Comment by data_acquired | Hacker News Reader

Comment by data_acquired | Hacker News Reader

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Researcher here. I agree with your assessment of the way credit is given to authors, and there's a possibility of being scooped because folks are on strike.

I think you're forgetting that there's work-related conditions arising from not having a union that can cause you to get scooped. What about being scooped because you have terrible insurance that requires you to spend time away from a lab or because you have terrible pay and can't afford a decent day-care for your child? Or if, as a post-doc, you have a great idea but your professor is a harasser and a bully who faces little consequences for their actions? Remember, this isn't industry where you can walk over to a different job with better work conditions. Re-starting a project from scratch is months if not years.

And scooping is a physically survivable event. Poor insurance can some times literally not be a survivable event, and poor working conditions are a mental and physical health disaster.

I agree that all of the working conditions you mention are deplorable, and must be addressed. But again, I'm not sure a union is the right way to go about it. Unions only have power to bargain for things like insurance, childcare, or strong anti-harassment policies because of their ability to strike, and strikes are only consequential if almost everyone is on board.

For every researcher whose career is set back due to crappy insurance or an abusive PI, and for whom striking to advocate for better working conditions would be their top priority during a labor dispute, there are far more researchers who are unaffected (or indifferent) to these problems, and for whom finishing their project will always be their top priority. A strike simply won't accomplish anything if only a fraction of workers actually walk out.

The assumption is that the movement has built enough support for everyone to strike together.

But a strike walk-out is one of all kinds of bizarre reasons one ends up getting scooped. Mice get sick, chemical stocks go bad, collaborators leave for personal reasons, etc. etc. Yes, there's a marginal increase in the odds that one gets scooped during a strike. Truth is, when it comes to transitioning to a faculty position (which is the point of a post-doc position), being scooped is really not that much of a deal. Having the big-ass discovery to one's name can help, yes, but what determines one's chances on the faculty market are a panoply of other factors too --- is the university looking for someone with your research profile? Did they have a funding cut? Is your advisor a famous person known to the hiring committee? etc. Fellows on strikes are acutely aware of the risk of getting scooped every minute that is spent away from the bench, but in the balance, its really not foremost on many folks' minds beyond a point.

So, worst case, people get scooped in the short run. In the longer run, better pay + insurance means far more talent even considering a post-doc position and academia at all. As for whether unions are the way to do it, one-time mobilizations or strikes or nebulous pressure from the public are not reliable and repeatable interventions as and when new issues arise over time. Like, imagine a scenario where a one-time strike gets media attention, gets people more pay but only for a different administration later to roll things back later when the issue is gone. Unions in the US have legal fiat for ensuring lasting changes to labor contracts and can be a pretty effective intervention for these issues.

>Fellows on strikes are acutely aware of the risk of getting scooped every minute that is spent away from the bench, but in the balance, its really not foremost on many folks' minds beyond a point.

FWIW, most researchers I know who were involved in academic strikes did not put their research on hold, but all of them with teaching duties did walk out of that. This was sufficient to pressure the university to acquiesce to a decent portion of their demands, since total loss of graduate TAs/instructors is hugely consequential to the university. But the NIH is not a teaching institution, so this particular bargaining threat is moot.

>The assumption is that the movement has built enough support for everyone to strike together.

Perhaps we should agree to disagree on this, but per above, I maintain that this is an unlikely assumption at a pure research (i.e. non-teaching) institute.

>Mice get sick, chemical stocks go bad, collaborators leave for personal reasons, etc. etc.

These are all factors outside of an individual researcher's control. Few people would voluntarily decide to set back their career.

>Truth is, when it comes to transitioning to a faculty position (which is the point of a post-doc position), being scooped is really not that much of a deal

The point of a postdoc is to publish a handful (~1-3) of very high impact studies to bolster a faculty application. Getting scooped on even one of them can be a huge deal if it causes the publication to lose its impactfulness. I know several people in that boat, unfortunately—the scooping publication went to an absolute top-tier impact factory journal (e.g. Nature/Science), while the scooped paper went to a much lower impact factor speciality journal. Sadly, faculty applications are often evaluated based on the perceived prestige of the candidate's publications, not their actual contents, and while I can't say for sure that the scooped faculty candidates I know didn't get their ideal positions because they were scooped, I'd bet it was a nontrivial factor.

People’s careers are being involuntarily set back already for reasons more physical and real than the risk of being scooped.

I’ve been scooped. It sucks. The scooped paper doesn’t land in a big journal. It certainly knocked down the impact factor of the publication and my profile. The fraction of cases where a lack of a high impact paper held back a faculty applicant is likely low (see https://elifesciences.org/articles/54097 and similar surveys). I’ve absolutely seen folks land faculty positions without a crazy impact factor publication. And as you say, it’s really hard to tell if the lack of a high impact factor paper holds a particular applicant back (see other factors I listed) in a particular case. So the link between high impact publication and faculty position is tenuous, and thus the link between being scooped leading to no faculty position is questionable, which means the risk of being scooped isn’t as much of an issue compared to work conditions.

The point you raise about practically and effectiveness of a strike presupposes that a union exists. And it seems that your claim that a research institute cannot generate as much solidarity as a university is a matter of belief rather than evidence seen elsewhere that research institutes have less successful unions than universities. Unless you know of many examples of this kind.

>People’s careers are being involuntarily set back already for reasons more physical and real than the risk of being scooped.

This bears repeating. I know of a fairly large number of people who left their public-sector research positions because of poor working conditions. I wonder if they measure that as better than having their careers hobbled by a strike-born scoop?

For the record, I'm an NIH fellow and my understanding is that as part of the government we're not even allowed to strike. Not entirely sure where the power of the union comes from at that point, but at the very least it gives a voice. And the point of the union isn't just pay increases (stipends at NIH are honestly considerably generous), but to have a voice.

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