This post contains excerpts of a letter sent to staff at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL, English: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne) is one of the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology and is located in Lausanne, Switzerland.
I wonder how many more letters like this we will see after AR5 is released. – Anthony
An Aspiring Scientist’s Frustration with Modern-Day Academia: A Resignation
Dear EPFL,
I am writing to state that, after four years of hard but enjoyable PhD work at this school, I am planning to quit my thesis in January, just a few months shy of completion. Originally, this was a letter that was intended only for my advisors. However, as I prepared to write it I realized that the message here may be pertinent to anyone involved in research across the entire EPFL, and so have extended its range just a bit.
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While I could give a multitude of reasons for leaving my studies – some more concrete, others more abstract – the essential motivation stems from my personal conclusion that I’ve lost faith in today’s academia as being something that brings a positive benefit to the world/societies we live in. Rather, I’m starting to think of it as a big money vacuum that takes in grants and spits out nebulous results, fueled by people whose main concerns are not to advance knowledge and to effect positive change, though they may talk of such things, but to build their CVs and to propel/maintain their careers.
(1) Academia: It’s Not Science, It’s Business
I’m going to start with the supposition that the goal of “science” is to search for truth, to improve our understanding of the universe around us, and to somehow use this understanding to move the world towards a better tomorrow. At least, this is the propaganda that we’ve often been fed while still young, and this is generally the propaganda that universities that do research use to put themselves on lofty moral ground, to decorate their websites, and to recruit naïve youngsters like myself.
(2) Academia: Work Hard, Young Padawan, So That One Day You Too May Manage!
I sometimes find it both funny and frightening that the majority of the world’s academic research is actually being done by people like me, who don’t even have a PhD degree. Many advisors, whom you would expect to truly be pushing science forward with their decades of experience, do surprisingly little and only appear to manage the PhD students…Rarely do I hear of advisors who actually go through their students’ work in full rigor and detail, with many apparently having adopted the “if it looks fine, we can submit it for publication” approach.
(3) Academia: The Backwards Mentality
A very saddening aspect of the whole academic system is the amount of self-deception that goes on, which is a “skill” that many new recruits are forced to master early on… or perish. As many PhD students don’t truly get to choose their research topic, they are forced to adopt what their advisors do and to do “something original” on it that could one day be turned into a thesis.
(4) Academia: Where Originality Will Hurt You
The good, healthy mentality would naturally be to work on research that we believe is important. Unfortunately, most such research is challenging and difficult to publish, and the current publish-or-perish system makes it difficult to put bread on the table while working on problems that require at least ten years of labor before you can report even the most preliminary results. Worse yet, the results may not be understood, which, in some cases, is tantamount to them being rejected by the academic community.
(5) Academia: The Black Hole of Bandwagon Research
Indeed, writing lots of papers of questionable value about a given popular topic seems to be a very good way to advance your academic career these days. The advantages are clear: there is no need to convince anyone that the topic is pertinent and you are very likely to be cited more since more people are likely to work on similar things. This will, in turn, raise your impact factor and will help to establish you as a credible researcher, regardless of whether your work is actually good/important or not.
(6) Academia: Statistics Galore!
“Professors with papers are like children,” a professor once told me. And, indeed, there seems to exist an unhealthy obsession among academics regarding their numbers of citations, impact factors, and numbers of publications. This leads to all sorts of nonsense, such as academics making “strategic citations”, writing “anonymous” peer reviews where they encourage the authors of the reviewed paper to cite their work, and gently trying to tell their colleagues about their recent work at conferences or other networking events or sometimes even trying to slip each other their papers with a “I’ll-read-yours-if-you-read-mine” wink and nod. No one, when asked if they care about their citations, will ever admit to it, and yet these same people will still know the numbers by heart. I admit that I’ve been there before, and hate myself for it.
