> least some of the shifts.

Longer lifespan only indirectly implies higher retirement age.

------
malshe
In my experience there are multiple cutls within academia and they operate at
different levels. In finance, for example, there is a cult of "efficient
market hypothesis" and another cult of "behavioral finance". The two groups
don't appreciate each other much although publicly they love to say how much
they respect their colleagues from the other group.

~~~
cirgue
By that measure, all of human society is a cult.

~~~
malshe
That's a strange statement. So as a human society who do we all hate
collectively in secret but claim to love openly? My point is that the academia
as a whole is not a cult but there are cults within academia.

Also that's not the only "measure" by which one can claim existence of cults
within academia but it's still something you don't want in the research
community. Numerous times I have heard statements like "this paper will never
get past XYZ because XYZ doesn't like Thaler/Kahneman/[any behavioral
researcher here]". That should never be acceptable in research that's claimed
to be scientific. Yet, it's common in academia.

------
liftbigweights
The same thing affecting academia ( mostly humanities ) is the same thing
affecting journalism. Instead of being institutions for seeking truth and
knowledge, they've become institutions of political advocacy and agenda.

~~~
repolfx
Obligatory plug for
[https://heterodoxacademy.org/](https://heterodoxacademy.org/)

However, lately I've come to wonder if the solution isn't simply to defund all
non-STEM academic subjects. It seems likely that subjects that aren't strongly
tied down to some sort of objective utility function will always drift towards
some sort of strange and extreme agendas.

------
nyc111
There is a historical reason for this. Religion is practiced by Doctors of
Divinity and science by Doctors of Philosophy. At the time of Newton education
or universities were controlled by religious doctors. After Newton Doctors of
Philosophy took control of the education. Doctor means someone who is licensed
to teach the doctrine. So at the fundamental level religion and academia are
organized exactly the same. Only doctrine is different. In this system cult
simply means an outside hierarchy organized by an unlicensed teacher. But both
are cults.

~~~
repolfx
That explanation sounds good but I couldn't find much on the doctor=doctrine
link. This says the word comes from medieval Latin "docere" which simply means
to teach. Doctrine shares the same root word as doctor, but that root word is
simply the notion of teaching and doesn't have inherently religious overtones.

[https://www.etymonline.com/word/Doctor](https://www.etymonline.com/word/Doctor)

------
yosefzeev
A cult with levels that you literally have to pay for is also a pyramid
scheme.

~~~
guachesuedehack
To be honest, it's the publishers that are to blame. I believe most scientist
dont really care how it's published as long it is. The publishers run a
pyramid scheme.

~~~
LanceH
You can't blame the publishers for schools which are training people to be
professors and little else at a rate 10x actually needed.

~~~
guachesuedehack
As far as i know, the publishers keep the bulk of the fees

~~~
therealdrag0
You two are not talking about the same thing. You are talking about
publishers, OP is talking about university students vs employment.
Universities accept paying students knowing that there is only a job for 1/10
of those students.

------
Myrmornis
Yes, humanities academia is severely flawed, not only in the ways that the
author describes but also in the prevalence of pseudo-intellectual quackery in
literature studies, cultural studies and areas of social sciences, philosophy,
etc.

The newspaper appears to have forgotten to qualify the title to make clear
that they were not talking about all academia.

~~~
FranzFerdiNaN
A lot of biomedical science is also barely worth of the name science as it's
not reproducible. And I'm sure you could find the same in physics and math
too. But it's way easier to look at the humanities, not being able to
understand the language used due to not having the required background and go
"clearly it's worthless because I, someone with a degree in a completely
different field, cannot understand it". And then endlessly point at the Sokal
affaire.

But at least one time a nonsense mathematical paper, written by a computer,
was accepted for publication. So clearly mathematics is a flawed, worthless
field worthy only of derision, right? And a few nonsense computer science
papers have also been accepted, so clearly also a worthless field.

