A mental health crisis in science(nature.com)
nature.com
A mental health crisis in science
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01708-4
211 comments
Academia places unrealistic goals on brilliant people and pays them so meagerly that they have to often find other sources of income. On top of this, some of the advisors are outright unbearable with their demands and work expectations, the world seems bleak for even a motivated researcher. Amidst the scarcity of grants, measly pay, extremely competitive environment, uncertainties tied with job market, failures in experimental methods, intractable theoretical adventures, publish-or-perish culture, and the better alternatives available for someone with a skill-set enough to pursue grad school, it's hardly any surprise grad students have mental health issues.
> Academia places unrealistic goals on brilliant people and pays them so meagerly that they have to often find other sources of income
Early in my career, I considered (with an MS in Electrical Engineering, but with 4 years of professional programming experience) a switch into law. Big firms hire (or did in the past) people with tech degrees to do patent work and will pay a salary plus pay for law school.
When I joined the big firm, there were about 25 people in my role. I was the only with with an EE or CS degree/background, the only one without a PhD, and the only one with actual post-academic work experience. For me, it was a 10% pay cut before accounting for law school tuition, similar benefits, and an small increase in hours. For all of the PhDs, it was essentially a 100% raise, substantially less work, and superior benefits.
Early in my career, I considered (with an MS in Electrical Engineering, but with 4 years of professional programming experience) a switch into law. Big firms hire (or did in the past) people with tech degrees to do patent work and will pay a salary plus pay for law school.
When I joined the big firm, there were about 25 people in my role. I was the only with with an EE or CS degree/background, the only one without a PhD, and the only one with actual post-academic work experience. For me, it was a 10% pay cut before accounting for law school tuition, similar benefits, and an small increase in hours. For all of the PhDs, it was essentially a 100% raise, substantially less work, and superior benefits.
> Big firms hire (or did in the past) people with tech degrees to do patent work and will pay a salary plus pay for law school.
I've never heard this before. What job title would you search for?
I've never heard this before. What job title would you search for?
Although I AM a patent agent, the job title that I had at Google was "technical advisor." Most of the others with my job were not patent agents and the credential was really not necessary. Litigation is not something you study to pass the Patent Bar.
If you're looking for a job like that with Big Law, you might look for "litigation advisor" or something similar.
If you're looking for a job like that with Big Law, you might look for "litigation advisor" or something similar.
The specific role I had was on the Patent Prosecution side vs. the Patent Litigation side. The litigators were more "normal" attorneys, and while we did some small level of advisement, for any real litigation they'd always hire an outside expert.
Same with Google: there's always an outside firm that does the work. The Google attorney was in charge and monitored all their bills.
For this particular role, it was "Patent Technology Specialist" or "Technology Specialist".
For example: https://foleyhoag.com/careers/technology-specialists/ (note, this is the firm where I did that work)
For example: https://foleyhoag.com/careers/technology-specialists/ (note, this is the firm where I did that work)
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I'm not the parent poster, but I believe they are generally called patent agents
Patent Agent is related, but is a subset of the role. Only one of the patent technology specialists at my firm was a patent agent when they joined. While, it was expected that we'd eventually sit for the patent bar, but it wasn't a requirement to get the job. The further expectation was that we'd also go to law school, receive our JDs, and pass the state bar as well.
I think the part about "unrealistic goals" is applicable to a lot of spheres of life and exacerbated by the social media. Social media after all inflicts high expectations and pressure to convert your life into a performance on everyone irrespective of profession, culture, age, country.
And ofcourse the Titans of social media - zuckerberg, chamath, tiktok and 1000s of engineers, PMs will not pay for the harm their engineered products have caused because waters have been muddied enough and no true accounting of the harm can happen.
It is kind of like inventing a new synthetic highly addictive drug which is technically legal but very harmful and you can sell it to everyone.
And ofcourse the Titans of social media - zuckerberg, chamath, tiktok and 1000s of engineers, PMs will not pay for the harm their engineered products have caused because waters have been muddied enough and no true accounting of the harm can happen.
It is kind of like inventing a new synthetic highly addictive drug which is technically legal but very harmful and you can sell it to everyone.
Blaming social media for this is shooting the messenger.
You don't need Facebook or the Gram to be keenly aware that all your university buddies who went into tech are going on vacations to Maui and buying their second homes, while you're still grinding your life away for nothing in a university lab. In fact, all you need to do be aware of this is to show up to your friends' bi-weekly happy hour at the local.
You don't need Facebook or the Gram to be keenly aware that all your university buddies who went into tech are going on vacations to Maui and buying their second homes, while you're still grinding your life away for nothing in a university lab. In fact, all you need to do be aware of this is to show up to your friends' bi-weekly happy hour at the local.
> Blaming social media for this is shooting the messenger.
No, it's not. Social media created a world wide bullying environment. Most of people all over the world are in trouble because they have to compete with unrealistic image of you or your profession created by social media. Whatever you are or do, you are never good enough. Education, medical field and science are especially vulnerable in this regard.
Tech sector isn't really exception, but insane amount of money people get in some parts of the world for compensation makes it more tolerable.
No, it's not. Social media created a world wide bullying environment. Most of people all over the world are in trouble because they have to compete with unrealistic image of you or your profession created by social media. Whatever you are or do, you are never good enough. Education, medical field and science are especially vulnerable in this regard.
Tech sector isn't really exception, but insane amount of money people get in some parts of the world for compensation makes it more tolerable.
Except it is not an unrealistic expectation to be paid adequately and not be underpaid worker.
Social media might make this disparity obvious and in your face, but it did not create it.
Social media might make this disparity obvious and in your face, but it did not create it.
I don’t disagree, but in person people do I think tend to avoid discussing in detail money-associated things with people who can’t afford the same. Like they’re not going to avoid it entirely, but a lot of points might be glossed over, the conversation may be changed quickly, etc. Whereas on social media there is more detail out in the open regardless of social context. That context ignoring part is kind of new.
I’m curious how that isn’t obvious to someone going into research.
It is quite obvious, which is why the parent poster's ire is misplaced.
Part of what contributes to this is the "brainwashing" that takes place in PhD programs that discourages applicants from transitioning out of academia into "the industry". Academia has tons of extremely smart, hard-working individuals, most of whom would have excellent white collar careers with half the work and 2-10x the pay.
There are a handful of academics who are truly built for working in academia and wouldn't be as successful in "the industry" but at least half could transition out of academia and clean-up with a normal office job.
There are a handful of academics who are truly built for working in academia and wouldn't be as successful in "the industry" but at least half could transition out of academia and clean-up with a normal office job.
I really don't understand this mentality either. I left academia to work in a company where my job is still doing research and writing papers but I get paid more money. I even write grants! And I get treated way better by the system in place, I have private health insurance, I get a performance bonus, I even get a company paid ski week!
There's a regular story told in physics departments that if you leave you can't get back in. But in my experience, maybe people leave and don't want to go back.
There's a regular story told in physics departments that if you leave you can't get back in. But in my experience, maybe people leave and don't want to go back.
> There's a regular story told in physics departments that if you leave you can't get back in.
At least in CS, becoming a Professor of Practice is both higher prestige and a much lower barrier to entry than becoming an Associate Professor with Tenure. The job security of the Professor of Practice is de jure weaker but de facto much stronger. (Tenure doesn't mean shit these days, especially in the USA.)
> But in my experience, maybe people leave and don't want to go back.
Bingo. And it becomes way more extreme by the year.
After a couple decades in the tech industry with a modest lifestyle, 4.3% on your entirely post-tax brokerage account comes damn close to paying a full professor's salary. Retirement at 45 ain't a bad gig.
Get bored? No problem. Move somewhere nice close to a good-but-not-top-10-R1 university.
Teaching can be fun. You can always ad junct if and only you get the bug. Most departments are extremely happy because the customers LOVE being taught by people who did the real thing.
Research is similar: if you find a student you really enjoy working with or an idea you really want to pursue, you can opt to write a grant or take an industry gig for a bit. Student's choice -- chill poverty or same work but with weekly standups and more meetings and 5x comp. Again, the customers LOVE being able to tell Congress they are funding real stuff.
And you don't have to sit in faculty meetings where a bunch of people pretend that their grant agencies and students aren't customers, or that their department chair and dean aren't their line manager and skip line manager, or that their PhD students aren't criminally underpaid direct reports.
Overall, it's nice to be able to clip coupons on bonds and have uni admin fawning over you. It beats the alternative of the tenure track, where you have to continue wage slaving at a university whose admin has been totally MBAified and can't really offer your direct reports much in the way of solidarity because there are 100 28 year olds who can also be PIs on military-industrial projects interspersed with the occasional NSF/NIH grant.
At least in CS, becoming a Professor of Practice is both higher prestige and a much lower barrier to entry than becoming an Associate Professor with Tenure. The job security of the Professor of Practice is de jure weaker but de facto much stronger. (Tenure doesn't mean shit these days, especially in the USA.)
> But in my experience, maybe people leave and don't want to go back.
Bingo. And it becomes way more extreme by the year.
After a couple decades in the tech industry with a modest lifestyle, 4.3% on your entirely post-tax brokerage account comes damn close to paying a full professor's salary. Retirement at 45 ain't a bad gig.
Get bored? No problem. Move somewhere nice close to a good-but-not-top-10-R1 university.
Teaching can be fun. You can always ad junct if and only you get the bug. Most departments are extremely happy because the customers LOVE being taught by people who did the real thing.
Research is similar: if you find a student you really enjoy working with or an idea you really want to pursue, you can opt to write a grant or take an industry gig for a bit. Student's choice -- chill poverty or same work but with weekly standups and more meetings and 5x comp. Again, the customers LOVE being able to tell Congress they are funding real stuff.
And you don't have to sit in faculty meetings where a bunch of people pretend that their grant agencies and students aren't customers, or that their department chair and dean aren't their line manager and skip line manager, or that their PhD students aren't criminally underpaid direct reports.
Overall, it's nice to be able to clip coupons on bonds and have uni admin fawning over you. It beats the alternative of the tenure track, where you have to continue wage slaving at a university whose admin has been totally MBAified and can't really offer your direct reports much in the way of solidarity because there are 100 28 year olds who can also be PIs on military-industrial projects interspersed with the occasional NSF/NIH grant.
We even have the opportunity to have PhD students in the company and we pay them a decent salary!
You should be discouraged from abandoning projects when hitting a wall. I’d advise against dropping out of PhD program if you don’t have a publication ready in second year. Also, there’re people who truly enjoy science and pay isn’t the deciding factor.
> Also, there’re people who truly enjoy science and pay isn’t the deciding factor.
If that's a good reason to keep pay low, why don't we apply this to the management and administrative class? Surely, we could find someone smart and capable who'd be happy to do an exec's or a director's job, without seven-figure pay as a consideration...
Think of all the money we could return to shareholders, if we just made the directors subsist on prayers and ramen...
If that's a good reason to keep pay low, why don't we apply this to the management and administrative class? Surely, we could find someone smart and capable who'd be happy to do an exec's or a director's job, without seven-figure pay as a consideration...
Think of all the money we could return to shareholders, if we just made the directors subsist on prayers and ramen...
>Surely, we could find someone smart and capable who'd be happy to do an exec's or a director's job, without seven-figure pay as a consideration...
We do, depending on domain. Directors in a lot of social programs make low pay for what they deal with. Luckily, many are mission oriented rather than being motivated primarily by money.
We do, depending on domain. Directors in a lot of social programs make low pay for what they deal with. Luckily, many are mission oriented rather than being motivated primarily by money.
I don’t know how the pay is where you are. It’s fine in the country I live in.
There are also people who truly enjoy science while wanting to provide for a family.
In my PhD program I don't see that at all, in fact our program recently paid for students to attend a multiple day seminar about how to get jobs outside academia. I'm not sure where you get that impression from
> in fact our program recently paid for students to attend a multiple day seminar about how to get jobs outside academia.
Consider that preparing you for jobs outside of university should be the goal of your education, not relegated to a two-day seminar.
And also consider how relatively fucked it is that such a seminar is actually quite necessary due to the fact that the vast majority of your faculty haven't spent more than a trivial amount of time in industry. (Things that don't count as non-trivial industry experience include: the gap year between undergrad and grad school, the one year industry Post-Doc, sporatic consulting, the "spinoff" that never got past a seed round in which the university endowment or SBIR was the lead "investor", or especially the "several internships at top companies" lol.)
Consider that preparing you for jobs outside of university should be the goal of your education, not relegated to a two-day seminar.
And also consider how relatively fucked it is that such a seminar is actually quite necessary due to the fact that the vast majority of your faculty haven't spent more than a trivial amount of time in industry. (Things that don't count as non-trivial industry experience include: the gap year between undergrad and grad school, the one year industry Post-Doc, sporatic consulting, the "spinoff" that never got past a seed round in which the university endowment or SBIR was the lead "investor", or especially the "several internships at top companies" lol.)
The goal of a PhD education is to learn how to do research, first and foremost. That is the entire point of a PhD
If you want to do anything else just get a masters
If you want to do anything else just get a masters
> The goal of a PhD education is to learn how to do research, first and foremost.
This is vague to the point of meaninglessness. To wit, consider the following questions:
1. What is "Research"? (In PhD school the de facto answer is "whatever things get published in top conferences")
2. What does it mean to "learn how to do Research"? (I argue the most important skill is knowing which questions to ask, but that's not something that PhD students or even Professors every get to actually do -- your funding agency's friendly managers/directors will clearly articulate the set of questions you are permitted to ask during Proposer's Day workshops.)
All of that to say: learning how to do "Research" is the goal that students are told they're supposed to have. The actual goal of a PhD program is to generate income from overhead on grants. This has a nice side benefit of occasionally producing valuable licensing revenue streams. That anyone learns anything is a happy coincidence.
This is vague to the point of meaninglessness. To wit, consider the following questions:
1. What is "Research"? (In PhD school the de facto answer is "whatever things get published in top conferences")
2. What does it mean to "learn how to do Research"? (I argue the most important skill is knowing which questions to ask, but that's not something that PhD students or even Professors every get to actually do -- your funding agency's friendly managers/directors will clearly articulate the set of questions you are permitted to ask during Proposer's Day workshops.)
All of that to say: learning how to do "Research" is the goal that students are told they're supposed to have. The actual goal of a PhD program is to generate income from overhead on grants. This has a nice side benefit of occasionally producing valuable licensing revenue streams. That anyone learns anything is a happy coincidence.
have you considered you might already be brainwashed
Some advice for grad students who want to preserve their mental health:
1) Have an entirely separate life outside of academia. Do not mix the two, maintain a strict separation, and keep all academic relationships strictly professional.
2) Don't think of your advisor as anything other than an employer. They're not a father figure or a mentor or anything like that. You're just cheap labor, and don't forget it.