(7) Academia: The Violent Land of Giant Egos
[He must be talking about Mannworld here -Anthony]
I often wonder if many people in academia come from insecure childhoods where they were never the strongest or the most popular among their peers, and, having studied more than their peers, are now out for revenge. I suspect that yes, since it is the only explanation I can give to explain why certain researchers attack, in the bad way, other researchers’ work. Perhaps the most common manifestation of this is via peer reviews, where these people abuse their anonymity to tell you, in no ambiguous terms, that you are an idiot and that your work isn’t worth a pile of dung. Occasionally, some have the gall to do the same during conferences, though I’ve yet to witness this latter manifestation personally.
(8) Academia: The Greatest Trick It Ever Pulled was Convincing the World That It was Necessary
Perhaps the most crucial, piercing question that the people in academia should ask themselves is this: “Are we really needed?” Year after year, the system takes in tons of money via all sorts of grants.
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What’s bothersome, however, is how long a purely theoretical result can be milked for grants before the researchers decide to produce something practically useful. Worse yet, there often does not appear to be a strong urge for people in academia to go and apply their result, even when this becomes possible, which most likely stems from the fear of failure – you are morally comfortable researching your method as long as it works in theory, but nothing would hurt more than to try to apply it and to learn that it doesn’t work in reality. No one likes to publish papers which show how their method fails (although, from a scientific perspective, they’re obliged to).
read it all at Pascal Junod
Agree with some of the comments above that the student should have just go on to complete it. Despite the negative sides, there are positives too about modern academia where he/she should draw their motivation from. Not a wise move, unless they are really stuck on the thesis, being way far from completion state. Nobody is perfect, we just do our best, publish our results, and that’s how we progress,mistakes will be pointed out, and we ought to fix them. Striving for perfection is good, but being obsessed about it is not.
He should have studied engineering, where real world results are all that matters and PhD’s usually mean you have done something useful.
gjrebane says: September 14, 2013 at 2:30 pm
All true, but fighting ‘the system’ from the inside has a much higher likelihood of success. Get back in there and get your PhD, then take no prisoners.
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The tone of this comment is similar to many others, and I don’t agree. I see the letter coming from a person who has realized that he needs a career change. “If I continue on this path, I’m headed to work for an organization I don’t respect, and will be around people I don’t agree with.” My advice is to follow your heart. I’ve made major career changes twice in my life and they were tough at the time but I have no regrets.
If you are a US citizen or hold a green card, send me your resume. The company I work for is looking for honest employees. Anthony has my email address.
Now that I’m an elder, I’m all for respecting your elders, providing it’s me. Those other elders, however, are iffy….
When I was young I hated a quote by Lady Melbourne, mother of the English Prime minister.
It went something like, “Those who fly in the face of convention simply must expect to face the consequences.” As the years went by I came to sadly see it is true.
To some degree we all have to break free of influence and sail single-handed and fly solo, but on the other hand few scale Mount Everest alone. It pays to have someone you trust who can give you a boost or lower you on a rope.
I hope this young man finds some good team to be part of, for it truly sucks to go it alone for too long.
“It’s never worth a first class man’s time to express a majority opinion. By definition there are plenty of others to do that.”
— G.H. Hardy, A Mathematician’s Apology
Good one! I had that attitude when young, but one does have moments of doubt, while sleeping in one’s car!
I know that most people will think of climate science when they see this, but it is more broadly applicable. String theory also comes to mind. Thousands of theoretical papers, no results.
Less directly, it makes me think of all of the “X studies” PhDs. Replace X with almost anything and get a Phd for having an opinion.
The devil is in the details of the Ph.D. candidate’s situation.
However, I’ll repeat what several others have said.
Everything else being equal, this person should probably finish his Ph.D. as the Dr. title will provide him with opportunities he would not otherwise have.
After the Ph.D., he can choose another place in academia or work in industry.
Once upon a time I was unsure whether such works as “The Peter Principle” and “Parkinson’s Law” were intended as comic spoofs or to be taken seriously. As I have aged I have come to realise that they are true and accurate depictions of the world. Perhaps the best of this kind of work is “Systemantics” by John Gall. The observations made are demonstrated to be true every day, and shown by this brave man’s resignation letter.
