An aspiring scientist's frustration with academia - good read for board academics

[Brainfade]

http://crypto.junod.info/2013/09/09/an-aspiring-scientists-frustration-with-modern-day-academia-a-resignation/ Interesting read.

Dear EPFL, I am writing to state that, after four years of hard but enjoyable PhD work at this school, I am planning to quit my thesis in January, just a few months shy of completion. Originally, this was a letter that was intended only for my advisors. However, as I prepared to write it I realized that the message here may be pertinent to anyone involved in research across the entire EPFL, and so have extended its range just a bit. Specifically, this is intended for graduate students, postdocs, senior researchers, and professors, as well as for the people at the highest tiers of the school’s management. To those who have gotten this and are not in those groups, I apologize for the spam. While I could give a multitude of reasons for leaving my studies – some more concrete, others more abstract – the essential motivation stems from my personal conclusion that I’ve lost faith in today’s academia as being something that brings a positive benefit to the world/societies we live in. Rather, I’m starting to think of it as a big money vacuum that takes in grants and spits out nebulous results, fueled by people whose main concerns are not to advance knowledge and to effect positive change, though they may talk of such things, but to build their CVs and to propel/maintain their careers. But more on that later. Before continuing, I want to be very clear about two things. First, not everything that I will say here is from my personal firsthand experience. Much is also based on conversations I’ve had with my peers, outside the EPFL and in, and reflects their experiences in addition to my own. Second, any negative statements that I make in this letter should not be taken to heart by all of its readers. It is not my intention to demonize anyone, nor to target specific individuals. I will add that, both here and elsewhere, I have met some excellent people and would not – not in a hundred years – dare accuse them of what I wrote in the previous paragraph. However, my fear and suspicion is that these people are few, and that all but the most successful ones are being marginalized by a system that, feeding on our innate human weaknesses, is quickly getting out of control. I don’t know how many of the PhD students reading this entered their PhD programs with the desire to actually *learn* and to somehow contribute to science in a positive manner. Personally, I did. If you did, too, then you’ve probably shared at least some of the frustrations that I’m going to describe next. (1) Academia: It’s Not Science, It’s Business I’m going to start with the supposition that the goal of “science†is to search for truth, to improve our understanding of the universe around us, and to somehow use this understanding to move the world towards a better tomorrow. At least, this is the propaganda that we’ve often been fed while still young, and this is generally the propaganda that universities that do research use to put themselves on lofty moral ground, to decorate their websites, and to recruit naïve youngsters like myself. I’m also going to suppose that in order to find truth, the basic prerequisite is that you, as a researcher, have to be brutally honest – first and foremost, with yourself and about the quality of your own work. Here one immediately encounters a contradiction, as such honesty appears to have a very minor role in many people’s agendas. Very quickly after your initiation in the academic world, you learn that being “too honest†about your work is a bad thing and that stating your research’s shortcomings “too openly†is a big faux pas. Instead, you are taught to “sell†your work, to worry about your “imageâ€, and to be strategic in your vocabulary and where you use it. Preference is given to good presentation over good content – a priority that, though understandable at times, has now gone overboard. The “evil†kind of networking (see, e.g.,http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/networking-good-vs-evil/) seems to be openly encouraged. With so many business-esque things to worry about, it’s actually surprising that *any* scientific research still gets done these days. Or perhaps not, since it’s precisely the naïve PhDs, still new to the ropes, who do almost all of it. (2) Academia: Work Hard, Young Padawan, So That One Day You Too May Manage! I sometimes find it both funny and frightening that the majority of the world’s academic research is actually being done by people like me, who don’t even have a PhD degree. Many advisors, whom you would expect to truly be pushing science forward with their decades of experience, do surprisingly little and only appear to manage the PhD students, who slave away on papers that their advisors then put their names on as a sort of “fee†for having taken the time to read the document (sometimes, in particularly desperate cases, they may even try to steal first authorship). Rarely do I hear of advisors who actually go through their students’ work in full rigor and detail, with many apparently having adopted the “if it looks fine, we can submit it for publication†approach. Apart from feeling the gross unfairness of the whole thing – the students, who do the real work, are paid/rewarded amazingly little, while those who manage it, however superficially, are paid/rewarded amazingly much – the PhD student is often left wondering if they are only doing