
“This week, I resigned from my position at Duke University” - Fede_V
https://www.facebook.com/jfgariepyneuro/posts/466442776860755
======
qCOVET
I absolutely agree with everything in this post. When I was a post doctoral
fellow, my principal investigator would publish at least one paper a month.
She was celebrated in the department.

(a) The papers were published in journals like - Journal of Green Donkey
Testicles, Journal of differentiation of dying mouse ... Journals that I had
never heard of, had no impact and every tiny bit of an experiment that was
conducted in the lab, would get published, without a full picture.

(b) Much of the data was turned into data by turning everything into being
'statistically significant' . I would do experiments and I would see no
freaking difference between control and experimental, yet, through the magic
of statistics, she would find the difference. It was lame and depressing.

(c) Above is an isolated example. There are countless smart, diligent and hard
working professors who continue to push the boundaries of science (ex. my
amazing PhD prof, whom I dearly love and admire). Unfortunately, their time is
plagued by writing grants after grants, fighting inter-departmental politics,
dealing with Chair of the department on regular basis ... basically stuff that
distracts them from having the time to relax, think and innovate.

(d) Commercialization of innovations in schools and universities are butchered
by the IP policies, where by the University would take 1/3, the
commercialization office would take 1/3 and the poor researcher is left with
the rest. This kills innovation + tech commercialization and the desire of a
researcher to be an entrepreneur.

~~~
elliptic
Regarding d) - how much do you think the researcher, much of whose work was
presumably funded by taxpayer dollars, should get?

~~~
qCOVET
I believe University of Waterloo is one of the few that does full ownership of
work by Prof (I could be wrong) .. and year after year, they beat the biggest
Universities in Canada for being ranked as the #1 in entrepreneurship, tech
commercialization and innovation. I think its the subsequent economic impact
that counts, rather than sequestering innovation for the sake of a few bucks
in 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 ownership model.

[https://uwaterloo.ca/research/waterloo-commercialization-
off...](https://uwaterloo.ca/research/waterloo-commercialization-office-
watco/intellectual-property)

Many of the big giants of tech world have set up offices all around uWaterloo
and enjoy a symbiotic relationship w/ the research faculty.

------
hyperion2010
I met and worked with JF for 6 months. I learned an enormous amount working
with him. His creativity in experimental design and his approach to answering
questions was inspiring. Sadly, the fact that he is leaving academia does not
surprise me. People who care more about doing good science than about
publishing (those are absolutely NOT the same things) rarely make it in
academia. Funding for true basic research has contracted significantly and
scientific communities have become incredibly risk averse with regard to who
and what they give grants to. The peer review system reviews based on social
norms within that field, not on what is actually good science. Finally,
training and education are still based on the guild system. People who
actually want to advance the state of human knowledge, not just have an
academic position, find this environment toxic.

Best of luck to JF in his future endeavours. Academia is the true looser here.

------
Al-Khwarizmi
The CS field gets a lot of bashing for gravitating a lot around conferences
rather than journals. Because, you know, journals are supposed to be the
serious venue for the grown-ups. But actually, CS conferences (at least the
ones I've published in) have a double-blind review system that feels much
fairer than the single-blind in the top journals. Of course it's far from
perfect (more often than not the reviewers can guess the affiliation of the
authors anyway) but things like almost needing to talk to the editor to
publish papers, or the editor using author name as an important acceptance
criterion, do not happen AFAIK. In general my experience with reviews has felt
much fairer in conferences with double blind system than in the typical
journals with editorial boards full of sacred cows. And I don't say that out
of spite for rejection, because in fact I've had more rejections in
conferences than in journals.