Some of the axioms (I think that’s what they are called):
Systems work poorly or not at all.
Systems do not do what they say they are doing.
Corollary: People in a system do not do what the system say’s they are doing.
Systems once established grow to fill the known universe.
Corollary: Systems once established cannot be dis-established.
Etc.
This gentleman’s situation is easily explained by these, and other, observations.
Sadly, not an uncommon story. Good advice I received beforehand was “only do a Ph.D. if you really love your subject”.
But spotting the uncommonly good supervisor who can make it the best time of your life so far, was probably down to luck.
Wow, this makes academia sound like an amoral bunch of ego driven lawyers who will say anything for money. This can’t be true…
ooops – just remembered the CGAW academic cow pie – I retract all the above.
Remember that Peter Higgs (Higgs Boson fame) had his seminal paper rejected by Physics Letters. He challenged the status quo and they told him to get lost.
He says what a lot think but don’t have the courage to say. The PHD industry is similar to most others where mangers [toe] the line even when they know what they are doing is all about money .
The PHD industry relies on the constant supply of money from people at the bottom end. Some actually see through the scam and become coffee shop employees.
Persistence is something I have admired in associates. Equally I have admired the adventurous associates who seize on starting totally anew on a uniquely different path.
I cannot give the young person who is the author of that resignation any advice, since I do not know enough about background and personal info.
As to what the person wrote in the resignation, it does not sound inconsistent with other assessments of academia.
To the young person, find and follow your love / dreams. Bon voyage.
John
Onlooker wrote;
“You beat me to the Eisenhower reference. He made some terrifically sage predictions, that’s for sure. (And he’s an enigma as he saw this coming and yet did his part in building the beast ever larger and more influential; not as bad as the “progressives”, but disappointing all the same).”
Well, in retrospect he is not such an enigma after all. At the time there was great fear that the “other guys” (the Russians) had lots and lots and lots of nuclear tipped missiles (They did explode an “A-Bomb” and put Sputnik “Up There”) and that they could hurt the USA (the place Ike was charged with defending) badly. There was quite a bit of angst what with the building of backyard bomb shelters and “duck and cover” drills in the schools (I did in fact go through those).
Some in the “military industrial complex” wanted the USA to build tens of thousands of missiles and bombers. Ike did in fact push back against that and insisted on accurate intelligence on “what exactly” the other guys where up to. As part of this He “sponsored” the “Corona” spy satellite project (formerly top secret) to try and figure out what the “other” guys where capable of. Even after 13 failed launches He insisted it continue. And then a whole treasure trove of information about the Russian Military Complex came through. Turns out there never was a “Missile Gap” and our (USA) defenses where more than adequate. Of course the source of that knowledge was “Top Secret” so Ike did not mention it directly.
So by the time Ike made that speech he was privy to information confirming that we did not need thousands of bombers, but he did realize that only extraordinary scientific and engineering achievements enabled our ability to obtain that information.
Ike was warning us that research is essential, but it has to provide REAL DATA. Early in the Cold War there were wild predictions about how the other guys could “wipe us out” with their missiles, and we had to respond with a total all out effort to “overwhelm” the threat. Sound familiar? We currently have government scientists telling us we need to eliminate human caused GHGs, back then we had government “advisors” telling us we had to “overwhelm” any possible nuclear capability the “enemy” had.
In both cases once higher quality intelligence (data) came along the “panic” passed.
Ike was quite wise, he probably would have told the climate scientists claiming that we have to totally restructure the way energy is obtained and used to; PROVE IT.
Cheers, Kevin.
Have not read the responses, but I do find one thing encouraging: Honesty, Integrity, and a broad understanding in a young person. Of course there are more like him, but not enough.
Great character to be a politician, except, unfortunately, he would probably find even more of the same.
