Academia Is Eating Its Young

For a while now, I've pondered the creation of a new scientific society, something which has the same 'vibe' as the Royal Society did in the late 1800 early 1900's. Sort of a 'gentlepersons group' of critical thinkers. The promise is freeing science to once again flourish, the danger is something like TEDx.<p>A society to promote the pursuit of science by the common man or woman, with rigorous debate and discussion. A society where everyone agreed on the ground rules about what constituted 'science' and what constituted quackery.<p>We are almost to the point where we have enough multi-billion individuals that such a society could be endowed to create a place for science and scientists. Research without the requirement to teach undergraduates, publication with the requirement of a Ph.D. I could imagine that people who could learn the discipline to do the research could be supported in that research by some facilities and a modest stipend. Not the crazy big investment stuff like Fusion Reactors, but smaller problems like characterizing digestive flora in developed and undeveloped countries.<p>Its probably a pipe dream. But I wish such a group existed.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner Kary Mullis (the genius inventor of PCR) talks about this at length in an excellent essay in his book "Dancing Naked in the Mind Field". The book, overall, is ok - some of the stories/opinions he holds are "alternative" and a refreshing perspective.<p>"Because of science - not religion or politics - even people like you and me can have possessions that only a hundred years ago kings would have gone to war to own. Scientific method should not be take lightly.<p>The walls of the ivory tower of science collapsed when bureaucrats realized that there were jobs to be had and money to be made in the administration and promotion of science. Governments began making big investments just prior to World War II...<p>Science was going to determine the balance of power in the postwar world. Governments went into the science business big time.<p>Scientists became administrators of programs that had a mission. Probably the most important scientific development of the twentieth century is that economics replaced curiosity as the driving force behind research...<p>James Buchanan noted thirty years ago - and he is still correct - that as a rule, there is no vested interest in seeing a fair evaluation of a public scientific issue.<p>Very little experimental verification has been done to support important societal issues in the closing years of this century...People believe these things...because they have faith."

The article is rather vague on what he thinks are the problem with academia. All I can see is this:<p><i>Instead, it’s the politics, the inefficiency, and the in-bred hostility towards change has driven these incredible people out of academia.</i><p>Good luck getting politics out of human systems involving more than a few tens of people. It's just inevitable.<p>I don't know what he specifically means by inefficiency and in-bred hostility. One form of inefficiency I can think of is the constant grant writing professors have to do. But then this is just a product of penny pinching politicians and our anti-intellectual culture. I am not sure how academia can fix this.<p>I have no clue what he means by "in-bred hostility". I'm not the most sociable person in the world, but the number of positive interactions I've had with other researchers is vastly outweighed by the few negative interactions I've had with academic jerks.<p>The title of "academia eating its young" suggested me to the lament of many in the biomedical fields who seem go from postdoc to postdoc for years on end because permanent faculty positions are few and far between. Again, this is a direct result of the shrinking levels of funding going into research and higher education. This isn't academia eating its young, it's our society eating academia.

Some scientists are too old to change, and too proud to believe the results of their younger counterparts. It's stupid and it sucks, but it's crazy to think Microryza will fix this in any substantial way. Crowdfunding science encourages projects that are "sexy" but don't build toward real advances, and so are of questionable scientific value (two examples off the top of my head: <a href="http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/121115/srep00834/full/srep00834.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/121115/srep00834/full/srep00...</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/01/science/new-research-suggests-two-rat-brains-can-be-linked.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/01/science/new-research-sugg...</a>). Moreover, projects that the average person can't understand are at a great disadvantage, and your success rate is tied to the ability to sell yourself, rather than the merit of your research or your abilities as a scientist, which the average person not in your field will be unable to assess. For all of the problems with the present grant funding system, I find it very difficult to believe that crowdfunding could allocate resources more efficiently.

This is part of a broader problem in society with baby boomers not retiring or stepping aside for the next generation as has always happened before and it has broken many systems.<p>Is this because boomers consistently voted for tax via over safety net and then squandered that money so cannot afford to retire? Maybe. Is it because they're healthier than prior generations at the same age and the size of their demographic bulge means there are just more folks who don't feel ready to retire? Possibly.<p>In the US tenure systems are killers for younger talent. In my subject they led to one dominant branch of physics dominating tenure tracks - string theorists - with no real opportunities for other ideas ...now 20 years on and string theory appears to have been a terrible squandering of a lot of talent with little predictive science emerging from all that work.<p>It's somewhat depressing.<p>I once had a letter published in new scientist when I was an undergrad pointing out that there were no career paths for scientists as financially attractive as the most basic entry level job available to non-scientists. But that was nearly 20 years ago. Things have just got worse since.