A pity that in my country (Spain) the bureaucratic requirements for funding,
tenure, etc. are one-size-fits-all and basically conferences count almost
nothing and journals are everything, even if in my particular subfield no one
cares about journals. So I end up playing a double game: publishing some
papers where I know I should to find the right audience, and others where I am
forced to to survive.

~~~
lmeyerov
Double blind is a farce in practice in most CS specialties (maybe not bloated
fields like AI/HCI/graphics?). Once you get to the top tier, everyone knows
everyone, including the industrial labs, including what they're working on.
Most good work is too differentiated to anonymize to well-versed readers: less
Neural Networks for X, more Sub-Theory of a Sub-Theory or Version 2 of This
Weird Thing.

This may not be obvious to the normal grad student, but after a decade in a
community of 1K-10K people, most of them working in groups, it becomes clear.
The end result is that the last several top-tier conferences I reviewed for, I
basically guessed the authors of all the papers I reviewed, and knew at least
one of them personally on each paper. All of that, despite being a "young"
member of the community.

~~~
santaclaus
> maybe not bloated fields like AI/HCI/graphics

Having reviewed papers in the 'bloated' graphics field at SIGGRAPH, yes, you
can usually guess who wrote a particular paper.

> This may not be obvious to the normal grad student, but after a decade in a
> community of 1K-10K people

The communities are smaller than that. Within sub-fields in graphics, you
usually have perhaps five or six research groups to guess from.

------
alexholehouse
Posts like this (and there are many of them) scare me.

I'm in the latter half of a PhD. I love it. I work insane hours entirely out
of my own choice, because it is the most rewarding and enjoyable thing I've
ever been a part of.

The idea that I've found something that I love, that is challenging, that (I
hope) I'm relatively good at, and that has a definite net positive good for us
as a species/society, yet I may not be able to pursue this long term because
of the immense challenges facing academia as a whole (catalyzed, I would
argue, by tragic lack of funding) is really concerning, on both a personal and
a societal level.

~~~
javert
> catalyzed, I would argue, by tragic lack of funding

No, you don't get it. There is _tons_ of funding. But academia is a corrupt
old-boys network. Those petty, conniving people rise to the top and ultimately
control the system.

\- A grad student (who regrets going to grad school)

~~~
alexholehouse
Does that mean a lack of funding can't catalyze the issue?

Edit: Just for transparency (topical!) I did not downvote you, and totally
agree that cronyism is a major (and yeah maybe causative) issue, _but_ I also
think the decision on _how_ to fund is basically an entirely separate problem
which really doesn't have an obviously good solution (in my mind).

~~~
javert
Make the companies that profit from the research do the research themselves,
in house, and pay for it and direct it themselves. That's the only way.

You can't set up academia as a soviet-style bureaucracy and expect it to
perform any differently from a soviet-style bureaucracy.

~~~
JupiterMoon
But not all scientific research will benefit companies. Some will even be
detrimental to large companies (disruptive technologies). Therefore blueskies
pure science needs funding from some source other than industry.

What I do find disturbing is the trend to push University research towards
immediately commercially viable stuff. Industry would/should do this stuff
anyway.

------
plg
"I found scientists to be more preoccupied by their own survival in a very
competitive research environment than by the development of a true
understanding of the world."

I have found this as well. However it's important to remember that before one
can do good work, one has to find funding for the good work. It's a complex
problem.

~~~
return0
They can go work elsewhere. Part of the problem is that academic pipelines are
clogged with too many PhDs who are not motivated by scientific curiosity.

~~~
lutorm
I think that is completely false. Why would you go into a career with little
prospects for a permanent job that if you get it might pay half of what you
could get elsewhere if not for scientific curiosity and the desire to make a
difference in students' lives?