3) Don't think of you university as a 'place of learning and research' - they've all been corporatized to the hilt, and are basically run on the same lines as any business entity, including the worst aspects of corporate HR.
4) If you do have mental health issues, absolutely never go to anyone like a university-affiliated therapist, etc. If you ever have a dispute with the university, they'll use any such interaction in an effort to discredit you.
5) Fraudulent manipulation of data is more common than not as is dishonest behavior by PIs, and if your data from your own research doesn't agree with their past work, they'll try to prevent it from getting published and otherwise sabotage your progress, so expect that.
6) Academic politics is among the nastiest that exists, and enemies of your PI will also happily sabotage your progress just to make your PI look bad. Even other grad students might try something like this, so trust noone (and see #1).
7) If you have any really brilliant ideas with commercial potential, don't say a word about it to anyone, don't write it down, because the university will claim that it owns all your IP and will demand a percentage of anything you do with it, so keep quiet until you've left the system.
You can learn a lot if you get into the right situation, however. Careful vetting of any prospective research group is important in that respect.
1) Have an entirely separate life outside of academia. Do not mix the two, maintain a strict separation, and keep all academic relationships strictly professional.
2) Don't think of your advisor as anything other than an employer. They're not a father figure or a mentor or anything like that. You're just cheap labor, and don't forget it.
3) Don't think of you university as a 'place of learning and research' - they've all been corporatized to the hilt, and are basically run on the same lines as any business entity, including the worst aspects of corporate HR.
4) If you do have mental health issues, absolutely never go to anyone like a university-affiliated therapist, etc. If you ever have a dispute with the university, they'll use any such interaction in an effort to discredit you.
5) Fraudulent manipulation of data is more common than not as is dishonest behavior by PIs, and if your data from your own research doesn't agree with their past work, they'll try to prevent it from getting published and otherwise sabotage your progress, so expect that.
6) Academic politics is among the nastiest that exists, and enemies of your PI will also happily sabotage your progress just to make your PI look bad. Even other grad students might try something like this, so trust noone (and see #1).
7) If you have any really brilliant ideas with commercial potential, don't say a word about it to anyone, don't write it down, because the university will claim that it owns all your IP and will demand a percentage of anything you do with it, so keep quiet until you've left the system.
You can learn a lot if you get into the right situation, however. Careful vetting of any prospective research group is important in that respect.
My wife is a researcher and it's astounding to me how many people she works with ignore point 1. Almost everyone is dating other people in the same lab or at least the same institution.
As you can imagine some people do great with it but I'm also aware of some catastrophes.
I like to think that our relationship, where we're free to vent about our work but also talk about and enjoy lots of other things, helps to keep us both mentally healthy.
As you can imagine some people do great with it but I'm also aware of some catastrophes.
I like to think that our relationship, where we're free to vent about our work but also talk about and enjoy lots of other things, helps to keep us both mentally healthy.
Funny that this is published in Nature. Arguably they're part of the corruption (not in the legal sense) prevalent in the "industry".
Self-awareness is good but less impressive when they're still charging universities obscene amounts to access material the journal obtained basically for free.
Self-awareness is good but less impressive when they're still charging universities obscene amounts to access material the journal obtained basically for free.
Yeah, it's not a matter of the "culture" at all. It's just a matter of low pay, long hours, and minuscule chances of job security and advancement.
(He says as he writes his thesis and prepares to start his postdoc.)
(He says as he writes his thesis and prepares to start his postdoc.)
Honestly I would be happy if I just got paid as a 100% FTE. I'm literally in the lab all the time, this 50% nonsense is BS. They say it's because international students are restricted to 20 hours per week, so okay just double the pay then and still call it 50%. The salary for my current work is super low anyhow, I'd be making way more if I got a job at big pharma with my current degrees
I toggle around with the idea that the system is designed or heavily influenced to be like this to benefit the big-industries and rich people. Have talent but need money? Work for big industry. Have money and can afford to stay in school? Get some patents and get more rich. I know this is a bit tin foil hat-ish.
Can the institutions be blamed for trying to stay afloat? Where is this money coming from to pay the scientists? A collective decision has to be made to keep science healthy in a meaningful and productive way. I think academia (through its ethos of critical approach and peer review) may be the single social structure that keeps some kind of sanity.
I don't know, can the admins stay afloat without making 200k+ per year? Maybe give some of that to us grad students
I'm not defending any administrators, m'friend. This is why I wrote "meaningful and productive." I want scientists to have all the money.
No you see those admins are important because they went to business school so they deserve to make more money than the peons they oversee
Academic research is funded by grants.
Can these grants provide a living wage?
Perhaps so, if universities cut back on overhead. Much of the grant funding is taken away to pay administrators who don't directly contribute to research. There is a huge amount of waste and no real pressure to control costs.
Depends on where you live: https://csstipendrankings.org/
NSF grants are hard to get, with a small award being for about $600K over 3 years. That translates to about $300K after the university takes its overhead. For me, that would about fund about two PhD students for 3 years for about $31K per year during the 9 month academic year. Many PhD students in computer science do internships during summer where they make a lot larger salaries, or they are funded by me for that period instead.
In my city, Rochester, according to this website, our stipends are the most generous in the USA based on the low cost of living here. https://csstipendrankings.org/
We would all like to pay students more, but either we then have fewer students or need the government to award larger grants. As someone who had a hard time getting into a PhD program due to how competitive it is, I would be opposed to depriving folks of educational opportunities.
Students typically take classes and do little research for their first 1-2 years, but they do receive a stipend during that time period.
NSF grants are hard to get, with a small award being for about $600K over 3 years. That translates to about $300K after the university takes its overhead. For me, that would about fund about two PhD students for 3 years for about $31K per year during the 9 month academic year. Many PhD students in computer science do internships during summer where they make a lot larger salaries, or they are funded by me for that period instead.
In my city, Rochester, according to this website, our stipends are the most generous in the USA based on the low cost of living here. https://csstipendrankings.org/
We would all like to pay students more, but either we then have fewer students or need the government to award larger grants. As someone who had a hard time getting into a PhD program due to how competitive it is, I would be opposed to depriving folks of educational opportunities.
Students typically take classes and do little research for their first 1-2 years, but they do receive a stipend during that time period.
Well, if we got rid of the administrators taking half the grants, we could probably almost double the wages. So in many cases, yes.
Wages paid by grants in general have to match whatever the institutions 'standard' pay scales are. So it's the institutions deciding pay rates. At least in the U.S..
My wife is currently in the middle of a fight over this. Her salary is paid by a grant from an organization that has a minimum pay scale for postdocs. The university has its own standard pay scale for postdocs, which is about $20k/year lower. So far they've refused to budge. It's not even their money, there's just 4 layers of bureaucracy who have nothing better to do than ~enforce policy~ no matter the cost.
Of course they'd fight your wife. They don't want any history or evidence of potentially paying more under any circumstances.
Science as a whole has died a hard death.
All reward and prestige of being a researcher has been lost and the people in the study have a slim chance of being able to work with their degree.
Which I understand is about the opposite of what this article wants, but you shouldn't trust the people who have broken science to fix it. Research itself gets locked behind tightly walled journals and are written with obscure and difficult language laymen can't understand, peer review has become a hoop jumping scam that let's bad research through.
Medical review and other ethics boards are suffocating the ability for researchers to actually do things in a massive overcorrection from the early days of research.
Media is in a continuous game of misrepresentation of everything researchers say and trust in scientific truth had lead to instructional actors getting their fingers in the process and corrupting it to suit their ends.
ARXIV and the likes are the future of science. Where literal discord servers are getting together to publish studies. Yeah. Bunk gets published all the time, but peer review can just happen dynamically through good old regular unchecked skepticism.
I would never in a billion years engage in the academic side of research. If I wanted to be a scientist I'd do it as a hobby, buying the tools to do it in my garage and publishing to open journals where ethics boards and bureaucrats cannot touch me beyond the reach of actual law.
In all hopes, academia will start to crumble and this sort of garage philosophy will grow into a network of people that replaces it with a fresher and more dynamic outlook.
All reward and prestige of being a researcher has been lost and the people in the study have a slim chance of being able to work with their degree.
Which I understand is about the opposite of what this article wants, but you shouldn't trust the people who have broken science to fix it. Research itself gets locked behind tightly walled journals and are written with obscure and difficult language laymen can't understand, peer review has become a hoop jumping scam that let's bad research through.
Medical review and other ethics boards are suffocating the ability for researchers to actually do things in a massive overcorrection from the early days of research.
Media is in a continuous game of misrepresentation of everything researchers say and trust in scientific truth had lead to instructional actors getting their fingers in the process and corrupting it to suit their ends.
ARXIV and the likes are the future of science. Where literal discord servers are getting together to publish studies. Yeah. Bunk gets published all the time, but peer review can just happen dynamically through good old regular unchecked skepticism.
I would never in a billion years engage in the academic side of research. If I wanted to be a scientist I'd do it as a hobby, buying the tools to do it in my garage and publishing to open journals where ethics boards and bureaucrats cannot touch me beyond the reach of actual law.
In all hopes, academia will start to crumble and this sort of garage philosophy will grow into a network of people that replaces it with a fresher and more dynamic outlook.
I had a tenured faculty position at an R1 university and left it in part because of a completely dysfunctional institutional environment with no insight. My best friends include full professors at well-known institutions, though, and I've continued to be involved with academics and research.
I'm frankly tired of science being characterized in terms of competitiveness and abuse. That's true, but it's deeper than that. It is now structurally corrupt, in the sense that nominal credit does not reflect actual contributions and results are often questionable or even fraudulent, and the incentives are structured to reward collecting new data that are very predictable rather than new ideas or exploring unknowns.
The characterization of science as just being "stressful" or "competitive", as opposed to being broken and corrupt, does disservice and deflects from real change by implicitly putting the responsibility on those who are affected the most.
It's as if you had a city full of crime, white collar as well as otherwise, and then discussed the problems in terms of victims being anxious, rather than the fact there's no police in the the city and the court system is corrupt.
I'm frankly tired of science being characterized in terms of competitiveness and abuse. That's true, but it's deeper than that. It is now structurally corrupt, in the sense that nominal credit does not reflect actual contributions and results are often questionable or even fraudulent, and the incentives are structured to reward collecting new data that are very predictable rather than new ideas or exploring unknowns.
The characterization of science as just being "stressful" or "competitive", as opposed to being broken and corrupt, does disservice and deflects from real change by implicitly putting the responsibility on those who are affected the most.
It's as if you had a city full of crime, white collar as well as otherwise, and then discussed the problems in terms of victims being anxious, rather than the fact there's no police in the the city and the court system is corrupt.
This echos so much of the world it seems right now.I have seen this in engineering, analytics, and the restaurant industry.
New people and outsiders still have so much hope for what the paths they choose offer them and once they enter and progress are faced with the "city full of crime...(with) no police" and very little recourse. Engineers that are berated and bullied to output test results that conform to desired product specs, management that wants data that conforms to "projected" trends and bully analysts to "massage" the data accordingly, chefs that are told they have to work 12-16hr 5-6 days a week. These are just the examples that I have personal experience with.
It seems that this structural corruption has everything to do with financial rewards and who holds the purse strings. The group/s that dole out the rewards seem to have played their hand miraculously and convinced everyone that this is the only way.
As I write this it reminds me of threads I was reading 10 years ago about surgery and surgeons and what it took to become apart of that field. It was described as being fraught with super high stress, high precision, high physically demands such as super long shifts (24-48hrs) lack of sleep, and a huge drop out rate. So many of the posters from the industry were saying while it was toxic and terrible it produced world class surgeons and that culture of training and gatekeeping was what kept the profession the best in world.
Would you say that possibly the people maintaining the "structurally corrupt" culture are doing it to maintain a perceived superiority and relevance both financially and socially? What about the political winds constantly undermining the output of the profession when it becomes politically expedient to do so? Do you have any ideas on what change would look like? What are some of the solutions that you and your friends have discussed?
New people and outsiders still have so much hope for what the paths they choose offer them and once they enter and progress are faced with the "city full of crime...(with) no police" and very little recourse. Engineers that are berated and bullied to output test results that conform to desired product specs, management that wants data that conforms to "projected" trends and bully analysts to "massage" the data accordingly, chefs that are told they have to work 12-16hr 5-6 days a week. These are just the examples that I have personal experience with.
It seems that this structural corruption has everything to do with financial rewards and who holds the purse strings. The group/s that dole out the rewards seem to have played their hand miraculously and convinced everyone that this is the only way.
As I write this it reminds me of threads I was reading 10 years ago about surgery and surgeons and what it took to become apart of that field. It was described as being fraught with super high stress, high precision, high physically demands such as super long shifts (24-48hrs) lack of sleep, and a huge drop out rate. So many of the posters from the industry were saying while it was toxic and terrible it produced world class surgeons and that culture of training and gatekeeping was what kept the profession the best in world.
Would you say that possibly the people maintaining the "structurally corrupt" culture are doing it to maintain a perceived superiority and relevance both financially and socially? What about the political winds constantly undermining the output of the profession when it becomes politically expedient to do so? Do you have any ideas on what change would look like? What are some of the solutions that you and your friends have discussed?
I think I developed a similar conclusion that research as a whole is corrupted when there was that CS student that committed suicide due being affected by paper-approval collusion agreements involving nearly all the prominent researchers in the field. Nothing was done about it, even though it directly contributed to someone's death.
I had so much disgust for the field since then.
I had so much disgust for the field since then.
I wasn't aware of this, do you have a link you could share?
I think it's referring to this case:
https://huixiangvoice.medium.com/the-hidden-story-behind-the...
And for outcomes, the paper in question was retracted and the professor involved resigned. However, I haven't seen updates regarding the review ring (where a bunch of peer reviewers collude).
https://retractionwatch.com/2021/03/16/after-grad-student-su...
https://www.wuft.org/news/2021/04/23/university-of-florida-p...
And for outcomes, the paper in question was retracted and the professor involved resigned. However, I haven't seen updates regarding the review ring (where a bunch of peer reviewers collude).
https://retractionwatch.com/2021/03/16/after-grad-student-su...
https://www.wuft.org/news/2021/04/23/university-of-florida-p...
> It is now structurally corrupt, in the sense that nominal credit does not reflect actual contributions and results are often questionable or even fraudulent
This is my experience as well, after working in many different departments. It's really sad. I could hardly summarize it better.
This is my experience as well, after working in many different departments. It's really sad. I could hardly summarize it better.
I've heard a lot of complaints from a lot of different people working in lab science (in my case, my interest was in bio & chem) and none of them were about "tightly walled journals" (working academic researchers generally have institutional access, and when the logins are annoying to manage they just sci-hub like everyone else) or IRBs.
Rather, it was very basic stuff, like being told to come in at 5:30AM to feed a cell line only to have the PI show up at 2PM, throw the experiment in the garbage, threaten the student's livelihood, and then demand they stay until 11:30PM redoing the experiment. Over and over again, at random intervals.