science now so that they may themselves manage later. The worst is when a PhD who wants to stay in academia accepts this and begins to play on the other side of the table. Every PhD student reading this will inevitably know someone unlucky enough to have fallen upon an advisor who has accepted this sort of management and is now inflicting it on their own students – forcing them to write paper after paper and to work ridiculous hours so that the advisor may advance his/her career or, as if often the case, obtain tenure. This is unacceptable and needs to stop. And yet as I write this I am reminded of how EPFL has instituted its own tenure-track system not too long ago. (3) Academia: The Backwards Mentality A very saddening aspect of the whole academic system is the amount of self-deception that goes on, which is a “skill†that many new recruits are forced to master early on… or perish. As many PhD students don’t truly get to choose their research topic, they are forced to adopt what their advisors do and to do “something original†on it that could one day be turned into a thesis. This is all fine and good when the topic is genuinely interesting and carries a lot of potential. Personally, I was lucky to have this be the case for me, but I also know enough people who, after being given their topic, realized that the research direction was of marginal importance and not as interesting as it was hyped up by their advisor to be. This seems to leave the student with a nasty ultimatum. Clearly, simply telling the advisor that the research is not promising/original does not work – the advisor has already invested too much of his time, reputation, and career into the topic and will not be convinced by someone half his age that he’s made a mistake. If the student insists, he/she will be labeled as “stubborn†and, if the insisting is too strong, may not be able to obtain the PhD. The alternative, however unpleasant, is to lie to yourself and to find arguments that you’re morally comfortable with that somehow convince you that what you’re doing has important scientific value. For those for whom obtaining a PhD is a *must* (usually for financial reasons), the choice, however tragic, is obvious. The real problem is that this habit can easily carry over into one’s postgraduate studies, until the student themselves becomes like the professor, with the backwards mentality of “it is important because I’ve spent too many years working on itâ€. (4) Academia: Where Originality Will Hurt You The good, healthy mentality would naturally be to work on research that we believe is important. Unfortunately, most such research is challenging and difficult to publish, and the current publish-or-perish system makes it difficult to put bread on the table while working on problems that require at least ten years of labor before you can report even the most preliminary results. Worse yet, the results may not be understood, which, in some cases, is tantamount to them being rejected by the academic community. I acknowledge that this is difficult, and ultimately cannot criticize the people who choose not to pursue such “risky†problems. Ideally, the academic system would encourage those people who are already well established and trusted to pursue these challenges, and I’m sure that some already do. However, I cannot help but get the impression that the majority of us are avoiding the real issues and pursuing minor, easy problems that we know can be solved and published. The result is a gigantic literature full of marginal/repetitive contributions. This, however, is not necessarily a bad thing if it’s a good CV that you’re after. (5) Academia: The Black Hole of Bandwagon Research Indeed, writing lots of papers of questionable value about a given popular topic seems to be a very good way to advance your academic career these days. The advantages are clear: there is no need to convince anyone that the topic is pertinent and you are very likely to be cited more since more people are likely to work on similar things. This will, in turn, raise your impact factor and will help to establish you as a credible researcher, regardless of whether your work is actually good/important or not. It also establishes a sort of stable network, where you pat other (equally opportunistic) researchers on the back while they pat away at yours. Unfortunately, not only does this lead to quantity over quality, but many researchers, having grown dependent on the bandwagon, then need to find ways to keep it alive even when the field begins to stagnate. The results are usually disastrous. Either the researchers begin to think up of creative but completely absurd extensions of their methods to applications for which they are not appropriate, or they attempt to suppress other researchers who propose more original alternatives (usually, they do both). This, in turn, discourages new researchers from pursuing original alternatives and encourages them to join the bandwagon, which, though founded on a good idea, has now stagnated and is maintained by nothing but the pure will of the community that has become dependent on it. It becomes a giant, money-wasting mess. (6) Academia: Statistics Galore! “Professors with papers are like children,†a professor once told me. And, indeed, there seems to exist an unhealthy obsession among academics regarding their numbers of citations, impact factors, and numbers of publications. This leads to all sorts of nonsense, such as academics making “strategic citationsâ€, writing “anonymous†peer reviews where they encourage the authors of the reviewed