The problem is, like this article alludes to, that the field does not reward
scientific curiosity or even serious scientific advancement.

~~~
hugh4
For many students, the answer is "to get a visa to move to a first-world
country".

If you're a smart first-worlder, there's many careers more lucrative than
scientific research, so you'd only go into it because of passion. But if
you're a smart third-worlder, a scientific career is often your best shot at
emigrating to a rich country, so it becomes rational to do it whether you're
passionate or not.

------
fit2rule
This article speaks to me of the most destructive force in our human world:
the social collective. It seems that the majority of his ills are sourced
directly from the dire circumstances of the mass collective operating on
itself in a negative way - that there is something broken in the peer-
acceptance process; perhaps it is indeed impossible to advance science without
disassociation from the collective reality of all scientists, who - psycho-
socially - desire to attain a social goal as an imperative before any kind of
natural observation or 'progress' otherwise; i.e. the complaints of the author
would be best addressed to nobody in particular; it is the fact of the
anonymous-crowd-mass which produces the conditions degrading science, today.
There are simply too many social machinations in play. The desire for
acceptance at a banal level (grant money), the desire for acclaim at a banal
level (peer review), the desire to be heard above the din of the masses, at a
most banal level (publication requirements) - all of these banal instincts
have accrued much caché in the zeitgeist as reasons for doing things.

tl;dr sometimes you have to shake the sheets if you want to get a good sail
on. No great explorer, adventurer, discoverer, scientist, engineer .. ever ..
got that way because they followed the processes of the status quo. The fact
that many of us must discover, and learn to stomach: life is not special for a
majority of people. That includes scientists. It includes people who think
they deserve otherwise. If you want to exceed and excel, propel the species
forward: beware the collective. It will eat you.

------
JesperRavn
As someone who completed a PhD and knows many people who went on to academic
positions, there tend to be three stages for people who come to accept the
status quo.

1\. A desire to make big breakthroughs in the field.

2\. A frustration with the slow progress being made in the field, the apparent
inability of the field to produce big breakthroughs, and the proliferation of
papers whose net contribution to knowledge is small or zero.

3\. An acceptance that the stagnation in the field is (1) partly an artifact
of it being hard to recognize progress when it is happening and (2) a
consequence of the fundamental nature of the discipline, e.g. all the simple
elegant theories have been explored already.

It's not that there are not problems in academia, but most academics (at least
in my field) don't consider these to be a major barrier to progress. I was
particularly wary of the claim:

 _I will still publish my book, The Revolutionary Phenotype, which contains an
important novel theory on the emergence of life._

Surely a novel theory on the emergence of life would be of great interest in
the field? At worst I imagine you would have to dress it up in some
mathematical model.

EDIT: I found a chapter from a previous version of the book in progress here:
[http://themoralsignal.com/TheMoralSignal%20-%20Chapter%201.p...](http://themoralsignal.com/TheMoralSignal%20-%20Chapter%201.pdf)
readers can judge for themselves, but it didn't strike me as work that
academia would be foolish for ignoring.

------
krick
I don't really see, what people mean when they "agree" or "disagree" with this
article and the likes of it. Aside of expressing his own disappointment the
author points out what is wrong with the academic research, that's true. But
point out what is wrong, though isn't useless, is a lot easier than suggest
(even pretty lousy) better alternative.

It's easy to imagine how everyone should be free to explore whatever he wants
in his own free time, with his own money, at his own home lab (although even
this isn't true, because currently even the most basic stuff needed for
research in chemistry or biology is illegal to freely buy and sell, as it can
be used to produce drugs or bombs or because of some other "national security"
bullshit). But what the author is talking about isn't his own time and money —
it's expecting to be provided with all stuff he needs for research _and_ for
him to live and prosper. And if someone is about to give you all that, your
promise that you'll discover something great eventually isn't really enough
for him. Quite understandably so. So ideally he would like to make sure that
you, both: won't use all money and lab equipment that's given to you to smoke
crack and do nothing; _and_ that you are actually able to discover something
great. Which, I guess, even you yourself won't promise, because you don't
know.

So, in fact, even with all that bureaucracy we cannot have any guarantees. And
author wants for the system not only to work, but to work without putting too
much pressure on him and his colleagues. How he imagines that? He doesn't
explain clearly enough.

~~~
rwallace
The problem is that excessive competition in a system originally designed to
ensure research money was spent well, is now actually causing the money to be
spent badly. Asking for concrete suggestions for improvement is perfectly
fair. Here are two things that could be done that would help.

First, ideally, flood the system with money, fund science the way it should be
funded, as though it actually mattered as much as entertainment or killing
people. Again, providing ten times as much money would produce more and better
science _per dollar_ not just in total.

Second, failing that, filter PhD applicants by random lottery; discard a
randomly selected 80% or however many it takes, before moving forward as
currently.

------
jordanpg
Usually we only hear this from the disgruntled. It is valuable to hear this
perspective from someone who perceives themselves as happy and successful.

> because I know how they were obtained.

This is similar to one of the reasons I left graduate school.