~~~
jhbadger
A couple of points: specialized language in science is needed because science
deals with things like genes, particles, and mathematical constructs that we
have no words for in normal language. This often means that papers in, say,
biology, are not only not understandable to chemists, but even to other fields
of biology studying different things. This really isn't in the case in the
humanities, which deal with the human experience we experience in daily life.
There often the point is to sound as complicated as possible to hide the fact
that nothing much is being said.

The "Sokal Text" affair tends to overwhelm Sokal's bigger accomplishment, the
book "Fashionable Nonsense" (with Jean Bricmont). There he shows how famous
scholars like Lacan and Deleuze threw random scientific terms into their works
in contexts where nothing scientific is being said as a way to sound "deep".

The reproducibility problem in science is real, but oftentimes people confuse
reproducibility (i.e. I give concentration X of compound Y to mice of strain
Z, and 50% develop cancer within a month and you do the same and get a similar
result) with failure of generalization (You change the concentration or mouse
strain and get a different result and write a paper saying I'm wrong).

------
bonniemuffin
I prefer to think of it as more of a MLM or pyramid scheme than a cult.

~~~
woodpanel
MLM you say?

Ok, let me see

\- peddling in private homes (friends and family)? check!

\- using social connections as marketing channel (classmates, friends and
family)? check!

\- promising benefits, while customers have to pay upfront and wait years for
see their investment (never) pay off? check!

\- turning customers to promoters (work environments turn away applicants
without XYZ degree)? check!

\- kick-back/ROI is distributed in ways that are "opaque" at best for
customers? check!

~~~
marmaduke
Any political party checks all those boxes.

~~~
woodpanel
Really? Do you pay thousands of dollars each year to, and spend your first
non-child-labor years for any political party? If so, then yes that party must
be a cult :-)

------
scandox
I don't know the source but I first read the following useful distinction here
in HN:

The difference between a cult and a religion: a cult wants it all, a religion
just wants its cut.

~~~
liftbigweights
All religions started out as a cult. Christianity was a cult until it won.

The difference between a cult and religion is the same as the difference
between a molehill and a hill. It's hard to say exactly when a molehill turns
into a hill, but you'll know it when it does.

~~~
kiriakasis
> All religions started out as a cult. Beware of survivor bias. Even assuming
> that all religion were once cult it still does not follow that all cults
> could become viable religions.

------
jwilk
Archived copy with GDPR nag screen:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20181102171858/https://www.washi...](https://web.archive.org/web/20181102171858/https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/academia-
is-a-cult/2018/10/31/eea787a0-bd08-11e8-b7d2-0773aa1e33da_story.html)

~~~
dredmorbius
Clean version at Outline.com;

[https://outline.com/cmMBJX](https://outline.com/cmMBJX)

------
whatshisface
> _It’s not unusual for academic job seekers to spend 10 percent of their
> annual income — the amount of a tithe — attending a single conference for an
> interview (including airfare, lodging, registration fees and incidentals)._

You can tell the author legitimately knows humanities academia from the inside
because they are experts at pointing out unrelated coincidental facts as if
their simultaneous truth meant something.

~~~
infinity0
bro, correlation causes causation

~~~
marmaduke
That is the taboo undercurrent of most discussion sections of science papers

~~~
whatshisface
That's not really true about natural sciences, there isn't a lot of confusion
about causation in chemistry for example.

------
_hardwaregeek
Seems like this should be titled "Humanities Academia is a cult". Which is a
conclusion with which I don't necessarily disagree. Frankly, the job numbers
are out there. If you choose to get a PhD in history even after seeing them,
you're probably delusional in some form.

I'm not so certain about STEM however. While cults can pop up anywhere there
is a leader with a non trivial power dynamic, I'd say that a fair portion of
professors in STEM will happily explain to you the harsh reality of academia
and discourage you from getting a PhD. Furthermore, there are jobs outside of
academia for PhDs, so there's a lot less lock in.

