@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.

@NicoleCRust @elduvelle @neuralreckoning Honestly, the first two of those statements strike me as completely accurate. At least, if you look at the institution of academia apart from the scientists.

Many individual scientists are not like that at all. They do excellent work and foster supportive cultures in their labs. They don't care about money, and insulate their students from those concerns so they can focus on the quest for knowledge.

The problem is, that seems to be the result of a mix of luck, privilege, and personality. They do these things because they can and because they choose to, despite the system being evolved for something else entirely. If you look at the system itself--the roles, the norms, the incentives--it is all oriented around the profit motive, and fundamentally exploitative, elitist, and resistant to change.

So there is a lot of good in academia. It's just contingent and precarious. That's what I think people need to know, and what we need to fix.

@ngaylinn @elduvelle @neuralreckoning
I'm curious to hear more, if you are willing. You have a unique perspective, coming from industry. And your perspective is different from mine, so I'd like to hear more about it.

Why do you see academia as a money making machine (as opposed to, say, a non-profit institution focused on a good cause like education/knowledge advancement)?

@NicoleCRust @elduvelle @neuralreckoning Yeah. This is something I'm still figuring out for myself, but the contrast with Google is very striking.

I keep thinking about the role of “grad student” and how it seems fundamentally unfair and exploitative to me. For obvious reasons, that’s the part I’m most familiar with. To understand, I think it helps to contrast my starting experience at UVM and at Google.

Google hired me straight out of undergrad. From day one, I was a software engineer. I was in the reporting chain. My manager gave me some visibility into how things were run, and I had some input, too. It was sort of a meritocracy, if not a very good one. I had job security, good opportunities for advancement, and solid pay / benefits. If I didn't get along with my manager, they'd find me a new one.

@NicoleCRust @elduvelle @neuralreckoning Starting as a grad student, I have 14 years of industry experience, but am often treated as if I'm straight out of undergrad. I am not a scientist, and that is made abundantly clear a dozen times a day. I make an inadequate living doing work for the university, but I’m not an "employee," either, and I get very limited benefits. I have no meaningful visibility or voice into how the university is run. I exist here at the whim of my PI. I have no job security, no path for advancement.

I won’t stick around here long enough for the university to invest in my wellbeing, or to change the university in any meaningful way. In order to “make it” in academia, I’ll need to luck into some solid findings in an area people are literally willing to invest in. The university supports good science, but they reward grants. The quality of the science only correlates with funding, and I feel like success is determined by the latter.

@NicoleCRust @elduvelle @neuralreckoning I want science to be a nurturing, growing community, oriented around helping as many people as possible understand the world and contribute to our shared understanding.

But on-boarding is 5 years of exhausting, undervalued labor as an outsider with limited access and respect. Then my career and my research agenda might just get dumped. If I can’t secure ongoing funding, they have no future. Doesn’t matter if I’m good at what I do, or if my ideas are important.

If we started over to design a system like the one I want, it wouldn’t have “grad students.” It would be different in many ways. I know this, because I was in management and used to design human systems. I know the principles, and I see them applied in perverse ways. Unfortunately, very few academics have that perspective.