I realized that everyone who plays ball and puts in the hours gets a PhD. And
I saw incomprehensible postdoc hires. Lots of things didn't even look like
significant accomplishments (or even all that hard, and I'm no rockstar).

------
luckydude
Years ago, like 1999 or so, I chaired a Linux conference. The Usenix people
wanted me to fold Linux into Usenix and thought (probably mistakenly) that I
could bring those people to Usenix.

I said sure on condition: all papers are blind reviewed going forward. No
authors, nothing that could identify the authors in the papers until they are
accepted.

Usenix flat out refused. Which sort of backs up what this guy is saying. Sad
state of affairs.

------
freshhawk
This is a sentiment I've heard from a lot of my friends in academia.

I hope the author isn't also similar to those friends of mine in another way:
assuming that the marketing job that private industry has done when comparing
themselves to academia is true. That things are more rational and productive
outside academia. That they won't just enter another game played by chickens
with no heads that has slightly different rules. That they won't spend most of
their time doing useless bullshit that the system demands they produce even
though it does nothing to further the goals they are supposed to be advancing.

I liked the piece, so I do hope the author ends up preferring the different
kind of pointless make-work the alternatives provide him.

------
chubot
I feel the same thing in huge companies in which the employees are insulated
from market forces. Aren't we supposed to be, like, building stuff that users
want? Rather than just trying to get promoted and game the system?

IQ and motivation are independent variables... it's a shame when people with
high IQs exert tons of effort in small-minded directions, or just toward
fighting each other.

~~~
zo1
>" _Aren 't we supposed to be, like, building stuff that users want? Rather
than just trying to get promoted and game the system?_"

That's the company's job, not yours.

In fact, you are actually already doing it if you twist definitions a bit. The
"user" is the company you work for, and you are the product. And you "gaming"
the corporate-ladder system is you simply marketing the product (yourself) to
your user/client so that they pay you more for it.

The beauty of it is that the emergent behavior of those combined two agents
yields a net positive for society. Do not be fooled into thinking that only
"noble" academia is the way to advance humankind.

~~~
jqm
No. Absolutely no. A net positive is not being realized for humanity when you
consider all the factors in this type of behavior. What this is a wasteful
process of leaching excessive production into the bank accounts of people
pretending to be productively engaged.

I have to agree with OP. Far too many big companies are busy trying to figure
out how to game the system and cheat the consumers and have become filled with
ladder climbers who have long since lost sight of the original mandate
assigned to them by the system. This probably won't last very long
historically speaking and it might not end well either. It's unbalanced,
unjust, corrupt and just plain wrong.

Incidentally, the companies job is OP's job. Companies don't exist without
people.

------
w1ntermute
Another possible (unspoken) reason why Gariépy is resigning is presumably that
he's been a postdoc[0] for the last 3-4 years[1]. Unfortunately, the nature of
modern biomedical research is such that you need an army of researchers to do
the mechanical grunt work at the lab bench that leads to papers. This has led
to a glut of postdocs, who are underpaid, overworked, and have little hope of
ever obtaining a permanent academic position[2]. And even at top universities,
industry positions are quite difficult to get without putting time and effort
that you don't have to spare into extensive networking[3].

During his postdoc, Gariépy's had one second-author publication in _Nature
Neuroscience_ [4], which probably wasn't enough to get a tenure-track
professorship. If, like the first author on that paper, he had gotten an
assistant professorship at a prestigious university[5], he probably wouldn't
be airing his dirty laundry. Also note that he is a YouTuber[6] and has a book
coming out according to his Twitter profile[7], so he's probably trying to
leverage any notoriety he gets from ragequitting his postdoc to jumpstart his
career in science journalism.