I asked around about this stuff because a family member now works in the field and had some startling experiences, only to find that this is apparently almost universal, and that what I'm describing is on the lighter end of it. There are stories about labs at elite universities where the grad students have set up secluded spaces to go hide from their PIs and cry. It's everything you've heard about working as a developer at a video game company, dialed up to 11.
Rather, it was very basic stuff, like being told to come in at 5:30AM to feed a cell line only to have the PI show up at 2PM, throw the experiment in the garbage, threaten the student's livelihood, and then demand they stay until 11:30PM redoing the experiment. Over and over again, at random intervals.
I asked around about this stuff because a family member now works in the field and had some startling experiences, only to find that this is apparently almost universal, and that what I'm describing is on the lighter end of it. There are stories about labs at elite universities where the grad students have set up secluded spaces to go hide from their PIs and cry. It's everything you've heard about working as a developer at a video game company, dialed up to 11.
I don't really speak out of concern of the well being of those in research, but for the health of the system as a whole.
The fact it's a monster that eats people alive to me is an evidence that the whole thing needs to be torn down and replaced, which is the best way to erase all these sorts of harms.
But this isn't about today's scientists. I fully expect a collapse of academia to harm anyone currently in it, because the skills you need to succeed will change dramatically
The fact it's a monster that eats people alive to me is an evidence that the whole thing needs to be torn down and replaced, which is the best way to erase all these sorts of harms.
But this isn't about today's scientists. I fully expect a collapse of academia to harm anyone currently in it, because the skills you need to succeed will change dramatically
>The fact it's a monster that eats people alive to me is an evidence that the whole thing needs to be torn down and replaced, which is the best way to erase all these sorts of harms.
It is easy to tear down but hard to build.
I get that you are jaded, but tearing down institutional science is just going to harm future scientists by robbing them of opportunity. Yes the system isn't perfect, but that doesn't mean we have to throw it in the trash in its entirety.
It is easy to tear down but hard to build.
I get that you are jaded, but tearing down institutional science is just going to harm future scientists by robbing them of opportunity. Yes the system isn't perfect, but that doesn't mean we have to throw it in the trash in its entirety.
What does Opportunity have to do with science?
In this case, it seems like the Opportunity is an opportunity to get trapped in a system that is likely to be both unsatisfactory and unproductive.
My fear is that we've crossed the event horizon and we can't rollback all the alterations that accumulated over the years and gotten academics into a cul-de-sac or box canyon. (Pick your metaphor...) next stop, the singularity, where we will have the opportunity to experience life as a dimensionless point...
In this case, it seems like the Opportunity is an opportunity to get trapped in a system that is likely to be both unsatisfactory and unproductive.
My fear is that we've crossed the event horizon and we can't rollback all the alterations that accumulated over the years and gotten academics into a cul-de-sac or box canyon. (Pick your metaphor...) next stop, the singularity, where we will have the opportunity to experience life as a dimensionless point...
>What does Opportunity have to do with science?
Most science requires specialized tools and materials that cannot be obtained outside of an institutional environment. Tearing down the institutions means ceasing basically all non-profit generating "big science" efforts. That robs future scientists of working on the cutting edge.
A garage lab is fun idea, but the reality is infeasible in most circumstances. Even if possible, it will be slap-shod and a gigantic money pit that no granting agency will give a dime to.
>My fear is that we've crossed the event horizon
Hyperbole. Science existed before institutions and will exist after if it all should come tumbling down. There are more scientists than there has ever been, and as a result a lot of "boring" but necessary science is happening, but that doesn't mean there aren't rebels and outlaws in that same system asking interesting questions and overturning ideas.
Most science requires specialized tools and materials that cannot be obtained outside of an institutional environment. Tearing down the institutions means ceasing basically all non-profit generating "big science" efforts. That robs future scientists of working on the cutting edge.
A garage lab is fun idea, but the reality is infeasible in most circumstances. Even if possible, it will be slap-shod and a gigantic money pit that no granting agency will give a dime to.
>My fear is that we've crossed the event horizon
Hyperbole. Science existed before institutions and will exist after if it all should come tumbling down. There are more scientists than there has ever been, and as a result a lot of "boring" but necessary science is happening, but that doesn't mean there aren't rebels and outlaws in that same system asking interesting questions and overturning ideas.
Very interesting points. Thanks for taking the time to share.
I had a friend who made a big board with switches and knobs on it that changed lights and other stuff. It connected to nothing. But sometimes the professor would come to the lab to "be helpful". So they would point to the board and say turn that switch when I ask. Or rotate that knob or whatever. And the professor would get bored and leave after a while. But I guess he was good at getting money so that's all that matters in some places.
A lot of this seems to be poor leadership ability. Unfortunately, it seems like in the sciences you can get get promoted because you’re really good technically, but these skills don’t mean you can manage a hill of beans. Rather than treating the whole system down, maybe we need to look to promote those who can manage teams rather than just those who are “merely” technically bright.
Hiring boards at major universities know leadership ability is valuable, it's just that there are very few people with the skills, the credible track record, the leadership/teaching ability, and willing to apply, that they have to settle for less. And it so happens that this is where it's easiest to justify settling.
A lot of folks talk about how hard it is to find a tenure track job but it's actually trivial for anyone in the 99th percentile of all 3 categories.
But for anyone with that combination of talents, they can easily make 7 figures in a comfortable job outside of academia so not many of them apply even at the Stanfords and Harvards of the world.
A lot of folks talk about how hard it is to find a tenure track job but it's actually trivial for anyone in the 99th percentile of all 3 categories.
But for anyone with that combination of talents, they can easily make 7 figures in a comfortable job outside of academia so not many of them apply even at the Stanfords and Harvards of the world.
>And it so happens that this is where it's easiest to justify settling.
Why do you think this is so? Is it because technical skills are more easily measurable and thus more defensible than so-called “soft skills”?
I think it goes without saying that most 99 percentilers can get the job of their choosing within that skillset. My question is more about the ranked priorities of the rest of the "middling" candidates. Why is the value system is structured to reward one type of skills when everyone seems to conclude it doesn’t provide good outcomes?
Why do you think this is so? Is it because technical skills are more easily measurable and thus more defensible than so-called “soft skills”?
I think it goes without saying that most 99 percentilers can get the job of their choosing within that skillset. My question is more about the ranked priorities of the rest of the "middling" candidates. Why is the value system is structured to reward one type of skills when everyone seems to conclude it doesn’t provide good outcomes?
Because leadership skills and teaching ability are much harder to objectively measure on a CV and in a few hours of face-to-face meetings.
Whereas everyone on a hiring committee can tell quite quickly if a prospective applicant is blowing smoke about their technical skills, competence at navigating academia, etc...
This is the same dynamic everywhere when multiple qualities are valued but only some of those qualities are easy to quantify or assess.
Whereas everyone on a hiring committee can tell quite quickly if a prospective applicant is blowing smoke about their technical skills, competence at navigating academia, etc...
This is the same dynamic everywhere when multiple qualities are valued but only some of those qualities are easy to quantify or assess.
I tend to agree. But I do think it’s a solvable problem by valuing, teaching, and prioritizing leadership skills. I think one of the problems in academia is that specialization requires people to forgo learning those traits, and they revert to what they’re comfortable evaluating (because it’s also what they specialize in)
What? Do you understand my previous comment?
I think so. I’m drawing a distinction between the difference being due to an ability to measure and the difference being due to self-selection, predicated on the need to specialize.
If you’re interviewing with a group of mathematicians, there’s a greater likelihood they will consider math skills to be the Ine Important Thing, in part because they’ve had to focus on that so much it becomes disproportionately important in their worldview. It’s a bias due to being overly focused on a specialization.
If you’re interviewing with a group of mathematicians, there’s a greater likelihood they will consider math skills to be the Ine Important Thing, in part because they’ve had to focus on that so much it becomes disproportionately important in their worldview. It’s a bias due to being overly focused on a specialization.
> I tend to agree. But I do think it’s a solvable problem by valuing, teaching, and prioritizing leadership skills. I think one of the problems in academia is that specialization requires people to forgo learning those traits, and they revert to what they’re comfortable evaluating (because it’s also what they specialize in)
I don't see where you drew the distinction, can you point it out?
How does the possibility of mathematicians being narrow minded in your second paragraph relate to this distinction?
I don't see where you drew the distinction, can you point it out?
How does the possibility of mathematicians being narrow minded in your second paragraph relate to this distinction?
>I don't see where you drew the distinction, can you point it out?
>"I think one of the problems in academia is that specialization requires people to forgo learning those traits, and they revert to what they’re comfortable evaluating (because it’s also what they specialize in)"
There's a distinction in avoiding a measure because it's not quantifiable and just plain not feeling as comfortable in that domain.
>How does the possibility of mathematicians being narrow minded in your second paragraph relate to this distinction?
When you're a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Humans tend to be cognitively lazy, so they revert to what they know when faced with uncertainty. E.g., a mathematician feels more comfortable measuring math skills, even though a better measure may be a combination of math and leadership skills. So they tend to hire quants with poor management traits. It doesn't mean they couldn't evaluate the soft skills, it means they chose not to.
Using a different analogy, if you asked a sprinter to choose a decathlete, what skills do you think they would more heavily weight in their evaluation? I'm saying it's likely they would more heavily weight the sprinting events because they don't know how to evaluate the other events as well. They specialize in sprinting, after all, and that's what they know and feel comfortable with. The result probably isn't going to select the best overall decathlete, but it doesn't mean the other events couldn't be measured.
>"I think one of the problems in academia is that specialization requires people to forgo learning those traits, and they revert to what they’re comfortable evaluating (because it’s also what they specialize in)"
There's a distinction in avoiding a measure because it's not quantifiable and just plain not feeling as comfortable in that domain.
>How does the possibility of mathematicians being narrow minded in your second paragraph relate to this distinction?
When you're a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Humans tend to be cognitively lazy, so they revert to what they know when faced with uncertainty. E.g., a mathematician feels more comfortable measuring math skills, even though a better measure may be a combination of math and leadership skills. So they tend to hire quants with poor management traits. It doesn't mean they couldn't evaluate the soft skills, it means they chose not to.
Using a different analogy, if you asked a sprinter to choose a decathlete, what skills do you think they would more heavily weight in their evaluation? I'm saying it's likely they would more heavily weight the sprinting events because they don't know how to evaluate the other events as well. They specialize in sprinting, after all, and that's what they know and feel comfortable with. The result probably isn't going to select the best overall decathlete, but it doesn't mean the other events couldn't be measured.
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A part of this is that in academia there are often few positive career rewards. You're under pressure to publish frequently, in high impact factor journals, and that is to keep your job. You don't get pay rises or bonuses, or any other career improvements, and job security can be until your next contract, at best. If you don't make it to tenured professor, and have good grant funding, then you are staring down the barrel of starting a new career at an older age and with few contacts.
The place to start is by having far fewer PhD students, but more masters students and technicians. A 60% reduction in PhD student numbers would reflect job opportunities, and student aptitude, more accurately.
The place to start is by having far fewer PhD students, but more masters students and technicians. A 60% reduction in PhD student numbers would reflect job opportunities, and student aptitude, more accurately.
This would help on some level, although it would definitely make the stress on applicants much higher.
E.g. there’s increasingly an expectation that students should come into a PhD program with one or more publications already under their belt. For top programs ideally these should be first author (not yet an absolute requirement but it’s more important each year).
So you better get a good research assistant job as an undergrad so you can do that. It has to be early enough in undergrad that you have time to get the paper out before applying to grad school. So you need to be prepared to get a professor to work with you freshman/sophomore year…
So you have to have evidence of skills basically coming in to undergrad. Either be really brilliant and stand out in class, or, better, have some experience in high school to make you credible…
These pressures would only increase with fewer PhD slots. Maybe that’s fine long term but it does have a distorting effect on people’s lives if you have to make high stakes decisions that early.
E.g. there’s increasingly an expectation that students should come into a PhD program with one or more publications already under their belt. For top programs ideally these should be first author (not yet an absolute requirement but it’s more important each year).
So you better get a good research assistant job as an undergrad so you can do that. It has to be early enough in undergrad that you have time to get the paper out before applying to grad school. So you need to be prepared to get a professor to work with you freshman/sophomore year…
So you have to have evidence of skills basically coming in to undergrad. Either be really brilliant and stand out in class, or, better, have some experience in high school to make you credible…
These pressures would only increase with fewer PhD slots. Maybe that’s fine long term but it does have a distorting effect on people’s lives if you have to make high stakes decisions that early.
Would you rather be told you're not going to get a stable job as a researcher when you're 21 and first applying to grad school or at 28-35 when you're finally told you didn't get any interviews for a tenure track job?
Exactly. It's far better to get rejected early from the PhD track, for not being a high achiever, than to muddle through unable to secure a job. You would still be able to prove yourself in a masters degree.
Kinda, some people I know who did poorly at undergraduate/masters did a lot better at the PhD level though and vice versa as research is very different to being taught.
There is such a lack of permanent research positions compared to postdocs and PhD students that I'm not even sure it's selecting for the best people.
There is such a lack of permanent research positions compared to postdocs and PhD students that I'm not even sure it's selecting for the best people.
Society needs way more than just a few "high achievers" ie people willing to work themselves to the death for vague rewards, doing science.
right, this is the clear improvement. on the other hand, now it means science-oriented high schoolers lives get an extra helping of misery and stress.
on top of this you also filter out anyone who doesn't perfectly stay on this high-stakes pipeline from age 14 to tenure, which is probably not good overall for science.
economics is actually pretty close to working this way already. indeed, the job market for economics PhDs is much less dystopian than say life sciences. but there are tradeoffs.
on top of this you also filter out anyone who doesn't perfectly stay on this high-stakes pipeline from age 14 to tenure, which is probably not good overall for science.
economics is actually pretty close to working this way already. indeed, the job market for economics PhDs is much less dystopian than say life sciences. but there are tradeoffs.
A different possibility is that we stop trying to find "the best" candidates (which, by the way we're measuring with metrics that have been Goodharted well beyond relevance). What if this (and maybe everything else) worked via a kind of lottery:
1. The institution in question evaluates candidates as either a fit or not a fit. 2. The candidates who fit are the pool from which the positions are filled at random.
Obviously it's gameable as stated, but I think if I spent a day or two designing a better mechanism with the same premise, we'd end up with great candidates but without the hyperoptimization trap.
1. The institution in question evaluates candidates as either a fit or not a fit. 2. The candidates who fit are the pool from which the positions are filled at random.
Obviously it's gameable as stated, but I think if I spent a day or two designing a better mechanism with the same premise, we'd end up with great candidates but without the hyperoptimization trap.
> there’s increasingly an expectation that students should come into a PhD program with one or more publications already under their belt. For top programs ideally these should be first author (not yet an absolute requirement but it’s more important each year).