~~~
maceurt
Music academia is terrible and riddled with politics and infighting from my
experience also. The number of actual livable jobs for classical musicians are
very low. It makes me pissed off how public schools will still spend hundred
of thousands of dollars and push kids into classical music when it is such a
dead end, and competition is so high. It is a ponzi scheme where the students
pay the teachers, then the students become teachers and the cycle starts over
again. Barely anybody who does not play an instrument ever listens to
classical music it is a joke. The least selling genre of music in the United
States behind jazz.

~~~
flashgordon
I don't get this. Why aren't kids taught music just for the sake of it instead
of for a career? You most likely have mastery by not doing it "full-time" but
at least you will enjoy it and get to a point where yo would be able to play
it socially and enjoyably!

~~~
maceurt
Well, if you want to teach kids music that they actually enjoy and that will
be more applicable to this generation, focus on pop music, rap music, hip hop,
any popular music genre. Hip hop and R&B are the most popular genres of music
in the US [1], classical music and jazz are the least popular genres of music
[2]. Why are we still teaching classical and jazz over genres more popular,
enjoyable, and accessible? It is not a good career path, it is not popular
with kids or with the masses, and it is a lot more expensive than any other
genre of music.

[1] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2017/07/17/hip-
hop...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2017/07/17/hip-hoprb-has-
now-become-the-dominant-genre-in-the-u-s-for-the-first-time/#7b52a7053834)

[2] [https://news.jazzline.com/news/jazz-least-popular-music-
genr...](https://news.jazzline.com/news/jazz-least-popular-music-genre/)

~~~
StephenMelon
Why are we still teaching assemby and C over development languages more
popular, enjoyable, and accessible? It is not a good career path, it is not
popular with kids or with the masses, and it is a lot more expensive than any
other genre of software development.

~~~
maceurt
That is comparing apples to oranges. C and assembly are what most applications
and operating systems are built on in one way or another. Classical music is
not the root of popular music nor does it carry over to other music genres
that much at all.

Also, the way that music is taught in band rooms, is based almost entirely on
sheet music and nothing on actually creating music. In fact most of the people
I know who were very good classical band players had very underdeveloped ears
and sucked at music creation. If you program in C, you will become a better
python/js/etc. programmer, the same can not be said for classical music.

Plus, most computer science programs have switched from starting with C to
starting kids off on Java or Python, so that argument does not make any sense.
Most public schools do not even teach anything other than jazz or classical
music.

------
throwaway487548
A church.

------
paulpauper
I don't agree with this. A cult requires two things: your money and your
loyalty. Neither gets your that far in academia. Look at all the people trying
to get into Harvard. Many applicants would willingly pay way more than the
tuition if to be guaranteed a slot (if Harvard slots were put to auction, I
imagine bids would be very high), but so so few are accepted despite being
able to pay. Scientology will accept anyone that can pay. Rather academia is
more like professional sports in that it is very competitive and many try-out
and few make it to the pros.

~~~
StanislavPetrov
You are mistaking, admission to Harvard with a "career in academia". Being
admitted to a school has some correlation to your achievements (legacy
students and affirmative action aside). Being one of the small percentage of
graduate students that gets a paying job in the field has far more to do with
your loyalty and your willingness to subjugate yourself to the will of your
superiors - as the author of this piece (and anyone else who has come up
through the ranks of post-grad education in the last 25 years) rightly points
out.

~~~
paulpauper
_your loyalty and your willingness to subjugate yourself to the will of your
superiors_

no it does not because even among the loyal not all are guaranteed tenure,
whereas cults induct anyone who pays and is loyal, with no cap.

~~~
kernx16
How true is the no cap part? Genuinely curious, because I can't imagine some
cults where if you're at the bottom of the ladder, the cult will do everything
it takes to retain you if you give the cult little money and unrelenting
loyalty because the loyalty itself will take care of retaining oneself to the
cult. Hence, willingness to subjugate oneself to the will of the superiors
with no end. Hopefully that makes sense.

------
daenz
>It should come as no surprise that the professor who made that demand is a
white male alumnus of the Ivy League, and the student an immigrant from a
working-class background.

I'm getting really tired of these kinds of racial and ethnic generalizations.
If you substitute "asian" or "jew" in and you find it's racist, it's still
racist if it says "white."