0: [http://today.duke.edu/node/132805](http://today.duke.edu/node/132805)

1:
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanfrancoisgariepy](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanfrancoisgariepy)

2: [https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/10/04/glut-postdoc-
re...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/10/04/glut-postdoc-researchers-
stirs-quiet-crisis-science/HWxyErx9RNIW17khv0MWTN/story.html)

3: [https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/09/02/cambridge-
pl...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/09/02/cambridge-planners-
take-kendall-fat-chunkies/k9SuETiCJSVj5UveEUEoLK/story.html)

4:
[http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v16/n2/abs/nn.3287.html](http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v16/n2/abs/nn.3287.html)

5:
[https://medicine.yale.edu/neuroscience/people/steve_chang.pr...](https://medicine.yale.edu/neuroscience/people/steve_chang.profile)

6: [http://neuro.tv/](http://neuro.tv/)

7: [https://twitter.com/JFGariepy](https://twitter.com/JFGariepy)

~~~
sanderjd
I downvoted this and I wanted to say why. It reads to me like a (perhaps well-
researched) ad-hominem attack. Rather than speaking to the points raised by
the post, you attempt to undermine the person who posted it.

~~~
w1ntermute
I'm not undermining him at all, I'm simply sharing the broader context behind
him resigning, which he omitted from his post. Even though he may not have
been academically successful, it looks like he's got the street smarts
necessary to make it in the real world, which you definitely can't say for
many of the postdocs trapped in academia. And having seen some of the utterly
ignorant comments people make online (including on HN) and in person about the
biomedical sciences, we could use more people who both understand the science
and can communicate it to the broader public.

------
alexmuro
I work as a researcher in a grant funded lab, I can see where this post is
coming from. There is a lot of needless politics in academia, and often the
right things are not rewarded. However no matter what set of actions you
choose to reward, people will find a way to game that system.

The criticism in this post, while at least partly true, is too cynical to make
a difference in any way. Sure, there are a lot of poor and useless papers
published and terrible labs in the US University research system, but the
search for knowledge is moving undeniably forward under this system.

------
bane
I keep hearing about how miserable things are in academia and have come to
perhaps a surprising conclusion: research and education need to be broken up.
I know that there's arguments that the two should stay entangled, and that new
research feeds quickly into education blah blah blah. But I personally think
that the world is far better off with large, dedicated, quasi-commercial R&D
labs and institutions like Xerox-Parc, Bell Labs, Howard Hughes Medical,
Battelle, Microsoft Research etc. and that those research labs operate off of
a "licensed innovation" model.

It feels like these places are struggling (I might be wrong), but I'd argue
for a vast expansion of this system on par with the university system, but
without either being burdened by the needs of either one. Offer competitive
industry pay and work on demand for commercial and public interest.

A kind of kernel of this already exists, either big National Labs that try to
spin out mature research paths into companies (giving the researches a shot at
making it big as CEO or CTO of these new companies) or as dedicated commercial
R&D firms that get hired to produce product ideas for commercialization. But I
think it should be institutionalized in the same way universities are rather
than running as independent as they do now. And then universities should get
out of the research game altogether.

I don't have real concrete ideas on how this should be done, but it would
provide a better career track for smart people.

~~~
mcguire
" _I know that there 's arguments that the two should stay entangled..._"

I've just got one, but it's pretty compelling: the best instructors I've seen
have been researchers teaching _about the subject they 're researching._ That
might be an introductory, undergraduate AI class taught by a senior AI
researcher, or a new faculty member effectively teaching about his
dissertation topic.

Sure, I've seen plenty of researchers who made bad instructors, but I've seen
many more instructional faculty who not only didn't care about teaching but
also didn't know the basics of their subject.

~~~
bane
I'm not sure that it's not possible for top rate researches to teach at
attached universities if they care to. There's plenty of professionals who
work in the commercial world and teach a class or two a semester because they
love it but hate working in the academic world -- I work with two PhDs who do
exactly that.

Anecdotally, many of the worst teachers I had were researchers in their field.
It was clear that they wanted to just research in their field and teaching was
something the school forced them into doing and they did the bare minimum.

~~~
jcranmer
I've noticed that a few research professors have struggled to teach courses.
It's not a problem of being unable to convey the information (since CS is
conference-heavy in publications, you can't become a good researcher without
getting good at presenting), but rather that they can't write do homework
assignments or tests very well.

------
CSDude
I will give an example how the system is broken. I am a masters student, and
my advisor assigns me full reviews without even asking, in the fields that I
do not even understand anything a little bit, not even in my area. I review
them for him. Some dude's approval to a conference is at my hands. I do not
feel in any position to review most of the papers I have been given and
talking to my advisor does not help. So, I just accept them all if they do not
have major style issues, and that's it.

