Comment by MPSFounder | Hacker News Reader

Comment by MPSFounder | Hacker News Reader

I have a problem with this. In the old days, people did research for the sake of research, and mostly out of Europe came the greatest scientific works we have seen. I did my PhD in the US, and it is very unfortunate that "gaming" publications and focusing on "grants" is the meat of research. Before I get criticized, I was part of this process at a top 10 university and I am a proud American. It is because of this pride that I must show tough love. I chose to move away from academia without a postdoc because I hated it. I wanted to do research and contribute to work that pushes my field forward. Most (90% of those I met, and I dare say 99% of international students) only wanted a PhD for selfish reasons (entry to US market, salary bump, changing fields, access to RnD jobs, etc). Perhaps I am naive, but I wish more people did research for the sake of research. The only Clay prize went to a Russian who hated academia. Perhaps there is some truth in the fact the immortals in science are not those churning conference papers, but those laying seeds a la Laplace, Einstein, etc. I want to see more of those, because this is what will move the field forward. It is not manipulating metrics to improve a neural network for one use case, while knowing (and not sharing) it fails in every other instance. This is my second beef with research. When something is tried but does not work, it is not shared. Someone else will try and fail, and this build up will overall slow everyone down. I wish we were more accepting of failed trials, and of not knowing the answer (sharing results without the theory is OKAY. It is OKAY if someone else comes up with it using your results. Having spent many years in a PhD, I can confirm the vast majority unfortunately do not share my point of view. And I hope I do not come across as bitter, it frankly makes me sad.

"In the old days, people did research for the sake of research, and mostly out of Europe came the greatest scientific works we have seen."

In the old days, scientific careers were largely restricted to the independently wealthy or those who could secure patrons.

I also feel like there's a sort of tension with what Hacker News broadly wants out of science. There's often a lament that there aren't enough staff science positions, or positions where people can have a career beyond a postdoc that's just devoted to research.

Those things have to be paid for. Postdocs are expensive. Staff scientists are expensive - and terrifying, because they have careers and kids and mortgages. Postdocs are expensive.

That ends up eating a lot of a PIs time, because the success rate on proposals are low. Even worse now.

Would I love to be able to just sit in my office, think my thoughts, and occasionally write those thoughts up? Sure. But I'd also like to give people an opportunity to have careers in science where they can get paid.

The Idea of a staff Scientist is to Help with writing proposals, teaching and doing Research. It's also the only way of conserving the tacit knowledge of the Research group. Your PhD Student and Postdocs are gone after 3-6 years, and often enough the knowledge generated in this time is leaving with them. You are Not sitting around and writing Up your thoughts.

Staff Scientists don't help with teaching, essentially by definition, unless we dilute teaching to the very broad level of "helping students with things". They are certainly helpful for research, and in my experience only somewhat useful for writing proposals - certainly not to the point that they'd be self-funding (rare is the staff scientist who is good at writing proposals, wants to, yet does not want to be a PI).

None of that gets to the actual point of my comment, which is that it's all well and good to say people should do science for science's sake, but in the meantime, rent is due.

I think a more charitable reading is that these are just basic suggestions about how to make one's writing clear and get your point across. It's hard to step back and look at what you write from the perspective of someone not familiar with the subject matter (ie. the reviewer).

Sure it's framed in terms of "helping you get published" (which feels kind of gross) but I think ultimately it's really about tips for authors to get their points across in a clear and engaging way.

I mean, at some point science is communication. Great for Einstein if he gets general relativity, but if he wants anyone else to care, he needs to communicate not only the complex idea in a clear manner, but also _why_ I should spend my cherished minutes here on earth trying to wrap my small brain around it.

It's the difference between being a Cassandra or the Oracle at Delphi. Maybe the only difference between the two was presentation? (Classicists, feel free to roast my metaphor).

The argument is about pursuing research for discovery or pursuing research for career advancement. Both scenarios require communication but for different reasons. You're not really addressing main critique.

> I did my PhD in the US, and it is very unfortunate that "gaming" publications and focusing on "grants" is the meat of research.

I interpreted GPs above statement as reacting to the strategies in the article for "gaming" publications and grants, but perhaps I misunderstood GPs comment.

My argument is time vested into this is time away from discovery and research. Communication is certainly a valuable skills. But by most accounts, significant effort is spent on grants and to make publications appealing to employers (the author himself argues for fun branding in a scientific paper). Instead, I argue the focus should be on advancing the field. Of course, you can argue that conference papers with fun branding and a neural network improvement in one benchmark (where selection bias makes the model look robust), is advancing the field. And it's all about getting paper accepted, so I can get a high h-index, so I can get a high paying job or a job in academia. But I believe the real impact of scientific research is in its footprint on the next generation, and I sincerely doubt any of these papers (using fun branding and focusing on the wrong things), will have an impact then. I hope I am proven wrong.

The two are not as orthogonal as the cynical takes make it seem. This is also a bit like the idea that attractive people are less smart and vice versa, when the two are actually positively correlated.

The people who won the career game at top US universities in technical fields don't simply get there by making their plots fancier or using the right words in the abstract in otherwise trivial papers. The papers do make valuable contributions. Pursuing research for pure personal discovery is great, but if you don't tell others about it, why should they care? Most discoveries are not General Relativity or Evolution.

And there's also a component of "cope" in these lamentations. Oh, I'm a lone wolf genius, misunderstood by all, the contrarian who is rejected by the in-crowd yadda yadda because of career failure. It's a way to preserve ego. If only it wasn't for the social games, I'd be the next Einstein, my intentions are pure, while the establishment is rotten. It's a bit more nuanced than that. You have to do good work AND know how to present it and spread awareness about it. Both are needed.

You're not really addressing the point head on. The argument about how science is communicated is orthogonal. The argument is that science academia prioritizes career over pursuing academic science.

I won't speak for anyone else but here are three things I think are all true:

* We live in a renaissance of academic research that is giving us profound scientific discovery

* Prioritizing a scientific career over scientific discovery can lead to a net positive of good scientific results, and, so far, has

* Prioritizing a scientific career over scientific discovery produces low quality science

Saying that people who know how to maneuver the political academic landscape, to secure a position, also produce valuable contributions might be true (I believe it is) but the argument doesn't address the cost of prioritizing, or promoting, that behavior.

I'm reminded of "The Economics of Superstars" [0]. If someone is "better" by a measure of 2x, say, but gets (10+)x the amount of resources, this is not a good allocation of energy. Saying that the 2x person should get more resources is true. Saying that they're justified in getting orders of magnitude more resources, at the cost of everyone else who might use them to better effect, is not.

These conversations are subtle. I notice that one of the common crutches is to attack people as "just being bitter". This seems like a cheap attack and I wish you and others would try to be more thoughtful.

[0] https://home.uchicago.edu/~vlima/courses/econ201/Superstars....

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