~~~
woodruffw
> I'm getting really tired of these kinds of racial and ethnic
> generalizations. If you substitute "asian" or "jew" in and you find it's
> racist, it's still racist if it says "white."

No. If you attended a civil rights march in 1962 and remarked at how white the
counter-protesters were (and how the hoses never seem to get aimed at them),
you would be making an accurate observation about race and power dynamics, not
smearing white people. Observing that some (many?) of those same dynamics
persist in our present enlightened age is not racism.

~~~
daenz
Even if I accepted the modern re-branding of the word "racist" to mean the new
"power + privilege", which I don't accept, but I understand many people use
that definition, the author's statement is still loaded with _racial
prejudice._ He literally said that bad behavior X is "no surprise" because the
person behaving badly is white and a man.

You trying to justify this language as not only tolerable but acceptable is
part of the problem society has wrt treating people as individuals. And the
fact that you're using historical injustices against people to tell me why I
need to accept negative language around two _immutable physical
characteristics_ that I possess is really over the line. We're supposed to be
moving away from that kind of society.

~~~
woodruffw
> You trying to justify this language as not only tolerable but acceptable is
> part of the problem society has wrt treating people as individuals. And the
> fact that you're using historical injustices against people to tell me why I
> need to accept negative language around two immutable physical
> characteristics that I possess is really over the line. We're supposed to be
> moving away from that kind of society.

I'm confused here. You want society to treat you as an individual (a
reasonable ask), but you also feel like some other white person's bad behavior
somehow reflects upon you?

Let's be clear: the negative language in this article is about the negative
_actions_ , _not_ racial characteristics, of the person in question. The
racial characteristics are only a reminder that these things don't happen in a
vacuum, a truism that most people don't have an issue with (including you,
insofar as you recognize that historical injustices really do exist). Talking
frankly about how bad behavior connects _directly_ to privilege does not a
racist attack make.

~~~
daenz
>I'm confused here. You want society to treat you as an individual (a
reasonable ask), but you also feel like some other white person's bad behavior
somehow reflects upon you?

I don't feel like some other white person's bad behavior somehow reflects upon
me. I feel like it has become acceptable to judge me based on my non-
individual characteristics, based on the language in the article, and your
defense of that language. There is no contradiction here.

>Let's be clear: the negative language in this article is about the negative
actions, not racial characteristics, of the person in question.

Yes, let's be clear: the negative language is "no surprise," which is being
directly applied to those immutable physical characteristics of being white
and a man (and one mutable characteristic of being an Ivy League alumnus).
Please don't tell me what the author really meant, when their language is
quite clear.

------
yoler
Are PhD degrees required to do machine learning research? Or can someone be
completely self-taught and contribute to the field as much as those with PhDs?

~~~
tnecniv
Conferences / other publication venues don't require you have a PhD to submit
to them. However, figuring out what a good novel research problem is and
solving it rigorously is much much easier in an academic environment --- both
because you are financially supported to work on said problems and because you
have a community of people to tutor you and give you feedback.

~~~
tracker1
I think the financial part is important. Funding in academia is interesting to
say the least. Especially when it comes to grant funding, which can often have
interesting requirements that are impossible to have privately or as an
individual.

------
sn41
I would really like to respectfully listen to the points of view of the
author, but I do not like myself manipulated by this excessive over the top
clickbait headings. I hope that we can all return to a more civil discourse
without resorting always to the most extreme polarised positions that go by
the phrases "influence" and "persuasion" these days.

~~~
milesvp
FYI the story writer almost never comes up with the headline in a traditional
newspaper story pipeline (which most likely still includes wapo). Usually it’s
one of the editors that has final say on the headline (and control of A/B
testing online). Often the reporter will even have to push back when the
editor tries to use too strong a word that may be technically incorrect based
on the reporter’s more in depth knowledge of the topic.

Now I’m not trying to say that the story writer isn’t also writing sensational
stories, with their own agendas, only that you would do well not to judge a
story by its headline. Otherwise, I agree sensational headlines turn me off as
well.