~~~
mcguire
Do what I did (unintentionally): suggest that they reject a major, name,
researcher's paper because it's an unintelligible mess with no real results. I
never had to review a paper again.

Which is kind of a pity. I liked doing that, including learning enough about
the topic to make something like intelligent comments.

------
aflyax
Every single Ph.D. on my data science team has pretty much said the same thing
(independently). The way I put it: Academic science is a branch of the
entertainment industry in a socialist sub-economy.

------
svisser
Relevant one-page article: "On “Write-Only” Conferences" \-
[http://www.mit.edu/~irahwan/docs/IEEE-
IS_letter2007.pdf](http://www.mit.edu/~irahwan/docs/IEEE-IS_letter2007.pdf)

(conferences in exotic locations for which you only need to submit an article
to attend)

~~~
mcguire
I don't quite get that letter. The IEEE has plenty of write-only conferences
that are not in scenic locales; anyone who actually goes doesn't even get a
good vacation, so no one actually attends. But it's still a publication.

------
sundarurfriend
Non-facebook mirror:
[http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=rz261piT](http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=rz261piT)

------
pfooti
FWIW, I have a PhD and spent five years as an assistant professor. I then went
on to take a different job as a lecturer for a few years before leaving
academia completely. The general complaint JF raised rings true. In my field
(learning sciences), there was a TON of jank publications. The majority of the
published work still is stuff that exists solely to increment the author's
publication count. The term "least publishable unit" was used unironically.

The focus is flawed. There is still a lot of good work being done in the
system, but that work is really only 10% of the work that is done. I had to
choose between artificially inflating my pub count and not making tenure. In
the end, I decided to walk away - I personally don't have the kind of
perseverance necessary for that.

Of course, I now make significantly more money and am actually appreciated by
my colleagues (rather than viewed as competition), and still get to contribute
real work in the field in a private sector nonprofit instead. And I get to
program too (in LS at least it was all publications, the software you created
didnt count for anything.)

------
noelsusman
Something like 90% of people working in academia have pretty much the same
opinion. This isn't anything that hasn't been said a thousand times over
already.

The real question is how do we solve it? I've seen tons of people complain
about the state of academia (myself included), but I have yet to see a
workable solution to the problem.

~~~
danieltillett
There are quite a few options that have been proposed, the real problem is we
are not applying science to solving it. We need to do the studies to find out
what maximises quality scientific output and then scale out. The reason this
is not done is the people at the top think the current system is working well,
for them.

------
akulbe
My biggest concern with this is that it devalues education even further.

Many potential/current/former students are questioning the value of higher
education.

If you cannot trust the researchers, then how can anything be trusted? If it's
just one big good-old-boy system, what's the point?

------
timtas
Science is in trouble. Before long we'll owe an apology to medieval
astrologers and barbers.

What’s wrong with Science ([http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-
technology/2159154...](http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-
technology/21591549-and-nature-and-cell-nobel-prize-winner-attacks-elite-
journals-whats-wrong))

How science goes wrong
([http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21588069-scientific-
re...](http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21588069-scientific-research-has-
changed-world-now-it-needs-change-itself-how-science-goes-wrong))

I Fooled Millions Into Thinking Chocolate Helps Weight Loss Here's How.
([http://io9.com/i-fooled-millions-into-thinking-chocolate-
hel...](http://io9.com/i-fooled-millions-into-thinking-chocolate-helps-
weight-1707251800))

How computer-generated fake papers are flooding academia
([http://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2014/feb/26/...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2014/feb/26/how-
computer-generated-fake-papers-flooding-academia))

Bad Science – Study on Gay Marriage Was Fake, Gets Retracted
([http://www.zmescience.com/science/bad-science-michael-
lacour...](http://www.zmescience.com/science/bad-science-michael-
lacour-26052015/))

Some Online Journals Will Publish Fake Science, For A Fee
([http://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2013/10/03/22885995...](http://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2013/10/03/228859954/some-online-journals-will-publish-fake-science-for-
a-fee))

The Mind of a Con Man ([http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/magazine/diederik-
stapels-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/magazine/diederik-stapels-
audacious-academic-fraud.html))

Why Biomedical Research Has A Reproducibility Problem
([http://footnote1.com/why-biomedical-research-has-a-
reproduci...](http://footnote1.com/why-biomedical-research-has-a-
reproducibility-problem/))

I could go on but...you know...Google.