This is something I discovered pretty late in my life. The web pages maintained by profs barely have any info.
I have come to hate the whole "everybody looks for different things" type of answer when it comes to PhD apps. I wish profs would just spell it out on their site in concrete terms what they personally look for.
This is something I discovered pretty late in my life. The web pages maintained by profs barely have any info.
I have come to hate the whole "everybody looks for different things" type of answer when it comes to PhD apps. I wish profs would just spell it out on their site in concrete terms what they personally look for.
at least in computer science, this document is from CMU and tended to get circulated pretty widely, although probably not widely enough. every field ought to have something like it.
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf
I have seen that, and it was helpful. But at least in machine learning and AI, if you want an admit into any top 10 US PhD program, you need a publication or 2 in a top tier venue, preferably first author.
In other fields and lower ranked programs, again I wish profs would be explicit (since publications might not be expected).
Like this guy:http://math.stanford.edu/~vakil/potentialstudents.html
"So before I take you on as a new student, you should be comfortable with the foundations of the subject, which means having done the majority of the exercises in Hartshorne or my course notes, and being able to explain them on demand."
That is very explicit and sets clear expectations.
In other fields and lower ranked programs, again I wish profs would be explicit (since publications might not be expected).
Like this guy:http://math.stanford.edu/~vakil/potentialstudents.html
"So before I take you on as a new student, you should be comfortable with the foundations of the subject, which means having done the majority of the exercises in Hartshorne or my course notes, and being able to explain them on demand."
That is very explicit and sets clear expectations.
These are regular market forces. More people fighting for a few slots. If people weren’t so desperate to be professors this wouldn’t happen. Pretty sure actors and models go through something parallel.
As someone who loves my career as a researcher and scientist, but was denied admittance when I applied from 2003 - 2005, I'd be opposed to denying the career opportunity to those who want careers in research and to follow their dreams.
Academia isn't the only career path for those with a PhD (I worked in industry and at NASA as well), and I think students should be taught that early on. I think we deny the opportunity to learn how to conduct research to too many people due to limited resources.
Regarding student aptitude, that's hard to measure. Already we highly prioritize students who have already published as undergraduates. If we do more to ensure student aptitude, it would hurt those who may excel but were held back by a lack of mentorship during their undergraduates in how to get into a PhD program. This would also negatively impact efforts to increase diversity in science as well.
Academia isn't the only career path for those with a PhD (I worked in industry and at NASA as well), and I think students should be taught that early on. I think we deny the opportunity to learn how to conduct research to too many people due to limited resources.
Regarding student aptitude, that's hard to measure. Already we highly prioritize students who have already published as undergraduates. If we do more to ensure student aptitude, it would hurt those who may excel but were held back by a lack of mentorship during their undergraduates in how to get into a PhD program. This would also negatively impact efforts to increase diversity in science as well.
If anything, with increasing automation we need more PhD students and more research being done.
The problem is the gatekeepers such as journal corps profit from the artificial scarcity they create. There's no reason for them to only publish a certain number of "papers" in the paperless world.
The problem is the gatekeepers such as journal corps profit from the artificial scarcity they create. There's no reason for them to only publish a certain number of "papers" in the paperless world.
Not sure about 'with increasing automation we need more PhD students', sizeable chunk of PhD papers are in categories 'I ran ping from the multiple cloud providers' and 'I've injected some BGP routes via multiple internet exchanges'.
An early stage lab has a lot in common with a startup. The PI is given seed money to validate an ambitious idea and has limited time and resources to do it. The work is extremely labor intensive and in the early stages the PI will be in the trenches with the early employees working in the lab and setting an example for them to follow. Fast failure and pivots are extremely common. Furthermore, at any time the research idea could get scooped by another hard-working research lab, resulting in publication in a lower-tier journal. The PI must get early results that can be used to obtain further research grants.
A good PI in this situation will set expectations accordingly that 60+ hour weeks will be required and hopefully those who are not willing to do so will self-deselect. From their perspective I completely not understand not wanting to invest $50k/year of their startup funds in a graduate student who is not putting in the necessary time to succeed.
The prospective graduate student's maximum power is at the time when they are choosing a research advisor. Choose wisely, and remember you are always free to choose not to go if you don't see a good situation. I advise that people think long and hard about whether or not they truly want to do graduate school. There are far better ways to spend your 20's than in a lab. I had two great experiences in "intense" labs in my field (organic chemistry) after a very poor experience with a prestigious but absentee graduate advisor in another field - but it is definitely not for everyone.
> An early stage lab has a lot in common with a startup.
The problem is you also see this behavior in well established lab, where the PI has very little to lose if he quits research altogether.
In my experience, the correlation with whether the professor was an assistant professor seeking tenure vs a well established full professor and the amount of work they make PhD students do is almost nil. It's mostly purely driven by the will of the PI, not the demands of the funding situation. A lot of professors choose to have few graduate students so they don't have to stress too much about funding.
Remember: Once you get tenure, your job is not at risk if your research output is low (although it does affect compensation). If you get a $1M grant and end up with no research papers out of it, there is no accountability - except the granting agency will deprioritize you in the future (if even that).
If you're seeking an advisor, ask his/her current students what life is like. Also find people who graduated under him/her and ask them.
The problem is you also see this behavior in well established lab, where the PI has very little to lose if he quits research altogether.
In my experience, the correlation with whether the professor was an assistant professor seeking tenure vs a well established full professor and the amount of work they make PhD students do is almost nil. It's mostly purely driven by the will of the PI, not the demands of the funding situation. A lot of professors choose to have few graduate students so they don't have to stress too much about funding.
Remember: Once you get tenure, your job is not at risk if your research output is low (although it does affect compensation). If you get a $1M grant and end up with no research papers out of it, there is no accountability - except the granting agency will deprioritize you in the future (if even that).
If you're seeking an advisor, ask his/her current students what life is like. Also find people who graduated under him/her and ask them.
It's pick your poison, like choosing a startup vs BigCorp. My observations pertain to organic chemistry specifically, I'm less familiar with other fields.
With an assistant prof you will be asked to do unreasonably long hours on ideas that haven't been fully validated, but you get a lot of face-time with the PI (for better or worse) and have a chance to get on the ground floor of a potentially great research program. Your boss has a lot more invested in your success because their career depends more on you. It can be exciting.
With a more established prof you are more likely be plugged into the n-th iteration of an established research program. You're more expendable because the prof has more options to hire your replacement; you can get lost in the crowd; the prof won't be in the lab as much (travel, service responsibilities) so it's more sink or swim. Lots can go wrong in this environment. As the group gets larger, internal politics can create frictions, especially if the supervisor is away a lot.
I see A) as better than B) but that is just me.
With an assistant prof you will be asked to do unreasonably long hours on ideas that haven't been fully validated, but you get a lot of face-time with the PI (for better or worse) and have a chance to get on the ground floor of a potentially great research program. Your boss has a lot more invested in your success because their career depends more on you. It can be exciting.
With a more established prof you are more likely be plugged into the n-th iteration of an established research program. You're more expendable because the prof has more options to hire your replacement; you can get lost in the crowd; the prof won't be in the lab as much (travel, service responsibilities) so it's more sink or swim. Lots can go wrong in this environment. As the group gets larger, internal politics can create frictions, especially if the supervisor is away a lot.
I see A) as better than B) but that is just me.
Yeah, it will vary with the discipline/major and possibly also the rank of the university. My point was that from what I've seen, the startup vs BigCorp dichotomy wasn't as clear cut as you describe. Also, there is the third category: Small business. Few grad students, and relatively low pressure.
>Also, there is the third category: Small business. Few grad students, and relatively low pressure.
These can be the saddest cases in my opinion. Lower downside, but lower upside too. You work your butt off and knock the ball out of the park with your project: who notices? A few experts, in a very narrow field, may recognize the significance of what you've done. Can be lonely.
These can be the saddest cases in my opinion. Lower downside, but lower upside too. You work your butt off and knock the ball out of the park with your project: who notices? A few experts, in a very narrow field, may recognize the significance of what you've done. Can be lonely.
This is the understandable part of researcher and grad student abuse and the sense I get talking to people is that they do indeed enter the field expecting to duck in on weekends to tend to experiments, and expecting not to be well compensated.
The part that doesn't fit is their PIs being continuously abusive, or, worse, destructive: the PI's goals are ostensibly those of a supposed startup founder, to drive a team to the redline to get something delivered in an unreasonably short period of time, fair enough. But PIs deliberately fuck things up, disrupt experiments, chase team members out of the lab for no apparent reason, berate team members to the point where they can't be productive.
The culture is much more reminiscent of a 1980s fine dining restaurant kitchen than of a startup. The chef paid his dues, and if having a pot half-filled with hot stock thrown at his head was something he had to deal with, by god, so will his line cooks and stages.
The part that doesn't fit is their PIs being continuously abusive, or, worse, destructive: the PI's goals are ostensibly those of a supposed startup founder, to drive a team to the redline to get something delivered in an unreasonably short period of time, fair enough. But PIs deliberately fuck things up, disrupt experiments, chase team members out of the lab for no apparent reason, berate team members to the point where they can't be productive.
The culture is much more reminiscent of a 1980s fine dining restaurant kitchen than of a startup. The chef paid his dues, and if having a pot half-filled with hot stock thrown at his head was something he had to deal with, by god, so will his line cooks and stages.
Two most extreme stories I am most familiar with (did not experience first-hand) were of a PI throwing a chair in the direction of a postdoc, and of a PI having a screaming fit directly in the face of a graduate student. Both assistant profs.
One got tenure and became more mellow in a relative sense. The other was subsequently unable to attract any more graduate students to their lab, and left for another, slightly less prestigious institution.
I am also familiar with one case of graduate students resigning en masse, leaving a PI with a hollowed-out research group of 2-3 that they had to rebuild. Prof had a subsequent attitude adjustment.
In all these cases the stories spread pretty quickly and profs realized that there were costs to abusive behavior. These stories pre-date social media BTW.
One got tenure and became more mellow in a relative sense. The other was subsequently unable to attract any more graduate students to their lab, and left for another, slightly less prestigious institution.
I am also familiar with one case of graduate students resigning en masse, leaving a PI with a hollowed-out research group of 2-3 that they had to rebuild. Prof had a subsequent attitude adjustment.
In all these cases the stories spread pretty quickly and profs realized that there were costs to abusive behavior. These stories pre-date social media BTW.
What I found interesting of this article is that most of it is also applicable to a many tech sector jobs. High pressure to deliver something (because we squeeze the last of people), hire-and-fire practices everywhere, politics and toxic environments (because that is what people do and what is the current social perspective on what is okay).
Developers, like scientists, are very outcome driven (number of lines, number of features, RoI, ...)
The only - very big difference - is pay.
Developers, like scientists, are very outcome driven (number of lines, number of features, RoI, ...)
The only - very big difference - is pay.
Having now two lab scientists living under my roof, there is nothing even in the stories I've heard of the video game industry that compares to how toxic research culture is. It is next-level, as if being vexatious was a goal on its own --- which, given the culture generation after generation of PIs have come up through, might at this point actually be the case: students and employees are threatened, berated, harassed, and coerced into ludicrous hours as part of a dues-paying process.
I've heard of incredibly variable experiences from people working on science PhDs.
I've known maths PhD students who found they could only really do 2-3 hours of truly productive maths in a day, allowing them to spend the rest of the day playing games and suchlike, and after two years their supervisor told them they'd got enough interesting results to graduate.
And I've known chemistry PhD students whose supervisors felt if you're doing a mere 8 hours a day of work you might as well drop out now because you're obviously not serious about graduating, and expected their students to be in the lab tending to long-running experiments on evenings, weekends and even christmas day. And yes, we only give you three years of funding but everyone takes four years to graduate.
I've known maths PhD students who found they could only really do 2-3 hours of truly productive maths in a day, allowing them to spend the rest of the day playing games and suchlike, and after two years their supervisor told them they'd got enough interesting results to graduate.
And I've known chemistry PhD students whose supervisors felt if you're doing a mere 8 hours a day of work you might as well drop out now because you're obviously not serious about graduating, and expected their students to be in the lab tending to long-running experiments on evenings, weekends and even christmas day. And yes, we only give you three years of funding but everyone takes four years to graduate.
I believe it. I've surveyed friends and friends of friends about chem and bio because one of my kids is a biochemist, and that's where most of my telemetry comes from; lab STEM in general has a bad rap, but chem and bio might be distinctively awful.
I think there's a huge division in toxicity between wet bench and computational/dry lab work. If your math PhD friends go on a wild goose chase or slack off for a few weeks, the only thing that is lost is time. In a wet lab, it could cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars. The stakes, stress, and constant attention required from experiments feeds into the toxicity in wet labs.
Adding to that, a large portion of (important) wet bench work is mind-numbing manual labor. This work really should be done by a tech, but techs are just as if not more expensive than grad students, and techs can leave the job if they're not happy. Which means that grad students are at the bottom of the totem pole of intellectual respect, and PIs who had to do the same expect a lot more "due paying".
Meanwhile, students in computational labs are working from home.
Adding to that, a large portion of (important) wet bench work is mind-numbing manual labor. This work really should be done by a tech, but techs are just as if not more expensive than grad students, and techs can leave the job if they're not happy. Which means that grad students are at the bottom of the totem pole of intellectual respect, and PIs who had to do the same expect a lot more "due paying".
Meanwhile, students in computational labs are working from home.
> how toxic research culture is
…at some labs. There’re many-many places with good PIs, decent funding, retreats, events, etc. I don’t get why people paint it as black and white.
…at some labs. There’re many-many places with good PIs, decent funding, retreats, events, etc. I don’t get why people paint it as black and white.
Tech job hunts are easy in good times. (e.g. leave one employer, take a day off, interview at another employer the day after that, start working the week after)
Academic jobs are nothing like that.
Academic jobs are nothing like that.
notice that "leading" tech companies fixed this, with artificial hazing behavior in interviews, and changing the norms of hiring from two interviews to more than six, as widely reported.
There's actually a huge shortage of postdocs at the moment, if you're remotely qualified and a somewhat normal human being you can easily get a job. The problem is that the job is awful, stressful, temporary, and poorly paid - hence the shortage of candidates willing to apply for them.
I would say the job market is another stark differentiator. People with BS or MS degrees in CS would end up owning a job that an academic would have to wait until a tenure-track job to earn. The difference is CS jobs are obtainable right off the bat, while the tenure-track professorship requires a solid 8-10 years post graduation.
It's what you get when you put intelligent, ambitious and arguably insecure people in a high pressure environment with status/economic rewards and punishments. Also yes you are judged based on output not how cordial you are in the workplace or whatever. Sales I guess would also qualify.
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Others are hinting at the same thing, but toxic culture (by itself) is probably only part of the problem.
If a single research job is toxic, that's stressful in the short term, but will just motivate someone to leave eventually; stress relieved.