The one person I feel most strongly about this is Elizabeth Iorns.<p>Elizabeth was named one of the 10 most important people by Nature last year, for her work in the Reproducibility Initiative and with Science Exchange (<a href="http://www.nature.com/news/366-days-nature-s-10-1.11997" rel="nofollow">http://www.nature.com/news/366-days-nature-s-10-1.11997</a>). She is one of the most genuinely passionate researchers I know, and she cares deeply about doing good science.<p>If she is not teaching the next generation of scientists by the time I die, all of my work will have been for naught.<p>I could go on and on about the number of brilliant scientists who are struggling in today's system. There is a huge bottleneck of innovation and it's entirely self-imposed. Someone or something is going to blow that bottleneck to shreds, and the world will start to see incredible things.

The reward structure we live by is oriented towards extrinsic motivation even when work produced by intrinsic motivation is known to be of higher quality.<p>There goes a story that Edison was taught this lesson when he tried to sell his very first voting machine. He was told, "we don't want it if we can't mess with it". That's when he is suppose to have decided to only work on projects that people wanted.<p>Then there is Tesla - worked on projects without much regard to their social or economic relevancy.<p>Do not make this into a debate about Edison vs. Tesla, this is just to show how fucked up is this world we live in. I think all of us, hackers, hustlers, and designers, have made a similar choice at one time or another when we've decided to <i>do it for the x</i> or <i>be true to yourself</i>.

I always wonder when reading these just how much the author is rationalizing their choice to leave. If( and I'm assuming here) they were in grad school for CS and left , most of those problems really don't apply.<p>There isn't the glut of adjuncts and postdocs one sees in e.g Micro biology because industry absorbs most of them. Tech transfer isn't nearly as big a problem (though may still be a problem). And reproducibility and data fraud are not nearly as pervasive for the simple reason that a lot of CS work is not experimental in that sense.<p>This reads like someone's grab back generic issues with academia that don't all apply to any given field.

There really isn't anything substantive in this post. Almost all of the problems that are linked to are due to funding cuts.<p>"Science and academia are entirely broken today, but we can longer afford to wait for the dinosaurs to die." Please - what exactly is the author trying to say? What exactly is broken, who are the dinosaurs, and what do they have to do with it? Science works very well, as it long has, and in fact in works much much better than it ever has, due to increasing transparency and fairness in all aspects of the academic pipeline (admission, graduation, funding, peer review, publication, etc.)<p>Certainly, funding is tight, which might drive a lot of very creative people away - but a lot of very creative people remain, and not everybody wants to be in academia anyway.<p>Also, it's true that academia can be very inefficient, but that's not globally true, and neither is it an academic problem alone. Most importantly, it's something that can be fixed.

The comments for this article are loading on top of the article itself. It's completely unreadable. Anyone else seeing this?

All I saw in that post is basically:<p>- Science is broken and needs to be fixed<p>- A 22-year-old bioengineer taught himself how to code<p>- The author started Microryza<p>and now this is on the HN front page. Did I miss an important sentence somewhere, or is that the actual summary?

Whilst academia has its problems, they tend to be no different to any other walk of life. Yes there are politics, yes there are cliques and annoyances, and yes inefficiencies and crazy decisions made. But I don't think there are many institutions that don't suffer these problems because generally they are staffed with human being, and humans, being what they are, tend to be flawed, political, mistaken, and sometimes brilliant.<p>Academic institutions are unique for enabling people to work on research problems in an environment that is extremely rich and productive, its not for everyone, its certainly not going to make most people rich in cash, and its structures can infuriate as well as enlighten. Thankfully there are other options in life, and other opportunities, but before you rush to reduce the universities to ruins and homogenise research activities, lets just stop for a second and ask what it is the universities uniquely bring to the table.<p>Maybe, just maybe, there is something worth saving in the idea of a university. Something that may not fit certain people, that may pass over some brilliant people, that may even struggle to satisfy the instant always-on consumerist education that is so fashionable today. Indeed, the university on a social level is a public good. And that public good, transcends the inefficiencies, the politics, and the other complaints pointed toward the universities. When universities are working at their best, they are for the public good, contribute to the public good, and help make society a better place for everyone.

I think you're touching on a really interesting subject, which namank elaborated on in his comment. It's too early to tell, but it seems education is heading in a more 'intrinsic' direction, with less structure and more exploration. On the issues of publishing and funding scientific work, these are kind of the same problems facing all creators now. The rate of creation has gone up tremendously quickly, and we are still developing the tools to improve efficiency.

The article implies that Microryza funds independent scientists, but their website says they only fund scientists working at established academic institutions, and I verified in the last discussion of the subject [1] that that was indeed the case, at least for now.<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5280236" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5280236</a>

This article is wholly devoid of motivation and characterization.