------
viach
Looks like it's a good time to start automating scientific research...

------
mangamadaiyan
I almost did a Ph.D.

Luckily, my prof and I didn't get along too well, and I escaped with just a
Master's degree.

To this day, my prof doesn't list me in his page (all other students before
and after me are listed, and the lone publication I have with him is listed
too).

------
tete
I hear that a lot. It kind of made me certain that I don't want to go for a
PhD.

I also frequently hear that it was a great time and that people should do it
(very shortly summed up) "if they love science". But to be honest, there is a
lot of people who are researchers and scientists without ever getting any kind
of degree. Okay, not a lot as in the majority, but enough to be aware that it
is valid to write papers, etc. and be accepted in research communities. I am
not saying it is easy and it probably is way, way more unlikely, but then this
sounds a lot like "if you really love science".

I also agree that the utility part will probably be harder, so it may depend a
lot on what you study.

Those are all my assumptions, based on the things I heard. They are not really
statements. I really want to hear what others think about that and especially
where I am awfully wrong.

------
xjlin0
Cannot agree with him more, on every words from this post. Using just the
publication score as the measurement on the scientific research is actually
killing the entire field.

------
akhilcacharya
I'm assuming that he'll be recruited by Google next.

------
ching_wow_ka
I am somewhat ignorant. What significant achievements does Dawkins hold in his
field? All I know is that he's known for trying to convince others of his
beliefs.

~~~
stefantalpalaru
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins#Work](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins#Work)

~~~
jleyank
Here's his CV:
[http://www.fontem.com/archivos/usuarios/cv_521.pdf](http://www.fontem.com/archivos/usuarios/cv_521.pdf)

------
vonklaus
This is something thar is echoed all the time and it does not seem to be
something limited or confined to academia, whoch makes it all the more
unfortunate.

------
kaonashi
Seems like the inevitable result of forcing scientists to be competitive in an
activity which is inherently cooperative.

------
rch
David Eagleman is a good one, and plays a mean harmonica too.