If the entire 'industry' is toxic, there's no job change that can relieve the stress. Also, research jobs are attained after people make some hard-to-reverse decisions about money, time investment, and lifestyle. If someone is in loads of student debt, has spent a decade learning a very niche topic that can't be easily leveraged elsewhere and doesn't have enough money to just quit and be okay, it's easy to see where the stress comes from, and it doesn't seem easily resolved.
If a single research job is toxic, that's stressful in the short term, but will just motivate someone to leave eventually; stress relieved.
If the entire 'industry' is toxic, there's no job change that can relieve the stress. Also, research jobs are attained after people make some hard-to-reverse decisions about money, time investment, and lifestyle. If someone is in loads of student debt, has spent a decade learning a very niche topic that can't be easily leveraged elsewhere and doesn't have enough money to just quit and be okay, it's easy to see where the stress comes from, and it doesn't seem easily resolved.
Whole research fields share this toxic culture; what people seem to do is leave their field entirely. Not to mention that, because of the way academic lab research works, people frequently take up jobs in locations where there is only one credible "employer" (there will of course be dozens of PIs, but it's institutional failures that allow abusive culture to take root).
It seems like this is a symptom of a larger problem, rates of anxiety and depression have been going up in recent years in pretty much every facet. I always hear that social media is to blame, but I wonder if that is really the case? I feel like something else is going on, maybe it's just a totality of smaller issues rather than one big problem.
I’ve worked with groups of juniors and college students every year for a while now. I agree that something is going on, but I don’t think there is a single explanation.
Social media is a big part of it, but from what I’ve seen it’s not in the way people usually describe it. The most unhappy people I see aren’t the ones talking to their friends on Instagram and Facebook during their lunch break. To be honest, those people seem to be thriving socially simply by virtue of keeping up with their friends and coordinating social activities.
The most unhappy people I see are the ones consuming hours of Reddit and Twitter every day. They have a never ending stream of ragebait, outrage headlines, tragedy stories, and world-is-ending stories filling their feeds. They’re also filled with unreasonable expectations about the workplace.
In recent years multiple juniors have confidently told me that “nobody can do more than about 2 hours of work per day”, citing Reddit or Twitter threads that explain it. Then they get into a real job that requires a full day of work and feel like they’re being taken advantage of. I’ve had a concerning number of conversations with juniors who are getting paid $120K or more to do entry level work with great mentoring at a local company, only to be outraged at some idea that the industry is taking advantage of them because they haven’t been promoted to senior with $300K total comp after their first year. The source of these expectations is always some form of social media (Reddit, Blind, Twitter)
I don’t know how this translates to academic contexts because that’s not my mentoring domain. I imagine it’s at least contributing, though. That said, academic environments are known to be grueling so it’s not entirely a singular issue. They really are grueling.
Social media is a big part of it, but from what I’ve seen it’s not in the way people usually describe it. The most unhappy people I see aren’t the ones talking to their friends on Instagram and Facebook during their lunch break. To be honest, those people seem to be thriving socially simply by virtue of keeping up with their friends and coordinating social activities.
The most unhappy people I see are the ones consuming hours of Reddit and Twitter every day. They have a never ending stream of ragebait, outrage headlines, tragedy stories, and world-is-ending stories filling their feeds. They’re also filled with unreasonable expectations about the workplace.
In recent years multiple juniors have confidently told me that “nobody can do more than about 2 hours of work per day”, citing Reddit or Twitter threads that explain it. Then they get into a real job that requires a full day of work and feel like they’re being taken advantage of. I’ve had a concerning number of conversations with juniors who are getting paid $120K or more to do entry level work with great mentoring at a local company, only to be outraged at some idea that the industry is taking advantage of them because they haven’t been promoted to senior with $300K total comp after their first year. The source of these expectations is always some form of social media (Reddit, Blind, Twitter)
I don’t know how this translates to academic contexts because that’s not my mentoring domain. I imagine it’s at least contributing, though. That said, academic environments are known to be grueling so it’s not entirely a singular issue. They really are grueling.
I don't know - I have two kids, one 17 and one 19. The 19-year-old graduated valedictorian from his high school of 700 last year, did extracurriculars and scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT... and was still rejected by the "top" colleges he applied to (Stanford, MIT). The 17-year-old got a B this year, and she's devastated - if getting everything nearly perfect isn't enough, what hope does everybody else have? It wasn't like this when I was a teenager in the 80's.
> The 19-year-old graduated valedictorian from his high school of 700 last year, did extracurriculars and scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT
> Stanford, MIT
I see this attitude often and... I just don't get it. It seems innumerate at best.
MIT accepts around 500 students and Stanford accepts around 2,000 students. There's overlap between those two groups, but let's assume they are entirely disjoint. That gives us 2,500 seats. Let's round up to 3,000 just for fun.
Last year, around 3 million students graduated from 20,469 high schools. That's 20,469 valedictorians for 3,000 spots.
Last year, 1.7 million students took the SAT. That's 17,000 in the top percentile for 3,000 spots.
The set of valedictorians and set of SAT 99th percentile students probably mostly overlap. (And to the extent that they don't overlap, it's often because valedictorian is a weird game; eg, at both the high school I attended and the high school in my current community it's basically mathematically impossible to win the valedictorian game if you participate in band/orchestra because they aren't honors courses for the first 3 semesters... but, of course, any sane admissions department knows this and will weigh significant involvement in music over two additional honors courses.)
So there are at least 10K students who meet at least your son's (high) bar, all competing for less than 3,000 seats at MIT/Stanford. And that's a conservative estimate. You can add in another 5-10 top schools and the arithmetic is still either impossible for extremely challenging, even if you limit yourself to grades and test scores. And that's with extremely generous assumptions.
But, of course, they competition is far stiffer because a lot of those seats will go to kids who didn't get 4.0s and weren't valedictorians and didn't get 99th percentile SAT scores. But that's because they were spending too much time doing far more impressive things than running up their scores in those categories. Eg doing well at a national science fair, doing well at a national debate or mock trial tournament, winning a major mathematics competition, winning a major writing or art award, doing well nationally in a competitive sport, performing a musical instrument at a very high level, etc.
And those are just the color-inside-the-lines youth competition things. A step up from the "grades and tests" nonsense but still very sand boxy. High school students do a lot of impressive real world stuff as well -- significant open source contributions, significant community development work, publishing peer reviewed scientific articles, etc. Read George Hotz's wiki page -- kids with those sorts of accomplishments apply to places like MIT and Stanford every year. Perfect grades and test scores were criteria that didn't matter much until a candidate was already second or third tier; the difference between 3.8 or even 3.5 and 4.0 just doesn't matter when a seventeen year old already has career accomplishments on their resume that I'd be proud to have at 30. That's just computing. There are wunderkids like that in every field. Lots of them.
And even after all of that we still haven't left the borders of the USA (at MIT, about 10% of undergraduates are international).
> It wasn't like this when I was a teenager in the 80's.
Fewer students went to college. More importantly, systemic barriers to entry -- both informational and cultural -- remained extremely high for most people without WASPy coastal and/or upper-middle-class-suburb backgrounds. The internet eroded a lot of those informational and cultural barriers. Democratizing access to knowledge dramatically increased the efficiency of this market, and that has resulted in much stiffer competition.
> if getting everything nearly perfect isn't enough, what hope does everybody else have?
I really hope that my kids aren't going to aim for elite universities. Having spent a lot of time at both of the institutions you mentioned, I know they can get a great education and almost certainly live a better life without that kind of pressure.
> Stanford, MIT
I see this attitude often and... I just don't get it. It seems innumerate at best.
MIT accepts around 500 students and Stanford accepts around 2,000 students. There's overlap between those two groups, but let's assume they are entirely disjoint. That gives us 2,500 seats. Let's round up to 3,000 just for fun.
Last year, around 3 million students graduated from 20,469 high schools. That's 20,469 valedictorians for 3,000 spots.
Last year, 1.7 million students took the SAT. That's 17,000 in the top percentile for 3,000 spots.
The set of valedictorians and set of SAT 99th percentile students probably mostly overlap. (And to the extent that they don't overlap, it's often because valedictorian is a weird game; eg, at both the high school I attended and the high school in my current community it's basically mathematically impossible to win the valedictorian game if you participate in band/orchestra because they aren't honors courses for the first 3 semesters... but, of course, any sane admissions department knows this and will weigh significant involvement in music over two additional honors courses.)
So there are at least 10K students who meet at least your son's (high) bar, all competing for less than 3,000 seats at MIT/Stanford. And that's a conservative estimate. You can add in another 5-10 top schools and the arithmetic is still either impossible for extremely challenging, even if you limit yourself to grades and test scores. And that's with extremely generous assumptions.
But, of course, they competition is far stiffer because a lot of those seats will go to kids who didn't get 4.0s and weren't valedictorians and didn't get 99th percentile SAT scores. But that's because they were spending too much time doing far more impressive things than running up their scores in those categories. Eg doing well at a national science fair, doing well at a national debate or mock trial tournament, winning a major mathematics competition, winning a major writing or art award, doing well nationally in a competitive sport, performing a musical instrument at a very high level, etc.
And those are just the color-inside-the-lines youth competition things. A step up from the "grades and tests" nonsense but still very sand boxy. High school students do a lot of impressive real world stuff as well -- significant open source contributions, significant community development work, publishing peer reviewed scientific articles, etc. Read George Hotz's wiki page -- kids with those sorts of accomplishments apply to places like MIT and Stanford every year. Perfect grades and test scores were criteria that didn't matter much until a candidate was already second or third tier; the difference between 3.8 or even 3.5 and 4.0 just doesn't matter when a seventeen year old already has career accomplishments on their resume that I'd be proud to have at 30. That's just computing. There are wunderkids like that in every field. Lots of them.
And even after all of that we still haven't left the borders of the USA (at MIT, about 10% of undergraduates are international).
> It wasn't like this when I was a teenager in the 80's.
Fewer students went to college. More importantly, systemic barriers to entry -- both informational and cultural -- remained extremely high for most people without WASPy coastal and/or upper-middle-class-suburb backgrounds. The internet eroded a lot of those informational and cultural barriers. Democratizing access to knowledge dramatically increased the efficiency of this market, and that has resulted in much stiffer competition.
> if getting everything nearly perfect isn't enough, what hope does everybody else have?
I really hope that my kids aren't going to aim for elite universities. Having spent a lot of time at both of the institutions you mentioned, I know they can get a great education and almost certainly live a better life without that kind of pressure.
> I know they can get a great education
Too bad the people doing the hiring don't know that.
Too bad the people doing the hiring don't know that.
The unemployement rate is around 3%-4%, and at least 99% of people don't have degrees from elite universities.
fyi at least in STEM type fields, the top students at one of the good state schools have pretty similar opportunities to Stanford MIT etc. you can go work for big tech, top HFT and finance firms, go to top grad schools, or whatever. unlike at Stanford/MIT/Ivy, it's not the default path, so it takes a little bit more scheming while you're there to make sure you stand out, but it's still quite common every year.
Huh? You believe people that don't go to Ive League schools are just living in squalor? I don't know of any jobs that require a degree from those schools. MIT is even more silly because most tech sector jobs don't care where your degree is from.
I'm sure there's some weird pompous elitist corporation out there that only pulls from those schools but no one NEEDS to work at those places.
If you're basing your success off of gaining entry into those schools I have to guess you grew up in a very closed off, extremely wealthy area.
I'm sure there's some weird pompous elitist corporation out there that only pulls from those schools but no one NEEDS to work at those places.
If you're basing your success off of gaining entry into those schools I have to guess you grew up in a very closed off, extremely wealthy area.
> If you're basing your success off of gaining entry into those schools I have to guess you grew up in a very closed off, extremely wealthy area.
Either that or a middle income/upper middle income immigrant community. Often the intersection of the two.
But, yeah. Having worked at several and in the orbit of basically of them: I'm an extreme skeptic of undergraduate prestige factories.
Go to a school with decent resources. That's a MUCH better way to think about it than "decent school", which could mean anything. Want does that mean? Depends on your major.
Once there, be curious. Be voracious. Advocate for yourself. Major it whatever you want. But also make sure at least one of your majors has a lower-risk career track to fall back on. Never, ever accept "prestige" in lieu of either opportunities to grow or earn cold hard $$$. Always remember you live in a capital-ist society. People and institutions say they value a lot of things -- knowledge, God, country. But in a Capital-ism, power and comfort flow from people who have access to capital to whomever those people please.
Either that or a middle income/upper middle income immigrant community. Often the intersection of the two.
But, yeah. Having worked at several and in the orbit of basically of them: I'm an extreme skeptic of undergraduate prestige factories.
Go to a school with decent resources. That's a MUCH better way to think about it than "decent school", which could mean anything. Want does that mean? Depends on your major.
Once there, be curious. Be voracious. Advocate for yourself. Major it whatever you want. But also make sure at least one of your majors has a lower-risk career track to fall back on. Never, ever accept "prestige" in lieu of either opportunities to grow or earn cold hard $$$. Always remember you live in a capital-ist society. People and institutions say they value a lot of things -- knowledge, God, country. But in a Capital-ism, power and comfort flow from people who have access to capital to whomever those people please.
What do you mean, what hope does she have? You do not need to go to Stanford or MIT to be successful. In fact I think the average person would be better off not going to an expensive school like that.
If you're goal is to be in the top echelons of elitist society I guess that's where you've got to be. If your aim is be gainfully employed and make a good living then those schools aren't necessary for anything.
If you're goal is to be in the top echelons of elitist society I guess that's where you've got to be. If your aim is be gainfully employed and make a good living then those schools aren't necessary for anything.
I think being angry is a natural and healthy response to the current economic reality. The juniors you’re working with have it right. If the CEO is going to make 100X as much as me, I’m going to do my best to work 100X less than they do. Hopefully we’ve reached a timeline where we no longer acquiesce to rampant inequality.
If the CEO is going to make 100X as much as me, I’m going to do my best to work 100X less than they do.
You realized CEO's make that much money after a long career where they were busting their asses as juniors.
You basically made the same argument the grandparent is criticizing.
You realized CEO's make that much money after a long career where they were busting their asses as juniors.
You basically made the same argument the grandparent is criticizing.
Ya, but there are many more people who spend years busting their asses in menial jobs who are never rewarded for it.
I have no problem with CEOs making lots of money. I have a problem with them making 100x more than their median employee; especially when their poorest employees aren't making a living wage.
I have no problem with CEOs making lots of money. I have a problem with them making 100x more than their median employee; especially when their poorest employees aren't making a living wage.
Ya, but there are many more people who spend years busting their asses in menial jobs who are never rewarded for it.
But that's true for any job, not just CEOs. Plenty of people bust their ass and never make $250,000 like many FAANG employees. Should we cap the pay of FAANG employees to the lowest paid tech worker?