paper to cite their work, and gently trying to tell their colleagues about their recent work at conferences or other networking events or sometimes even trying to slip each other their papers with a “I’ll-read-yours-if-you-read-mine†wink and nod. No one, when asked if they care about their citations, will ever admit to it, and yet these same people will still know the numbers by heart. I admit that I’ve been there before, and hate myself for it. At the EPFL, the dean sends us an e-mail every year saying how the school is doing in the rankings, and we are usually told that we are doing well. I always ask myself what the point of these e-mails is. Why should it matter to a scientist if his institution is ranked tenth or eleventh by such and such committee? Is it to boost our already overblown egos? Wouldn’t it be nicer for the dean to send us an annual report showing how EPFL’s work is affecting the world, or how it has contributed to resolving certain important problems? Instead, we get these stupid numbers that tell us what universities we can look down on and what universities we need to surpass. (7) Academia: The Violent Land of Giant Egos I often wonder if many people in academia come from insecure childhoods where they were never the strongest or the most popular among their peers, and, having studied more than their peers, are now out for revenge. I suspect that yes, since it is the only explanation I can give to explain why certain researchers attack, in the bad way, other researchers’ work. Perhaps the most common manifestation of this is via peer reviews, where these people abuse their anonymity to tell you, in no ambiguous terms, that you are an idiot and that your work isn’t worth a pile of dung. Occasionally, some have the gall to do the same during conferences, though I’ve yet to witness this latter manifestation personally. More than once I’ve heard leading researchers in different fields refer to other methods with such beautiful descriptions as “garbage†or “trashâ€, sometimes even extending these qualifiers to pioneering methods whose only crime is that they are several decades old and which, as scientists, we ought to respect as a man respects his elders. Sometimes, these people will take a break from saying bad things about people in their own fields and turn their attention to other domains – engineering academics, for example, will sometimes make fun of the research done in the humanities, ridiculing it as ludicrous and inconsequential, as if what they did was more important. (8) Academia: The Greatest Trick It Ever Pulled was Convincing the World That It was Necessary Perhaps the most crucial, piercing question that the people in academia should ask themselves is this: “Are we really needed?†Year after year, the system takes in tons of money via all sorts of grants. Much of this money then goes to pay underpaid and underappreciated PhD students who, with or without the help of their advisors, produce some results. In many cases, these results are incomprehensible to all except a small circle, which makes their value difficult to evaluate in any sort of objective manner. In some rare cases, the incomprehensibility is actually justified – the result may be very powerful but may, for example, require a lot of mathematical development that you really do need a PhD to understand. In many cases, however, the result, though requiring a lot of very cool math, is close to useless in application. This is fine, because real progress is slow. What’s bothersome, however, is how long a purely theoretical result can be milked for grants before the researchers decide to produce something practically useful. Worse yet, there often does not appear to be a strong urge for people in academia to go and apply their result, even when this becomes possible, which most likely stems from the fear of failure – you are morally comfortable researching your method as long as it works in theory, but nothing would hurt more than to try to apply it and to learn that it doesn’t work in reality. No one likes to publish papers which show how their method fails (although, from a scientific perspective, they’re obliged to). These are just some examples of things that, from my humble perspective, are “wrong†with academia. Other people could probably add others, and we could go and write a book about it. The problem, as I see it, is that we are not doing very much to remedy these issues, and that a lot of people have already accepted that “true science†is simply an ideal that will inevitably disappear with the current system proceeding along as it is. As such, why risk our careers and reputations to fight for some noble cause that most of academia won’t really appreciate anyway? I’m going to conclude this letter by saying that I don’t have a solution to these things. Leaving my PhD is certainly not a solution – it is merely a personal decision – and I don’t encourage other people to do anything of the sort. What I do encourage is some sort of awareness and responsibility. I think that there are many of us, certainly in my generation, who would like to see “academia†be synonymous with “scienceâ€. I know I would, but I’ve given up on this happening and so will pursue true science by some other path. While there was a time when I thought that I would be proud to have the letters “PhD†after my name, this is unfortunately no longer the case. However, nothing can take away the knowledge that I’ve gained during these four years, and for that, EPFL, I remain eternally grateful. My sincerest thanks for reading this far

