@neuralreckoning
Thanks for this. I watched. Good to discuss.

I don’t deny anyone’s experience. Thus story is horrible and I believe that all this happened to her.

That said, I’m worried about encouraging the next gen to watch this video as representative of academia and decide if they want to sign up. I certainly don’t agree that all the statements in the video about science at large are true!. Certainly if I experienced what she experienced, I would leave too. The thing I’d like to emphasize is that we aren’t all experiencing that (and this is why we stay; we’re not suffering hopelessly). I would go as far as to say with confidence that hers is an extreme case.

I acknowledge that I’m coming from a position of good fortune here, surrounded by other fortunate people. And we have to be careful about survivor bias, absolutely. But let’s also be equally careful about making academia sound like a horror show. (I suspect that wasn’t your intent here! But could be interpreted that way maybe?)

@NicoleCRust what would you say specifically doesn’t apply to a universal academic experience from the video?

Personally I think it’s important to expose the reality of the current academic system to anyone who might want to enter it. When I decided that what I wanted to do with my life was research, I thought the path to permanent researcher was straightforward: masters, Phd, permanent position. Haha.

Would I have not entered “academia” had I known how convoluted, compromise-based and basically unscientific getting a permanent position was - a position which doesn’t even involve doing that much research in most cases? I don’t think so personally but I know many others would go a different way if they had the full picture. Plus the general public is the one basically funding this system and should be made aware that it’s not going well and needs to be improved somehow!

@neuralreckoning

@elduvelle @neuralreckoning

As a few examples:

Academia isn't about knowledge discovery; it's about money making.

Science is a money making machine in which students and postdocs are burnt out to bring in money for the institution.

Most of academic research that your taxes pay for is almost certainly bullshit.

...

I'm not claiming that she isn't raising some important issues about the scientific pipeline and how women/families are treated. These are important and we need to address them! But by mixing them in with these over-the-top (and I would say misleading and inaccurate) statements - I just don't see how that's productive.