I have a problem with them making 100x more than their median employee
Why? What should the maximum multiple be? Should a CEO only make 20x the median employee? What if the company only has 10 employees? What if it has 200,000 employees, should it still be 20x?
I'm not sure I understand why a CEO's pay should be solely linked to the median wage of the employees. What's the logic behind it?
But that's true for any job, not just CEOs. Plenty of people bust their ass and never make $250,000 like many FAANG employees. Should we cap the pay of FAANG employees to the lowest paid tech worker?
I have a problem with them making 100x more than their median employee
Why? What should the maximum multiple be? Should a CEO only make 20x the median employee? What if the company only has 10 employees? What if it has 200,000 employees, should it still be 20x?
I'm not sure I understand why a CEO's pay should be solely linked to the median wage of the employees. What's the logic behind it?
I realize that the CEO was born into a family where they were handed their position. You don’t get to the top by “working hard” that’s a sucker’s game. You need to be born to the right family, grease the right palms and be in the right place at the right time. Being a complete sociopath doesn’t hurt either.
- CEO of Microsoft is a child of middle class Indian immigrants
- so is CEO of Google
- CEO of Apple comes from working/lower-middle class family
- CEO of Johnson and Johnson (12th largest SP500 company) is an immigrant from Spain, coming from middle class family
etc etc etc
- so is CEO of Google
- CEO of Apple comes from working/lower-middle class family
- CEO of Johnson and Johnson (12th largest SP500 company) is an immigrant from Spain, coming from middle class family
etc etc etc
> CEO of Microsoft is a child of middle class Indian immigrants
Middle class people aren’t the secretary to the prime minister.
https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/satya-nadela-microsoft...
> so is CEO of Google
“His father also had a manufacturing plant that produced electrical components”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundar_Pichai
You’re buying the propaganda.
Middle class people aren’t the secretary to the prime minister.
https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/satya-nadela-microsoft...
> so is CEO of Google
“His father also had a manufacturing plant that produced electrical components”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundar_Pichai
You’re buying the propaganda.
> Middle class people aren’t the secretary to the prime minister.
That sounds quite normal, actually.
But the middle class (the petit bourgeoisie) is a small, economically elite class. It is in the middle between the working class that makes up the vast majority and the even narrower haut borgeoisie — the major capitalists whose relation to the economy centers on control of capital to which rented labor is applied.
Unfortunately, people sometimes confuse the middle class with the middle income segment of the working class, which is a very different thing. (And that confusion is often deliberately exploited.)
That sounds quite normal, actually.
But the middle class (the petit bourgeoisie) is a small, economically elite class. It is in the middle between the working class that makes up the vast majority and the even narrower haut borgeoisie — the major capitalists whose relation to the economy centers on control of capital to which rented labor is applied.
Unfortunately, people sometimes confuse the middle class with the middle income segment of the working class, which is a very different thing. (And that confusion is often deliberately exploited.)
>> Middle class people aren’t the secretary to the prime minister.
> That sounds quite normal, actually.
?!?!
> Unfortunately, people sometimes confuse the middle class with the middle income segment of the working class, which is a very different thing. (And that confusion is often deliberately exploited.)
Oh, I see. This doesn't seem particularly helpful. People don't "sometimes" confuse those two things. The de facto agreed upon meaning of "middle class" has been "middle income segment of the working class" for at least a century at this point.
And, in any case, serving on the Planning Commission seems much closer to "Ruling Class" than "Middle Class" unless you literally believe in the illuminati.
> That sounds quite normal, actually.
?!?!
> Unfortunately, people sometimes confuse the middle class with the middle income segment of the working class, which is a very different thing. (And that confusion is often deliberately exploited.)
Oh, I see. This doesn't seem particularly helpful. People don't "sometimes" confuse those two things. The de facto agreed upon meaning of "middle class" has been "middle income segment of the working class" for at least a century at this point.
And, in any case, serving on the Planning Commission seems much closer to "Ruling Class" than "Middle Class" unless you literally believe in the illuminati.
If the CEOs have it so great, why not become a CEO yourself and reap all those benefits?
Personally, my knife fighting skills aren't anywhere near up to par for that.
> To be honest, those people seem to be thriving socially simply by virtue of keeping up with their friends and coordinating social activities.
> The most unhappy people I see are the ones consuming hours of Reddit and Twitter every day.
I think you make a good distinction here. We always seems to lump "social media" into one big blob when talking about it but like you said I think there is some nuance here. I see Reddit/Twitter as a different kind of social media than Facebook/Instagram. On Instagram/FB it's all about the "real you", I have an account with my name on it and photos of me. Reddit (and to a lesser degree Twitter) on the other hand is all about being anonymous and interacting with strangers (as opposed to your friends) on the internet.
There's a time and place for both types of interactions but I feel like the "anonymous stranger internet" is what's really driving most of the negatives we see in social media.
> The most unhappy people I see are the ones consuming hours of Reddit and Twitter every day.
I think you make a good distinction here. We always seems to lump "social media" into one big blob when talking about it but like you said I think there is some nuance here. I see Reddit/Twitter as a different kind of social media than Facebook/Instagram. On Instagram/FB it's all about the "real you", I have an account with my name on it and photos of me. Reddit (and to a lesser degree Twitter) on the other hand is all about being anonymous and interacting with strangers (as opposed to your friends) on the internet.
There's a time and place for both types of interactions but I feel like the "anonymous stranger internet" is what's really driving most of the negatives we see in social media.
> The most unhappy people I see are the ones consuming hours of Reddit and Twitter every day
Or god forbid Hacker News!
Or god forbid Hacker News!
In a recent Ezra Klein show interview [1] with social scientist Jean Twenge on the documented rise in teenage depression, Twenge found it correlated with a rise in social media use, but also found that increasing social media use was correlated with fewer hours of in-person social interaction among teens than previous.
While Twenge wanted to talk about both things (and I'm somewhat suspicious of the certainty of her conclusions), I found it pretty thought-provoking to focus on the drop in in-person social interaction as the driver. Social media use can quite likely lead to lower in-person socialization (I do think it's likely causation, and in that direction). And there may be other social factors doing such too. Covid obviously. (note that rise in teen depression trend started well before covid though). Over-protectiveness (for teens) or general fear of risk of "the world"/focus on risk reduction. (They talked about this a bit).
To me it seems pretty clear (just my intuition/perception, not from actual social science) that our society is having a crisis of lack of meaningful relationships/community and lack of feeling of purpose in one's life, and this is leading to depression and anxiety. (As well as possible political disaster). What exactly is causing that lack of meaninful relationships and purpose, and what can be done, is harder. I think the internet is a (large) part of it, but so are other parts of the social/political/economic system.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/19/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...
While Twenge wanted to talk about both things (and I'm somewhat suspicious of the certainty of her conclusions), I found it pretty thought-provoking to focus on the drop in in-person social interaction as the driver. Social media use can quite likely lead to lower in-person socialization (I do think it's likely causation, and in that direction). And there may be other social factors doing such too. Covid obviously. (note that rise in teen depression trend started well before covid though). Over-protectiveness (for teens) or general fear of risk of "the world"/focus on risk reduction. (They talked about this a bit).
To me it seems pretty clear (just my intuition/perception, not from actual social science) that our society is having a crisis of lack of meaningful relationships/community and lack of feeling of purpose in one's life, and this is leading to depression and anxiety. (As well as possible political disaster). What exactly is causing that lack of meaninful relationships and purpose, and what can be done, is harder. I think the internet is a (large) part of it, but so are other parts of the social/political/economic system.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/19/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...
It's everything. Work from home. Self-check-out at the grocery store. Delivery of everything. Telemedicine. Cars instead of walkable neighborhoods or mass transit (or even bicycles). The decline of church attendance. I can't think of one social trend pushing us toward more face-to-face interactions.
If it's spanning this many different trends, I think there ought to be some larger thing driving it, but I can't put my finger on what it is.
If it's spanning this many different trends, I think there ought to be some larger thing driving it, but I can't put my finger on what it is.
Agreed with all of your examples.
I mean, to me, the larger thing is probably "capitalism", in which increasing amounts of social life are turned into things that can produce profit for a business. Our particular capitalism built on racism doesn't help either, with it's legacy of "we don't want public amenities because we don't want to fund them for THOSE people" and "we're scared to go outside because a lot of people have a lot of reason to wish us harm." (that we built for cars instead of walkable cities or public transit actually has a LOT to do with racism)
But people don't love talking about this here. Or rather, they do and they don't. :)
In the general socciety, decline of social interaction has probably been a topic of discussion since Robert Putman's 2000 book "Bowling Alone". http://bowlingalone.com/
I mean, to me, the larger thing is probably "capitalism", in which increasing amounts of social life are turned into things that can produce profit for a business. Our particular capitalism built on racism doesn't help either, with it's legacy of "we don't want public amenities because we don't want to fund them for THOSE people" and "we're scared to go outside because a lot of people have a lot of reason to wish us harm." (that we built for cars instead of walkable cities or public transit actually has a LOT to do with racism)
But people don't love talking about this here. Or rather, they do and they don't. :)
In the general socciety, decline of social interaction has probably been a topic of discussion since Robert Putman's 2000 book "Bowling Alone". http://bowlingalone.com/
According to Tim Urban’s latest book "What’s our problem?", modern Western society also has other problems such as an increase in groupthink, which is for example visible in the aggressiveness of current US politics.
Overall, it’s difficult to have much hope for the future. We’re in a new cold war where collaboration decreases rapidly between the West and, I guess, East. That’s wildly different than 2008 when China and Russia appeared to warm up to the West and taking some more democratic stances.
What does excite me is the continued improvements in hardware and software. Let’s hope those things will continue improvements in entertainment, medicine, travel, and education.
Overall, it’s difficult to have much hope for the future. We’re in a new cold war where collaboration decreases rapidly between the West and, I guess, East. That’s wildly different than 2008 when China and Russia appeared to warm up to the West and taking some more democratic stances.
What does excite me is the continued improvements in hardware and software. Let’s hope those things will continue improvements in entertainment, medicine, travel, and education.
I definitely think social media has a large share in driving down the mental health of the majority of users. No two lives are comparable, yet it induces people to compare their lives to someone else's often resulting in an unreasonable amount of envy, jealousy, and a general dissatisfaction of their lives. People pick their best moments while sharing, but it's never the true picture. It sets unrealistic expectations.
So what are you blaming exactly?
The fact that social media has us all connected and capable of measuring relative to others?
Or the fact it's weaponized by an entire industry of "influencers" subsidized by actors just trying to maximize the consumption factor of economic activity?
Or the fact that the system is fundamentally governed by network effect induced power laws, leading to massive inequality, that can end up being a stressor on average?
Just trying to tease out the right thread here, is all.
Something that lets us all communicate isn't inherently bad. It's the end that it is applied to that is.
The fact that social media has us all connected and capable of measuring relative to others?
Or the fact it's weaponized by an entire industry of "influencers" subsidized by actors just trying to maximize the consumption factor of economic activity?
Or the fact that the system is fundamentally governed by network effect induced power laws, leading to massive inequality, that can end up being a stressor on average?
Just trying to tease out the right thread here, is all.
Something that lets us all communicate isn't inherently bad. It's the end that it is applied to that is.
> Something that lets us all communicate isn't inherently bad.
I’m not so sure this is the case. Seems like we are testing the limits of our social programming when exposed to networks _vastly_ beyond our capabilities historically, and we’re seeing the various ways that our social behaviors break down naturally. That there is a profit motive in encouraging and accelerating this breakdown might be orthogonal to the idea that it isn’t meant to exist at this scale in the first place.
I’m not so sure this is the case. Seems like we are testing the limits of our social programming when exposed to networks _vastly_ beyond our capabilities historically, and we’re seeing the various ways that our social behaviors break down naturally. That there is a profit motive in encouraging and accelerating this breakdown might be orthogonal to the idea that it isn’t meant to exist at this scale in the first place.
It's being coddled in a sense. You have an entire generation that had very little required of them. Many of them never heard the word no and were just given what they wanted. Additionally, k12 schools told them that any slight or disagreement put towards them was bullying and unacceptable. No one should have to hear opinions they don't agree with.
Imagine growing up that way and then being sent off on your own. Of course your mental well-being will plummet. It's like being in a nice climate controlled house for 18 years and then being thrown out in the wilderness. When your expectation is to never have to deal with any discomfort.... well it's a shock.
As far as the social media part, I think many of these kids were raised on smart devices. They were receiving constant dopamine hits from a young age and no parenting on emotional regulation. If your brain is wired for an easy dopamine hit that doesn't require work, the real world is pretty harsh and depressing.
Imagine growing up that way and then being sent off on your own. Of course your mental well-being will plummet. It's like being in a nice climate controlled house for 18 years and then being thrown out in the wilderness. When your expectation is to never have to deal with any discomfort.... well it's a shock.
As far as the social media part, I think many of these kids were raised on smart devices. They were receiving constant dopamine hits from a young age and no parenting on emotional regulation. If your brain is wired for an easy dopamine hit that doesn't require work, the real world is pretty harsh and depressing.
Related, but not completely this topic, and a sample size of two warning!
I have a couple of boys, 5 and 8. They have tablets and computers, and they love them. Some days we don't use them, some days they spend far too much time on them. Life goes on, we do what we can. I played an entire metric crap ton of video games at those ages, and I turned out okay, I think.
I keep hearing "screen time." That is the enemy. I'm not so sure it's just the screens. Of course it's not playing outside in a field, but you can't let them wander too far, somebody will call the cops.
A lot of the modern stuff (TV shows, movies, games) seems to overstimulate them way quicker compared to something like playing a day's worth of Super Mario World. Like it was designed to lure them in and enrage them or something.
I'm imagining social media is the same, but we're not there yet. I don't do a lot of social media myself, so hopefully they will see the example.
I have a couple of boys, 5 and 8. They have tablets and computers, and they love them. Some days we don't use them, some days they spend far too much time on them. Life goes on, we do what we can. I played an entire metric crap ton of video games at those ages, and I turned out okay, I think.
I keep hearing "screen time." That is the enemy. I'm not so sure it's just the screens. Of course it's not playing outside in a field, but you can't let them wander too far, somebody will call the cops.
A lot of the modern stuff (TV shows, movies, games) seems to overstimulate them way quicker compared to something like playing a day's worth of Super Mario World. Like it was designed to lure them in and enrage them or something.
I'm imagining social media is the same, but we're not there yet. I don't do a lot of social media myself, so hopefully they will see the example.
It’s not social media, it’s social awareness of the exploitation of youth to prop up elders who contribute nothing but marching orders that, conveniently, prop up elder investments.
It’s being mocked over the environment. All they get is tough love as a generation dies off leaving behind the worst ecological mess any dying generation has left behind.
It’s being swindled by one socialized loss to enable private gain after another; sports stadiums, healthcare… etc
It’s teen women watching bodily autonomy taken from them by a bunch of leches.