[Ram]

Couldn’t help but suppress a smile as I read thru the piece. As much as nobody wants to talk about it, academia is getting as commercialized as the corporate world. It is no secret that there’s a lot of prestige/pride involved in being the professor who can bring in the most grants. During my relatively short tenure as a research student at grad school, it is was impossible to miss bulletin boards in the department hallways, proudly announcing the fact the Professor X had brought in XYZ money. And less said about the quality of ‘research’, the better.

[punjabi_khota]

Solid article, and most of what he said is true, although I would think it comes off as a bit short sighted. A huge part of academia is doing research because it is interesting. Many of the world's toughest technical problems have no straight solutions, so idealization and theory is very important. US academia's forever-in-grant-application-mode is a big pain though, and I have seen it first hand that the many advisors usually just do the grant writing and managing. I really do think that universities job is do bulk of theory and the blue sky research, while industrial research labs should do the transition from theory to application. It is a pity that there are few private enterprises taking that risk these days, google research,microsoft, HP etc to name a few. We need the theoretical neuroscientists, astrophysicists and number theorists as much as we need civil and mechanical engineers.

[Detonator]

Great read. May be one of the reason why we are losing good minds to other countries.

[Crookbond]

Great read. May be one of the reason why we are losing good minds to other countries.

The author is a student at EPFL, Lausanne - Switzerland. It is more a global phenomena - Cricaddict can justify considering his relevant experience. Indian research standards are abysmal but the last 5 years have changed things around (I can talk from Computer Science perspective).

[Detonator]

The author is a student at EPFL, Lausanne - Switzerland. It is more a global phenomena - Cricaddict can justify considering his relevant experience. Indian research standards are abysmal but the last 5 years have changed things around (I can talk from Computer Science perspective).

I wanted to releate this into Indian milieu. My bad, my comment isn't much clear. Talking about Indian research standards, I agree that its improving but still I guess the frustration of our students are much more than what the author implies. I m in touch with my school teacher, who is struggling a lot for getting PhD related to agriculture (I donno what exactly). He even said, agri students are considered as "not cool" in cities. Adding to panjabi_kota's list, I think we need more scientists on agriculture, environmental sciences, energy, etc.,

[Crookbond]

I wanted to releate this into Indian milieu. My bad, my comment isn't much clear. Talking about Indian research standards, I agree that its improving but still I guess the frustration of our students are much more than what the author implies. I m in touch with my school teacher, who is struggling a lot for getting PhD related to agriculture (I donno what exactly). He even said, agri students are considered as "not cool" in cities. Adding to panjabi_kota's list, I think we need more scientists on agriculture, environmental sciences, energy, etc.,

Frustration - that would be a euphemism. There's a reason why punjabi_khota did his PhD in the US and not in India.

[Detonator]

Frustration - that would be a euphemism. There's a reason why punjabi_khota did his PhD in the US and not in India.

Not meant to sound harsh, but it's just my opinion formed on meeting a couple of people. I might be wrong if the overall setting is considered. IMO, most people are after money and the high esteem they get by having a PhD after their name, only a few wanted to make a change in their respective areas.

[Crookbond]

Not meant to sound harsh' date=' but it's just my opinion formed on meeting a couple of people. I might be wrong if the overall setting is considered. IMO, [b']most people are after money and the high esteem they get by having a PhD after their name, only a few wanted to make a change in their respective areas.

Did you get that I actually agree with what you said in the previous post? For the highlighted, I see nothing wrong in that line of thought.

[punjabi_khota]

Not meant to sound harsh' date=' but it's just my opinion formed on meeting a couple of people. I might be wrong if the overall setting is considered. IMO, most people are after money and the high esteem they get by having a PhD after their name, only a few wanted to make a change in their respective areas.[/quote'] With very few exceptions, you will almost never make more money with a PhD than without, all other factors being constant. It doesn't matter if it is India or US or Europe.