------
DrNuke
That's why in 2015 clusters like YC, if they achieve criticality, self-
awareness and overall sustainability, have the chance to outgrow both unis and
corps for meaningful and productive innovation.

~~~
mcguire
On a small scale. There's no way that model will support decades-long, large
collaboration work.

------
hosh
The headless-chicken researchers sounds replaceable by AI. If survival is the
main goal, then it is a short-sighted strategy.

------
javert
As a grad student, he's right and I'm glad he's saying it. (I'm in CS, though,
not biology.)

------
bobwaycott
This echoes closely (for me) what I experienced as a grad student before
ultimately abandoning it.

In 2005, I was pursuing my then-dream of joining the ranks of academia. I was
a history & philosophy grad, and my field was 20th-century intellectual and
cultural history (so, you know, a whole lot easier than and not at all like
the _real_ sciences). I'd grown somewhat tired of the expected vulture-like
hovering about what had been the standard historiographical approaches of the
past 30 years. Not because I did not find them valuable, insightful,
meaningful, or worth continuing. I absolutely did. I continue to find them
incredibly insightful. However, it just wasn't _quite_ what I was looking for.
I thought I had something better, something nobody was doing at all at that
time in the field.

For an entire year, I found myself locked in an endless struggle of presenting
my case, arguing my thesis and its philosophical framework and merit, with
every member of the department. I couldn't succeed in convincing a single prof
to head my committee. Not one. There were long and impassioned debates. They
asked a ton of questions, really forced me to dig further into proving the
merits and value of the idea, constantly put me on the spot to really flesh
out how I was going to support this idea.

At first, I thought I was simply failing to make my case. I could accept that.
It drove me to work harder to make my case. I slowly began realizing something
else was up when, without fail, every prof hit a point of being no longer
interested in hearing my arguments. This was signified--every single time--
when they suggested they'd be willing to lead my committee if I would choose a
topic that matched their research. They offered to take me on as their RA
because I had so thoroughly proven my ability to quickly gain depth and
breadth of understanding in a given topic. They even granted me a TA position
by the end of the year to sweeten the pot (I'd been attending with no
financial assistance at that point, paying the bill myself).

After this happened with the last remaining prof, I finished the semester out,
then emailed them all a thanks-but-no-thanks letter. I left the program.

A month later, I received an email from one of the professors. It was a
personal heads-up and invitation to attend an upcoming conference the
university would be hosting. The keynote speaker just happened to be an expert
on a philosopher who featured prominently in inspiring and underpinning my
proposed work. The keynote topic was a talk about that philosopher's work, and
a musing on how it needed to be included in historiography alongside the
analytic categories employed for so long in modern historical scholarship.
There was even a light-hearted mention by this prof of how much it sounded
exactly like everything I'd been arguing in the department for a year, and how
she thought I wouldn't want to miss hearing what _an expert_ had to say on the
topic.

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

EDIT: couple word choices; formatting.

------
stefantalpalaru
> The editor later proceeded to explain to us why he was inquiring about the
> reputation of these scientists: "I'm asking to make sure that I accept
> articles from reputable people. Because you see, at ______, we want to do
> real science, not Richard-Dawkins-type science. " I remember discreetly
> crying for an hour that night at the conference's bar, not because that man
> was unjustifiably mean to one of the most intelligent scientists in the
> world, but because I had come to the realization that our system of
> scientific publication was governed by people who have no idea what
> knowledge is.

It's not just the people governing it. It's the system itself: you are vetted
by the only people who understand what you write - the other members of your
own little tribe. The editor is not supposed to understand what he publishes,
he just asks the opinion of your colleagues, anonymizes slightly the responses
(you can still tell who's who by their style) and gives them to you so you can
reply. Afterwards the music starts again, you switch chairs and it's your turn
to review your peer's article. Is there any wonder why this lead to heaps of
useless research and widespread enhanced interrogation of meaningless data?

And no, Richard Dawkins is not "one of the most intelligent scientists in the
world", he's just somebody you like and you extended your character judgment
to every aspect of his work because you took the same shortcut as that editor:
he's in your opinion one of the good ones. And your opinion is that of someone
using Facebook as a blogging platform ;-)

~~~
jessaustin
It _does_ seem unlikely that any random group of scientists (or people in
general, for that matter) are going to be of one mind with respect to Dawkins.

------
peterwwillis
As a lay person, it was pretty ridiculous and slightly horrifying to learn how
much time and effort my scientist friends have to put into fulfilling
irrelevant academic criteria just to be allowed to work on the research they
are incredibly passionate about.

In 'Scientific Progress Goes "Boink!"', Calvin and Hobbes build a duplicator
machine out of a cardboard box. If they were researchers, they'd first have to
go to school for X years, graduate, apply for a position at a research
institution that kind-of does research into duplicators, get accepted, and
then spend years working research around how cardboard boxes work, spend more
time writing grants and trying to publish their cardboard box research, and
maybe one day a board will green-light them for actually being able to
research how to duplicate something.

How can we tell the people with money to stop funding this stupid system?

~~~
cma
I think any funding system we come up with that gives out funds to
uncredentialed children and stuffed animals is probably going to turn out to
be a disaster. If systems have to pass that as a litmus test, I think many
good systems would fail.

~~~
Dylan16807
Very funny, but we're talking about a situation where they were fully capable
of designing and building the device.

~~~
cma
A system that needs to have no filtering so that kids don't get filtered out
is unnecessarily broad. If it hits this one comic book false negative, too
bad.

~~~
Dylan16807
In a world where children are as competent as they think they are, the system
should let confident children have a shot (they don't need much funding
anyway).

More seriously you're taking the analogy a bit too literally. It's about time
spent using competency vs. time spent signalling competency. The latter should
be nowhere near a majority.