And, the worst part, it’s the apathetic public following orders. Feckless society afflicted by learned helplessness; all the white collar workers who can’t provide anything real for themselves. Imagine being on the hook to coddle that?
This culture is a joke of self absorbed primates who ramble in high minded praise of their intelligence. War is peace and exploitation by aristocrats is freedom.
It’s being mocked over the environment. All they get is tough love as a generation dies off leaving behind the worst ecological mess any dying generation has left behind.
It’s being swindled by one socialized loss to enable private gain after another; sports stadiums, healthcare… etc
It’s teen women watching bodily autonomy taken from them by a bunch of leches.
And, the worst part, it’s the apathetic public following orders. Feckless society afflicted by learned helplessness; all the white collar workers who can’t provide anything real for themselves. Imagine being on the hook to coddle that?
This culture is a joke of self absorbed primates who ramble in high minded praise of their intelligence. War is peace and exploitation by aristocrats is freedom.
Social media does sound like a decent theory though. To your point, the issues plaguing the US ( and indeed the world ) have not changed that much over the past four decades. What did change is relative access to information, which exacerbated and maybe even hastened some trends. The small factors were always there, but were not as commonly seen for a variety of reasons ( social stigma, exposure to media, 'toughen up' message from society being but a few examples off the top of my ehad ). And even now, we only are aware of it as a potential trend due to social media exposure ( in this case, HN ). Would we be as aware of it even 10 years ago?
> To your point, the issues plaguing the US ( and indeed the world ) have not changed that much over the past four decades.
Wealth inequality has an increased a lot in the last four decades. I’d start there when looking for a source for mental health issues.
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-...
Wealth inequality has an increased a lot in the last four decades. I’d start there when looking for a source for mental health issues.
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-...
Money does buy certain level of comfort ( and help if needed ) so I am more than willing to consider it as a factor, but I am not sure it is THE answer to the source of mental health issues. Lack thereof may make things worse, but I am not sure it is the core issue. FWIW, I may well be wrong, but I don't think it is fair to assume it is X, when you see same health issues pop up in otherwise wealthy environments. Most interesting example of that being 'affluenza'.
> To your point, the issues plaguing the US ( and indeed the world ) have not changed that much over the past four decades.
Inside the US, this sounds wrong both anecdotally and from the data. I'd argue the cost of "living" has gone up quite substantially. Since 1980 rent has risen 140% and incomes 20%[0].
Anecdotally, in the 1970s it was entirely possible to live in an acceptable city or suburb on part-time work, and you could have your own apartment on minimum wage. You might not have nice things but I know many people who spent their 20s very comfortably like this not worrying about how to afford living. (having a family on this budget was not feasible, but that's another thing)
Conversely today I don't know anyone making less than less than 40k/yr who is not constantly stressing about food costs and how they'll make rent.
[0] https://www.realestatewitch.com/rent-to-income-ratio-2022/
Inside the US, this sounds wrong both anecdotally and from the data. I'd argue the cost of "living" has gone up quite substantially. Since 1980 rent has risen 140% and incomes 20%[0].
Anecdotally, in the 1970s it was entirely possible to live in an acceptable city or suburb on part-time work, and you could have your own apartment on minimum wage. You might not have nice things but I know many people who spent their 20s very comfortably like this not worrying about how to afford living. (having a family on this budget was not feasible, but that's another thing)
Conversely today I don't know anyone making less than less than 40k/yr who is not constantly stressing about food costs and how they'll make rent.
[0] https://www.realestatewitch.com/rent-to-income-ratio-2022/
Perhaps capitalism?
The days of providing new products to the eager market are gone. It simply no longer pays to hire more people and let them solve other people's problems. It's an all-out class war (fighting against unions, bribing politicians, colluding to suppress wage growth and so on) with capitalists infighting about who gets how large share of the emerging rent economy (communications, housing, transportation, food).
The days of providing new products to the eager market are gone. It simply no longer pays to hire more people and let them solve other people's problems. It's an all-out class war (fighting against unions, bribing politicians, colluding to suppress wage growth and so on) with capitalists infighting about who gets how large share of the emerging rent economy (communications, housing, transportation, food).
nvahalik(1)
Have been in research 20 years, and cultures vary dramatically by group.
Scientists also seem to be more anxiety prone than the general population. Also, it doesn't help if you take your work too seriously.
Scientists also seem to be more anxiety prone than the general population. Also, it doesn't help if you take your work too seriously.
I'm sorry to say it and you probably mean well, but your response sounds like the very kind of victim blaming that perpetuates and reinforces the abusive culture the article is talking about.
Instead of the victims or the culture, I'd rather look at the systemic issues that scientific institutions struggle with: debt, lack of social mobility, being underpaid and overworked, etc.
Instead of the victims or the culture, I'd rather look at the systemic issues that scientific institutions struggle with: debt, lack of social mobility, being underpaid and overworked, etc.
I would point out this
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2022/08/31/22-tenu...
as one of the elephants in the room. It's particularly a problem for DEI because someone who diagnoses their problem as "I am a woman", "I am black", ... is missing the major factor that the people who seem to fit in just fine in academia just fine are working in the family business. That is, at best you can erase "black stigma" but the privilege you are looking for is not a "white privilege" shared by all whites but rather a much more specific privilege, and if we just got them to where the average white person is they'd still feel lost at sea.
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2022/08/31/22-tenu...
as one of the elephants in the room. It's particularly a problem for DEI because someone who diagnoses their problem as "I am a woman", "I am black", ... is missing the major factor that the people who seem to fit in just fine in academia just fine are working in the family business. That is, at best you can erase "black stigma" but the privilege you are looking for is not a "white privilege" shared by all whites but rather a much more specific privilege, and if we just got them to where the average white person is they'd still feel lost at sea.
We can also look at main effects across populations.
Fundamentally, the research industry requires continuous exponential growth to accommodate everyone working there. Each PI trains 10+ grad students in their career. Where do those students go? They all want to become PIs themselves. Otherwise why would they get a PhD? Ultimately the majority must be disappointed and leave for positions outside academia.
But leaving academia is a process that takes some time. First cognitively as you give up on your dreams and decide to leave. Then as you search for a new job with no real-world experience and few or no connections.
In the mean time, the pipeline between grad school and professorship gets longer and fuller. Postdocs were once extremely prestigious positions, a sort of "finishing school" for the elite. Now they're standard, and most people need to do more than 1. In practice it's a holding pattern, giving PhDs something to do while they try to struggle to the top of the heap and find an assistant professorship.
And the actual experience of a postdoc! Leave all your friends and move to a new city. Work 60 hours a week for $45k a year. Have the rest of your career controlled by your PI, who you maybe met a few times before you decided to work for them, who has never had any kind of management training, and is under their own severe pressure to publish and bring in new grants. Compete against other brilliant, driven people, many of whom are abusing stimulants, and/or are immigrants with no safety net and willing to work 80+ hours.
How could this system NOT create a mental health crisis?
But leaving academia is a process that takes some time. First cognitively as you give up on your dreams and decide to leave. Then as you search for a new job with no real-world experience and few or no connections.
In the mean time, the pipeline between grad school and professorship gets longer and fuller. Postdocs were once extremely prestigious positions, a sort of "finishing school" for the elite. Now they're standard, and most people need to do more than 1. In practice it's a holding pattern, giving PhDs something to do while they try to struggle to the top of the heap and find an assistant professorship.
And the actual experience of a postdoc! Leave all your friends and move to a new city. Work 60 hours a week for $45k a year. Have the rest of your career controlled by your PI, who you maybe met a few times before you decided to work for them, who has never had any kind of management training, and is under their own severe pressure to publish and bring in new grants. Compete against other brilliant, driven people, many of whom are abusing stimulants, and/or are immigrants with no safety net and willing to work 80+ hours.
How could this system NOT create a mental health crisis?
In biochem, the norm is for people who intend to work seriously in the industry to go to grad school; that is, academic research in that field is not a competition for a tiny number of academic jobs. But bio and chem have two of the worst reputations for academic research culture.
I wonder if there is a filtering effect here where people who have relatively better soft skills and technical knowledge move into industry, and what we are seeing in academic circles is biased to what the industry declined.
> better soft skills
This is starting to happen in CS -- the level of technical competence remains fairly high, but the faculty ranks are swelling with "doesn't play well with others" types. Most of our PhD interns with serious ego/soft skill issues don't get return offers and end up in faculty positions as a result.
This is starting to happen in CS -- the level of technical competence remains fairly high, but the faculty ranks are swelling with "doesn't play well with others" types. Most of our PhD interns with serious ego/soft skill issues don't get return offers and end up in faculty positions as a result.
>And the actual experience of a postdoc! Leave all your friends and move to a new city.
Continent.
Continent.
Low pay and an insecure job. It's like a pyramid scheme and many end up either forced to leave science or remain an eternal postdoc, and in countries like Germany postdoc funding is restricted once you reach a certain career stage so even the eternal postdoc isn't an option.
And graduate students will be the last ones to receive a "pay raise" or even cost-of-living adjustment, I am certain.
Rather than focusing on research, we should look at "careers that are considered prestigious or rewarding in themselves" : fashion, entertainment, sports, medicine, tenured teaching. In all of those, there are more applicants than there are jobs. Hence, lousy salaries and poor treatment.
On the other hand, jobs that won't impress anyone you meet tend to have fewer applicants and much better treatment, because they can't afford to drive people away.
On the other hand, jobs that won't impress anyone you meet tend to have fewer applicants and much better treatment, because they can't afford to drive people away.
Speaking as a tenured PI in the (applied) physical sciences, everything here is true but a lot of it boils down to a lack of perspective and imagination by many faculty running labs.
There are many positive examples out there of ensuring student career success in a supportive lab environment while also producing good research. These need to be amplified as role models.
There are many positive examples out there of ensuring student career success in a supportive lab environment while also producing good research. These need to be amplified as role models.
Care to share some of those examples?
I know a very intelligent woman: graduated in 4 years having a 4.0 with a double major in CS and Chemistry. She was extremely gung-ho about going to university and achieving her PhD, and I naively believed at the time that she'd have no trouble accomplishing her goals.
Enter competitive research academia. She felt constantly defeated by classmates and advisors who seemed to be working against her at every turn. One advisor, whom she trusted, moved to take a job with another university. She followed in the hope that she could shed the toxicity of the current working environment. Turns out that the new place was just as toxic.
She finished with a 4.0 through grad school but never defended the dissertation due to burnout, tired of the constant struggle for resources, attention, and just plain basic humanity. She now has a subservient role to PhDs she could run circles around intellectually.
Enter competitive research academia. She felt constantly defeated by classmates and advisors who seemed to be working against her at every turn. One advisor, whom she trusted, moved to take a job with another university. She followed in the hope that she could shed the toxicity of the current working environment. Turns out that the new place was just as toxic.
She finished with a 4.0 through grad school but never defended the dissertation due to burnout, tired of the constant struggle for resources, attention, and just plain basic humanity. She now has a subservient role to PhDs she could run circles around intellectually.
This isn't even remotely surprising.
I'm a current PhD student in a coveted top-3 program. We have one of the better stipends in the country, and I've been fully funded by fellowships. My advisor thinks highly of me and isn't abusive. I have a perfect GPA (not that that matters), some publications, and pretty broad technical skills in "hot" area(s). Nevertheless, graduation feels hopelessly out of reach, and I'm getting closer and closer to dropping out.
Academia is full of cronyism, perverse incentives, idea theft. Never mind work-life balance, there is no distinction whatsoever between work and life. There's no "out" if you're in a bad situation; you can't just change jobs like in the real world; your advisor is your "third parent". The incentive structures make it nearly impossible to meaningfully collaborate without some petty authorship conflict arising. It's isolating and seemingly designed to create unhappy, atomized, paranoid, jealous, mean-competitive people. At the end, there is ultimately no reward, materially speaking: all but the very tippy-top academic job tracks are no better.
Academia's clerical heritage is not its only monastic quality. I'm on the wrong side of my 20s and still living in a tiny, crappy apartment with a roommate. At this point I implicitly believe I will never get close to owning a home. That a family is out of the question. That the future is always worse than the present. I've gradually turned into a learned-helplessness "sorry I exist" person, without ever noticing.
Suddenly I see how pathetic that is. I'm ready to change back. I'm ready to be optimistic and ambitious and self-confident again. I'm ready to live a life of improvement, not stagnation. I'm ready to build something meaningful. Not to mention, my eyes are finally opening to how much I could be making in industry if only I hadn't been so proud/idealistic/willfully ignorant... And how much better that kind of salary can make your life.
For the right offer, I am so ready to break free (DMs open (just kidding (but actually though))).
I'm a current PhD student in a coveted top-3 program. We have one of the better stipends in the country, and I've been fully funded by fellowships. My advisor thinks highly of me and isn't abusive. I have a perfect GPA (not that that matters), some publications, and pretty broad technical skills in "hot" area(s). Nevertheless, graduation feels hopelessly out of reach, and I'm getting closer and closer to dropping out.
Academia is full of cronyism, perverse incentives, idea theft. Never mind work-life balance, there is no distinction whatsoever between work and life. There's no "out" if you're in a bad situation; you can't just change jobs like in the real world; your advisor is your "third parent". The incentive structures make it nearly impossible to meaningfully collaborate without some petty authorship conflict arising. It's isolating and seemingly designed to create unhappy, atomized, paranoid, jealous, mean-competitive people. At the end, there is ultimately no reward, materially speaking: all but the very tippy-top academic job tracks are no better.
Academia's clerical heritage is not its only monastic quality. I'm on the wrong side of my 20s and still living in a tiny, crappy apartment with a roommate. At this point I implicitly believe I will never get close to owning a home. That a family is out of the question. That the future is always worse than the present. I've gradually turned into a learned-helplessness "sorry I exist" person, without ever noticing.
Suddenly I see how pathetic that is. I'm ready to change back. I'm ready to be optimistic and ambitious and self-confident again. I'm ready to live a life of improvement, not stagnation. I'm ready to build something meaningful. Not to mention, my eyes are finally opening to how much I could be making in industry if only I hadn't been so proud/idealistic/willfully ignorant... And how much better that kind of salary can make your life.
For the right offer, I am so ready to break free (DMs open (just kidding (but actually though))).
take your masters and run. go into the real world and get a job. your paycheck, mental health, future family will all thank you
I've seen this toxic culture tear people apart first hand. 80+hr weeks, 52 weeks a year, barely enough pay to make rent, while being berated by emails at 3am by the PI for poor data. It's sickening.
Scientists are exploited the same way game developers are exploited: their love for the area, and the intangible rewards they get from working in it, are used to depress wages and benefits.