[Crookbond]

With very few exceptions' date=' you will almost never make more money with a PhD than without, all other factors being constant. It doesn't matter if it is India or US or Europe.[/quote'] That's actually one thing which most people do not understand, at least in India (it needs some time to drill it into their head), while entering a PhD program. The typical philosophy is - Ek aur degree, toh zyaada salary.

[Detonator]

With very few exceptions' date=' you will almost never make more money with a PhD than without, all other factors being constant. It doesn't matter if it is India or US or Europe.[/quote'] PhD is a good deal for people working in educational institutions. Marketing strategy of many college is "In Mathematics dept in our college, the HOD is double PhD and 4 Professors with one PhD", not caring abt whether it actually improves the quality. That way they can project themselves as a reputed college and double or triple the college fee. Hence, people who has a phd after their name can get highly paid and some colleges with high investment actually hunts for PhD's. Esp in engineering colleges, even the newly started ones are paying 30k for lecturers and god knows how much they pay for PhD's. Just the tution fee for my friend's college is rounded off with 1 lakch per year (total 2.5L per year), becoz the "quality of coaching" is higher becoz they have atleast 2 Phd's in each dept. There is a Professor who has phd in pharmacology (got in some UK university), where he just reads the book to us. Asking doubts is considered as "interruption"to him, so he starts the class with a phrase "Stoope intorrropting in the middle" (yeah, that's how he says it). He is getting paid more than 2 lakhs per month (with quarters and other allowances) for just reading a book. Not a single day he has clarified anything to us. I used to post a lot in this site esp during his classes. Only a few actually wants to teach.

[seedhi]

Slightly unrelated to this thread, but I will appreciate any thoughts from people in India. How is the work/pay/life in research labs in India ? I believe that MSR, IBM, Google and Yahoo have some presence in India, at least in CS/Math/IT research.

[Crookbond]

I think I can answer this for CS/IT Research. MSR, IBM are big shots and have well established labs. Yahoo! is defunct and people are moving to other places. Xerox has opened up in Bangalore and is hiring aggressively - many people from IBM Research have moved to Xerox for various reasons. The VP of IBM Manish Gupta has also moved to Xerox to head their team! Google is never a "research" place viz. it doesn't focus on publications. Amazon is similar to Google as well. You have the new entrants Walmart and Symantec which have opened up. The pay is best at MSR, IBM, Google and Amazon.

[seedhi]

I think I can answer this for CS/IT Research. MSR, IBM are big shots and have well established labs. Yahoo! is defunct and people are moving to other places. Xerox has opened up in Bangalore and is hiring aggressively - many people from IBM Research have moved to Xerox for various reasons. The VP of IBM Manish Gupta has also moved to Xerox to head their team! Google is never a "research" place viz. it doesn't focus on publications. Amazon is similar to Google as well. You have the new entrants Walmart and Symantec which have opened up. The pay is best at MSR, IBM, Google and Amazon.

Thanks. Didn't know about Xerox.

[randomGuy]

I think I can answer this for CS/IT Research. MSR, IBM are big shots and have well established labs. Yahoo! is defunct and people are movg to other places. Xerox has opened up in Bangalore and is hiring aggressively - many people from IBM Research have moved to Xerox for various reasons. The VP of IBM Manish Gupta has also moved to Xerox to head their team! Google is never a "research" place viz. it doesn't focus on publications. Amazon is similar to Google as well. You have the new entrants Walmart and Symantec which have opened up. The pay is best at MSR, IBM, Google and Amazon.

Aside from the pay which is in top 2 percentile in many of these, facalities like free food/snacks, home pickup/drop, gym, sports, medical coverage including for dependents flexible office hrs, work from home option, regular team outings etc will be found in some of them, I know abt MS, Google and amazon. MS is the coolest in this regard I guess.

[Vijay.Sharma]

Aside from the pay which is in top 2 percentile in many of these' date=' facalities like free food/snacks, home pickup/drop, gym, sports, medical coverage including for dependents flexible office hrs, work from home option, regular team outings etc will be found in some of them, I know abt MS, Google and amazon. MS is the coolest in this regard I guess.[/quote']Abe, direct recruitment agency ke paas jaa na?

[Crookbond]

Why You DON’T “****ing Love Science” http://www.johnskylar.com/post/61507282912/why-you-dont-****ing-love-science