Count_to_10 says:
It’s kind of strange. In order to be a science professor, one really needs a social, extroverted personality, completely the opposite from the introverted personality of a scientist.
It’s kind of strange. People think that to be a scientist, one must be introverted.
I have one (PhD) and the results were relevant for a long time, then they seemed irrelevant, but recently I attended a conference where a researcher presented a paper that showed that the outcome of my research was more relevant than I thought.
The presenter noted that in their study they had originally made a bunch of assumptions that did not match reality and so they went back and adjusted their assumptions. I thought that was refreshing.
Overall my faith in some parts of the academic process was renewed…..something I did not expect.
However, I would also note that many parts of academia are in the “me-too” mode.
I suppose the greatest fallacy is the “disinterested academic”.. Like everyone else academics are trying to survive, thrive and build careers. It is only when they try to pretend that they have no interest in the pecuniary and are just doing pure research that the whole thing begins to become phoney.
To some extent the current system sets this up – at one time academics, good or bad, had tenure – they were given this precisely so that they could get on with research without having to worry about pecuniary interests or KPIs. Unfortunately some abused this privilege and the whole tenure system was dismantled as lesser men became jealous of the “cosseted” academic. Now academics have no tenure and have to publish papers, get cited and do whatever research they can get funding for. Little surprise if now we we have potentially been foisted the greatest fraud of all time by academics desperate to generate funding.
This is not new. When I studied at Cambridge at least half of PhD students would leave to take up appointments outside science. The most popular were jobs in financial companies where they would write the programs which nearly collapsed the world’s economy in the GFC. None of them went into climate science however…… The main reason then, and now, is money – being a scientist does not pay well.
It sucks for him to find out he’s not all that special, that he’s a cog in some ghastly clockwork. Still, all I see is a quitter. And nobody remembers a quitter.
Allen:
I read your post at September 14, 2013 at 11:40 pm which was clearly written while you were looking in a mirror. It says
Well, reading your post, all I see is an anonymous whinger. And nobody likes and anonymous whinger.
Richard
Hi, anonymous author.
I was fortunate in choosing the right major professor for my M.S. program. My thesis was quite original. (I had just one page of references.) And a part of it cut against the grain. I got two publications from it, one in the top journal in my field (Anal Chem).
Most people contemplating post-graduate study should be very clear about what they want to do afterward. Be sure to read: What Color is Your Parachute?
Studying a particular field simply because you love it is not necessarily sufficient reason. This is especially true for Climatology, a field that is currently dominated by the worst kind of hacks.
Yes, there’s always room at the top. But what is your Plan B? What are you employment prospects outside of academia? What can you do to make yourself more marketable?
I strongly agree with the advise given by Richard S Courtney and a few other commentators.
Put up with the academic BS for just a little longer. Your PhD will give you a foot in the door of the real world, where your talents will be appreciated.
KevinM says “Hes gonna have a hard time when he moves into the private sector expecting employees coming to work prepared …………”
With respect, I disagree 180 degrees. This is precisely the type of person I used to seek out for employment. They were hard to find. He’d be more employable by stapling his letter above to his c.v.
BTW, there is no feeling that I ever encountered in the throw-away “…………and management thinking about what’s best for the company”. Almost daily, I read of people with strange ides about private employment as apposed to government.
@ur momisugly The Gray Monk (BTW a winery close to me) .Your comment is great.
And immediately brought to mind our latest addition to our family, a lovely kitten,
she cannot seem to figure out what her tail is for.
A bit of topic.
@ur momisugly caleb , not much of hope to conquer Everest by your self these days , and to add to that:
the largest ever discovered cave (Vietnam) is now open to the public (:
@ur momisugly dan in Cali, would you look at house bound Canadian @ur momisugly 61 (lots of thread left up top not much down below).
For what it’s worth I would agree with Richard Courtney, finish your Phd for no other reason that this will assist you further in turning your idealism in to reality.
Whatever course you choose by all means modify and adapt your ideals but always maintain and protect the core of them.
Best wishes for the future.