High school-to-college pipelines need to be improved in many areas. The undergraduate pipeline is failing in gender overall: ~60% women + ~40% men. Universities that gender rebalance effectively make it harder for women to get in and easier for men. STEM (except biology and nursing) is bad at attracting women, with computer science and electrical engineering being possibly the most imbalanced fields compared to psychology and nursing at the other extremes. There's nothing wrong with individual major overall preferences but there is a problem when 2x the number of women are being educated than men. That's a strategic human capital loss and likely signals future underemployment. Phil Zimbardo (Stanford Prison Experiment and community college lecturer by telecourses broadcasted by KCSM) wrote a number of books and gives a TED talk on this subject.
Prescriptive formulas at the point of college entrance isn't the correct place to apply pressures. Mentoring, programs, resources, and subject public relations need to happen where there is great need and especially in areas with fewer resources.
Prescriptive formulas at the point of college entrance isn't the correct place to apply pressures. Mentoring, programs, resources, and subject public relations need to happen where there is great need and especially in areas with fewer resources.
I grew up in a family of scientists and professors. It's really disheartening to see how much trouble it is to make a living nowadays. My grandfather was an entomology professor, and was able to support a wife, 3 kids, and a nice house though they were no means wealthy. If you can't support yourself or a family in 2023 working in academia, why would anyone pursue it as a career?
And this will lead to the a stagnation of science if the best and brightest disincentivized from participating.
No, the science will take place in private companies, and the result is they will have even more control over society than before. Think of all the psychology employed at social media companies to get people hooked on social media, whatever the cost - even if the cost was functioning society itself.
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science boasts empiricism but the institutions who 'teach' science don't have any empirical basis on how to do so efficiently
yeah, its outdated, has been for a while
yeah, its outdated, has been for a while
I've noticed that the smarter and more academic people in my life are more prone to anxiety and depression. I've often wondered if there is a cause behind that correlation or just a random coincidence amongst the people I know. I guess this could account for some of that.
I quit my research career for exactly this; I was close to burnout. I left the academic sector because I realised it's internationally toxic; there's no solidarity among academics.
They'll can your grant application, they'll trash your paper during peer review, for absolutely zero personal gain.
Every aspect of research work is awful: ridiculously little funding, a parasitic publishing system outsourcing all of its labor to us (unpaid), overloaded teaching, universities' ballooning middle management inventing new hoops every week, endless unpaid labor in the name of 'academic service', low salary, endless pressure.
Burn it all down.
Every aspect of research work is awful: ridiculously little funding, a parasitic publishing system outsourcing all of its labor to us (unpaid), overloaded teaching, universities' ballooning middle management inventing new hoops every week, endless unpaid labor in the name of 'academic service', low salary, endless pressure.
Burn it all down.
There's toxic culture in a lot of fields and there's one common denominator.
Can't wait for AI to take over every field it can and push out the corrupting factor - humans
Can't wait for AI to take over every field it can and push out the corrupting factor - humans
Maybe this is the answer...when humans are no longer required for a field to move forward, prestige becomes meaningless and everything becomes a means toward self-fulfillment not competition
This makes me wonder how much of this is because research typically happens in an academic setting versus this just being the nature of research.
I wonder if researches from private companies feel the same woes. If so, its probably just the nature of, like others have mentioned, a deliverable / outcome based jobs. I'd imagine (and hope), that at the very least they're paid better and have more resources available to them.
I wonder if researches from private companies feel the same woes. If so, its probably just the nature of, like others have mentioned, a deliverable / outcome based jobs. I'd imagine (and hope), that at the very least they're paid better and have more resources available to them.
I worked in a research lab at a university for 10 years. It was grant funded, so my position could get canceled at any time, but so is working at at a private company. While the pay was about half of what I made a year after leaving and working at private companies, working in the research lab was WAAAAAAY easier.
It won’t change until people quit. I did, I’m making way more money, way less stress, and I have no regrets.
This song sums up how awful most lab careers are better than any articles that I am aware of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_bB3LBYG6E&list=RDQ_bB3LBYG...
"You halted the march of progress."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_bB3LBYG6E&list=RDQ_bB3LBYG...
"You halted the march of progress."
A large issue is that PIs have no training on how to manage people nor is there much protection for grad students (and practically none for postdocs). It is surprisingly common to hear stories of sexual harassment, or international researchers essentially being held captive by their advisors. The universities are motivated to maintain their public appearance, and so cases of harassment and mistreatment are either entirely ignored or dealt with quietly. This, in addition to pay issues, is also playing a significant role in the unionization efforts that are taking place across US universities.
My understanding is that there's been a big rise in mental illness, anxiety and stress in general, over the last 10 yeats or so. And its true across professions, ages, race, gender or sexuality.
A lot of factors pushing for it:
1. the general madness and chaos of the Trump presidency ("When I wake up in the morning will I learn Trump has launched nukes at North Korea? Or vice versa?" etc etc, ad nauseum for 4 years)
2. COVID lockdowns and economic swings
3. apparent explosive rise in gun mass shootings -- "Will I or my loved ones be next?"
4. social media's toxic effect on peace of mind, in general
5. active efforts by various actors to spread lies, sow tensions and trigger violence (eg. stochastic terrorism)
6. carbon climate crisis... a biggie
Therefore I've been building a sci-fi post-apoc, educational game lately [SB: see below] which happens to take as its premises that:
7. humanity (or at least the US) fails to save democracy
8. humanity fails to act boldly enough or fast enough to save us from the worst of climate change's most dystopic effects
9. and therefore, due to all of above, there's a yet further MASSIVE rise in mental health disorders (all the way up to full blown de facto "insanity") -- eg. like many of the survivors you see in the Mad Max films
From a purely entertainment standpoint I loved watching films like Idiocracy and Mad Max Fury Road. As a person in the real world and a patriotic citizen I don't want to see us descend to that level of insanity, struggle and suffering. Our existing mental health systems are already inadequate today. If we start losing more doctors, nurses & therapists to anxiety/depression or over-work fatigue (speaking in broad terms), and also scientists, engineers, teachers, etc, then it will get MUCH worse.
----
[SB] - https://synystrongames.itch.io/slartboz
A lot of factors pushing for it:
1. the general madness and chaos of the Trump presidency ("When I wake up in the morning will I learn Trump has launched nukes at North Korea? Or vice versa?" etc etc, ad nauseum for 4 years)
2. COVID lockdowns and economic swings
3. apparent explosive rise in gun mass shootings -- "Will I or my loved ones be next?"
4. social media's toxic effect on peace of mind, in general
5. active efforts by various actors to spread lies, sow tensions and trigger violence (eg. stochastic terrorism)
6. carbon climate crisis... a biggie
Therefore I've been building a sci-fi post-apoc, educational game lately [SB: see below] which happens to take as its premises that:
7. humanity (or at least the US) fails to save democracy
8. humanity fails to act boldly enough or fast enough to save us from the worst of climate change's most dystopic effects
9. and therefore, due to all of above, there's a yet further MASSIVE rise in mental health disorders (all the way up to full blown de facto "insanity") -- eg. like many of the survivors you see in the Mad Max films
From a purely entertainment standpoint I loved watching films like Idiocracy and Mad Max Fury Road. As a person in the real world and a patriotic citizen I don't want to see us descend to that level of insanity, struggle and suffering. Our existing mental health systems are already inadequate today. If we start losing more doctors, nurses & therapists to anxiety/depression or over-work fatigue (speaking in broad terms), and also scientists, engineers, teachers, etc, then it will get MUCH worse.
----
[SB] - https://synystrongames.itch.io/slartboz
People who understand that collapse is inevitable are generally more depressed, yes.
“Well-being and how to set healthy boundaries in your life and in your work is a fundamental skill,” says Sharon Milgram
What is this “life” you speak of?
What is this “life” you speak of?
If true, the terrible thing is that it is traumatic to even study this.
There's no winning this one.
There's no winning this one.
Welcome to late stage capitalism. Our blue collar brethren have been put through the grinder for decades. Now it's our turn. In the end the majority of the population will be simply burnt out - and to what end? To support the lavish lifestyle of a select few.
When I was a post grad I could make less than I would at McDonalds for work I was volontold to do.
I did the smart thing and quit. When you select for people who don't do the smart thing and want to be exploited in exchange for prestige they get exploited.
I did the smart thing and quit. When you select for people who don't do the smart thing and want to be exploited in exchange for prestige they get exploited.
Whenever these things come up, I'm always grateful toward my past self who opted out of academia and pursued industry. The entire system of placing your fate in the hands of disinterested, self motivated, senior faculty and researchers seemed very risky to me at the time. Plus the money has been nice. But I do feel like I missed out on some intellectual growth. YMMV.
In grad school I learned a bunch of stuff and pushed forward a research topic that was outdated at the time but I just had no idea. Once I got into industry it was obvious and I had to catch up. The degree ended up providing nothing more than a signal for job interviews.
True. But please consider the difference the social background of the people makes. If you are financially secure due to parents (or whatever) you can easily accept positions with a low payment and do your best to get into a promising tenure track.
So maybe it is only partly about exploitation, but also about applying a social filter.
So maybe it is only partly about exploitation, but also about applying a social filter.
I would describe the best "second-tier" academics I've encountered as mostly fitting the "parents money" archetype.
They're not the uber geniuses who flit to the top, but since the toxic incentives aren't as important to them due to their financial independence they get to focus on the work which ultimately pays dividends in their career.
They're not the uber geniuses who flit to the top, but since the toxic incentives aren't as important to them due to their financial independence they get to focus on the work which ultimately pays dividends in their career.
> I did the smart thing and quit. When you select for people who don't do the smart thing and want to be exploited in exchange for prestige they get exploited.
I've also been told this is a prime driver for gender disparity in STEM academia: the women with the talent to succeed in a Ph. D. instead go earn their MD.
I've also been told this is a prime driver for gender disparity in STEM academia: the women with the talent to succeed in a Ph. D. instead go earn their MD.
The world is as good as it's ever has been in human history. Minorities, females, lgbtq members, etc, have more rights, are more protected and represented than ever. Extreme poverty is down, life expectancy is up. Human rights for any group are enforced as never before. But mental health issues are still going up at alarming rates. So it must be something else.
I have various hypothesis as to what other causes may be but they're not worth very much. The problem is too complex for one head to understand it. It's like trying to determine the cluster health from one server. IT CAN NOT BE DONE. I don't care what your credentials are, if you're not a god you can't do it.
I am willing to present this hypothesis in public: presenting the world in an idealized and false light, pretending that it should a safe space for everybody in which conflicts of interest and identities should not bother anybody is not helping. Generations are growing up expecting the world to embrace them, their identity, their ideas. This is causing fragility.
I have various hypothesis as to what other causes may be but they're not worth very much. The problem is too complex for one head to understand it. It's like trying to determine the cluster health from one server. IT CAN NOT BE DONE. I don't care what your credentials are, if you're not a god you can't do it.
I am willing to present this hypothesis in public: presenting the world in an idealized and false light, pretending that it should a safe space for everybody in which conflicts of interest and identities should not bother anybody is not helping. Generations are growing up expecting the world to embrace them, their identity, their ideas. This is causing fragility.
This has nothing to do with the article.
The article states multiple times that harassment, bullying, abuse and general toxicity is affecting science workers in general, but in particular women and minorities. My post states that said abuses are historically at a low point, especially for those groups, thus can not explain the rise in mental health issues.
How exactly does this have "nothing to do with the article"?
How exactly does this have "nothing to do with the article"?
Your comment has everything to do with the article, but unfortunately, the "it has nothing to do with the article" is one of the issues with Science. To keep my argumentation on topic: Historically, scientists never had a so safe life like today. In the past, scientists used to put their life at stake. Galileo, Copernicus, Turin, Einstein..
Einstein?
"When Hitler came to power in January 1933, Einstein was in California and was almost immediately deprived of his posts in Berlin and his membership of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. His property was seized and his books were burned in public. Einstein never returned to Germany, and signed a letter to President Roosevelt alerting him to the fact that Germany might be developing an atomic weapon. He recommended that the US begin similar research."[1]
[1]: https://www.wired.com/2012/06/famous-persecuted-scientists/
[1]: https://www.wired.com/2012/06/famous-persecuted-scientists/
But Einstein's pursuit of Science wasn't what put him in danger? In fact it might have made it easier to flee?
Yes, yes, one of the great challenges of modern science is that we're not murdering the scientists anymore.
> Yes, yes, one of the great challenges of modern science is that we're not murdering the scientists anymore.
I hope that's not how you really understood it and you are just reducing the discussion to a childish level to try to get some points...
I hope that's not how you really understood it and you are just reducing the discussion to a childish level to try to get some points...
It's nothing to do with the article because general societal trends may not be relevant within a specific industry.
But exactly the "general societal trends" are used to make a point, so how it's not related?
Ah, the "quit complaining fallacy" makes an appearance. Things are better now than they were so shut up and take your lumps.
[deleted]
Science is hard, viciously competitive, and deeply cruel in all ways in order for some to win. Cheating, plagiarism, racism, sexual harassment, theft of ideas, publishing spam, .... Everything is in play in this game.
Calling it "culture" and laying some "blame" is a convenient "we're the worst off subset of victims; it's not us, it's them" perspective but it will neither solve the problem nor address the actual condition--science is not a utopian island that is separate from big business economics, university branding and wealth, nor from geopolitics.
Scientists have not figured out how to organize as well as any of those entities and will continue to be subjugated to their game and their system. When that is solved, the tools that abusers within the scientific community use against each other are more easily addressed.
Perhaps in the meantime we can pass some more laws that that make it seem like we care, but the existing regulations that make racism/ageism/sexism/abuse illegal are not currently effective. But to be clear: we don't care. We fought as hard as we could to win at that game and we raise our kids to try to win at that game. MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Cal, Michigan, Texas, Wisconsin, <insert your personal alma mater for which you have pride in its research capabilities>: you wanted to get in; maybe you did; you will desire for your kids to get in; they probably won't. The patents and rights of science and research are in the hands of someone who is not doing the work.
Calling it "culture" and laying some "blame" is a convenient "we're the worst off subset of victims; it's not us, it's them" perspective but it will neither solve the problem nor address the actual condition--science is not a utopian island that is separate from big business economics, university branding and wealth, nor from geopolitics.
Scientists have not figured out how to organize as well as any of those entities and will continue to be subjugated to their game and their system. When that is solved, the tools that abusers within the scientific community use against each other are more easily addressed.
Perhaps in the meantime we can pass some more laws that that make it seem like we care, but the existing regulations that make racism/ageism/sexism/abuse illegal are not currently effective. But to be clear: we don't care. We fought as hard as we could to win at that game and we raise our kids to try to win at that game. MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Cal, Michigan, Texas, Wisconsin, <insert your personal alma mater for which you have pride in its research capabilities>: you wanted to get in; maybe you did; you will desire for your kids to get in; they probably won't. The patents and rights of science and research are in the hands of someone who is not doing the work.
yay more laws!