Besides all the reasons here why the system is broken, academia is also frequently a source of free/cheap labor from students trying to publish something or just get some experience. So, at least where I came from, in the constant presence of fund cuts, the PI just replaces whoever lost their grant with a volunteer student, or perhaps keeps that person working for free with the perspective of finish and publishing the work or with the vain hope that he/she'll get paid when the next round of funding comes. No matter what, the PI gets his name on every paper and also his salary (in most cases, that is). Seems not surprising that people start leaving this "profzi" scheme (<a href="http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1144" rel="nofollow">http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1144</a>).

Wow, this is an interesting article and I agree with much of it. I've had my PhD for about 2 years now (neurobiology) and I agree that academia is eating..itself. The inefficiency, politics, hostility are some of the things, but much like any other governmental thing, it's just run poorly...and that trickles down to the PIs, students, departments etc. [edit] this got really long, I'm going to create a blog post on this instead and host it at another time [/edit]<p>Here is an example:I applied to a training grant (t32) that will pay my salary and help me through my PhD. It was not funded initially because my PI's funding was running out in a year. &#60;angry bold&#62;I was applying for funds to continue my education so my PI wouldn't have to pay me (so we could use that money for my research), but they wouldn't fund me because my PI was running out of funds...to fund me. &#60;/&#62;<p>I resubmitted the exact same grant, with zero changes, but I included a letter staying that I'd be covered if my PI ran out of money. Then I got funded. Total time? 1 Year! It took a year for a paragraph to propagate through the granting agency, as I had to resubmit the grant again and wait 6 months to get a vague answer (priority score).<p>This is one of many examples I have that are consistent with the OPs article, the system is broken. And this is a wide spread problem that is going to require all of science to really make a change happen. I'm intending on doing so with my startup (just applied to YC) to bring transparency, efficiency, and opportunity to scientists. My goal is to bring the semantic web to academic science to start linking data sets between fields. Positive, negative and pilot data all available in one spot so I can run meta analysis on these data and create preliminary data for a grant or future studies. (there is more to it, but this isn't the place to plug my site)<p>What I'm most concerned about isn't the technology, it's the people using the technology. I recently got this comment, "Wow, that is a brilliant idea....but good luck getting scientists to use it." The dinosaurs are scared of change, and their fear(ignorance?) is by far the hardest thing I'm going up against. It's also one of the biggest problems we are going to have in science.<p>Still gotta try though:)

If (American) Academia isn't eating its young, it is chasing us away. This article explains exactly why I couldn't bear to do a PhD in the US - instead, I can do it with better funding in half the time without any coursework or comprehensive exams in the UK. It may not be as "valuable" in the US, but it keeps a number of options open for the future, while not boxing me into academia, which could end up being a dead end anyways if the bubble bursts.

It seems to me that Microryza itself is an example of one of the key problems facing Academia.<p>You have very successful sites in this space, and Microryza doesn't seem to offer much beyond these in exchange for their smaller user base and less validated templates and formats (please correct me if I am wrong). It seems to me that everyone on Microryza would have been better served by using Kickstarter or one of the other more established options in this space.<p>So why don't they? Why does Microryza exist?<p>To me the answer is the standard academic elitism. A persuasive thread in academia is that everything outside academia is inferior to what is done by the elite in the ivory tower. So accept the long hours and long pay, because you are a member of the elite. Research this arcane irrelevant problem, because you are a member of the elite. Submit to only these few journals and conferences, because you are a member of the elite. Etc. Etc. Mycroryza seems to be embracing this elitism.<p>Now, this isn't to bash on Microryza; if they can pull academia into this space, that would be fantastic. But I think the fact that they need to exist to make it happen is a shame.

(This will be hopeless to find in this massive thread, but...)<p>The OPs service-have laymen fund science-solves exactly the wrong problem (though he's on the right track.) The problem is <i>not</i> too little money, it's too much research because of the massive incentives to crank out crap, and the inability of the expert funding committees to sort through it all. Kickstarting this will just lead to funding the flashiest pseudoscience. We need to allow researchers more freedom to produce rarely, not encourage hype even more.

1. Couldn't read the article, but get the gist. 2. Years ago I got a B.A. in business. 3. I can honestly say 90% of the courses were, pretty much a waste if time. I literally had one instructor tell his students, "I really don't want to be here, so I don't exect you to even show up". Being young and naive, I went to a few of his classes; He literally read, verbatim, from a Accounting Book.<p>4. The Internet can teach a person much more than most colleges, with the exception of a professional degree--medicine, or engineering. Even then, the degree will just open the door. I've met engineers that couldn't build a house.<p>5. If you have the money, go for a degree. The women are plentiful--that's about all I remember. Oh, yea--learn what the placebo effect is, and don't let others take advantage of you. Be careful with the student loans-- they are not bankruptable--at least for now. Hopefully, that might change.<p>6. The most successful tech guys I have know dropped out of school, and learned to program on their own.<p>7. I've met too any people who feel guilty not completing the degree. I truely, feel they are better off--really. I have seen too many Ivy League guys "skate" on projects, while the high school drop out works 2x as hard, and in the end; most managers do take notice of the "Contributers" and eventually realize the guy with Stanford sweatshirt doesn't do much, besides look cool in the company pictures.

The good stuff is on the shelves of the research libraries, and it's not going anywhere.<p>If someone does a lot of good research early in their career and publishes it, then they can get funded to continue. In the US, there are billions a year for research from NSF, NIH, DoE, etc.<p>For teaching, did I mention that the good stuff is still on the shelves of the research libraries and is not going anywhere?

I read everything he said and then read it again substituting "law school" and "law" where needed and it still worked.

Look at the URL in the picture at the top. He did a search before doing the autocomplete.<p>This changes the results.<p>Try it. If you don't do the search for what you want to autocomplete, you will not get the same autocomplete options, in this particular case.<p>So he's basically posting a picture of doctored autocomplete options. If he just went to google.com and typed that in the search box, he would not get that dropdown.

I've been doing a lot of analysis of organizational decline over the past month, and what characterizes R&#38;D (including academia) is extreme convexity: <a href="http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/gervais-macleod-9-convexity/" rel="nofollow">http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/gervais-macle...</a><p>Convexity pertains to the shape of the curve for output (profits, value added, impact) per input (investment, skill, effort, and just plain luck). It pertains to desirable risk behavior (convex =&#62; seek risk; concave =&#62; limit it). Most of the "fun" work (arts, sciences) is convex. It's creative and difficult and you usually don't get directly paid, but when you have a hit, it's Big. The problem with convex work is that everyday people can't handle that kind of income variability. Institutions can, and if they're working properly, they buy that risk.<p>Some areas of work are <i>so</i> convex that only altruistic financing (public or academic funding without repayment expectations, long-term implicit autonomy) are tenable. Science and most of what academia does <i>will</i> return value to society, with interest, but the convexity puts such a time gap between the creation and capture of value that an institution required to capture value generated (e.g. a for-profit corporation) wouldn't survive at it. You need implicit trust and autonomy for that.<p>I like the idea of academia and like the idea of saving it, but it'll be hard to do. The system is now generationally <i>broken</i> and it will take heroic efforts to heal it.<p>When you start studying institutional decline as I have, you learn a few things. First, institutions are all about moving risk-- finance, in other words, although sometimes of a more abstract kind than what happens on Wall Street. There's nothing wrong with that. Risk transfers are great. The professor gets stable financial mediocrity (which most people would accept, even me; I've met the $2M/year Wall Street crowd and they're just as unhappy as anyone else) while doing exciting work, and doesn't have to worry about capturing the value. However, the second thing you learn is that the MacLeod cartoon (Losers, Clueless, Sociopaths) is the truth (a Loser/Sociopath risk trade) and The Bad Guys really do exist. They turn what were once fair risk transfers into "heads, I win; tails, you lose" affairs. That's what academia is, these days. Professors no longer get the autonomy (freedom from market risk) they were promised until their most productive years (due to the unsustainable nature of what it takes to get tenure, and midlife burnout) are behind them. Instead, post-1980 they have a great deal <i>more</i> career risk than they should have, given the obvious convex value of what they (as a group) achieve. They work really hard for many years for someone else's benefit, and most get tossed aside at the end of it. Heads, I win. Tails, you lose.<p>Obviously, the "trickle-down economics" 1980s were horrible and started this looting and tearing down. The demolition of the academic job market started then and hasn't stopped. However, looking into it objectively, there is one thing that professors did that ruined their game (for most of them). They began, as a culture, to devalue teaching.<p>It's not the fault of the people who are 28 now and trying to get professorships. They weren't even alive when it started. But the Baby Boomers created an academic culture in which research (often esoteric or inaccessible to outsiders) was "the real work" and teaching was just commodity grunt work, to be tossed aside to $15/hour TAs and otherwise scaled back (200+ student classes). This "teaching is a commodity" attitude led to a greater society (unable to see the value of research) hitting back with, "then why the fuck are we paying so many of you?" Now academia is dying. When you have uneducated, right-wing idiot state senators who didn't get feel like their professors gave a shit, they repay the favor in 20 years by cutting funding for 20 years.<p>The moral lesson (and it applies to us as programmers, too) is that <i>teaching</i> (for us, documentation and outreach) isn't commodity grunt work. It's vital. It's often where most of the value is added. If you blow teaching off, the world will lose interest in you and pull investment. I would say "you deserve it" but, in the academic sphere, it's a different (younger) set of people getting whacked for it.<p>Sadly, that karma was slow to act on academia. It was Baby Boomer careerist narcissists who copped that "fuck teaching" attitude, and Gen-X/Millennials who got the shaft... like so much else in society.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ym2L1urOz8" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ym2L1urOz8</a>