Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-boson-academic-system

by sampo • 13 years ago

394 194 13 years ago

theguardian.com

mattmanser• 13 years ago

I'm a little disappointed that the article didn't address the obvious question.

If he didn't publish any papers after that, what did he actually do?

The entire article actually seems to undermine his point.

cinquemb4• 13 years ago

…published fewer than 10 papers after his groundbreaking work, which identified the mechanism by which subatomic material acquires mass, was published in 1964.

What are you talking about?

rpedela5• 13 years ago

He is asking why only 10 papers in 40+ years. What else was taking up his time? I have the same question.

logicallee• 13 years ago

who cares? you get tenure for what you did, not for what you're going to do.

privong2• 13 years ago

... and for the promise of continued production.

sampo4• 13 years ago

This will not answer your question, but at the end of his CV here, there is his list of publications.

http://www.ph.ed.ac.uk/higgs/peter-higgs

hyp0• 13 years ago

aha! just as I suspected... during 1951-1964, he published 16 papers, better than one per year. But, after his breakthrough, he eased back to 9, over 1965-2013... and only the first 3 look to be research papers (the remaining 6 seem to be historical recountings).

Now, I don't blame him - do something incredible, why not slack off? He's way more accomplished than I could ever hope to be.

But if you want an exemplar of doing great work, the pace before his breakthrough, leading up to it, seems the better guide. i.e. one per year.

AimHere• 13 years ago

He was a professor of physics at Edinburgh University, and he certainly showed up on the campus there. I saw him around, but I don't recall witnessing him doing any work since I didn't study much physics.

I'm guessing what he did was teach classes and supervise graduate students, put out the occasional paper now and again, just like any other professor. Also, his name would allow Edinburgh University to say 'We have that famous Professor Higgs working for OUR Physics department' to any passing Science Funding Authority or Corporate R&D department thinking of handing out a research grant in physics, or to any rich foreign parents looking for somewhere to send their physics-inclined offspring.

I'm sure he was pretty good value for money just for his name alone...

pbhjpbhj3• 13 years ago

I'm sure he was pretty good value for money just for his name alone... //

That may be true but it's such a sad indictment of how science funding works if it is true that I sincerely hope it isn't.

A professor of physics's value is in research and teaching, it's their capacities and abilities that make them valuable as physicists.

Who let the marketeers take over management of scientific progress??

alan_cx2• 13 years ago

Sure, but haven't you just made his?

paul2• 13 years ago

I feel like the inability to focus for long periods of time is holding back progress in many areas. If we can't even stay away from email for a few days, how can we clear our minds of conventional thinking?

kulkarnic2• 13 years ago

A few days? People get upset if you haven't replied in an hour.

Seriously though, long periods of solitude is not what we need. I'd not be productive if I became a hermit, but I'd be a lot more productive if I had periods of quiet time, punctuated by moments of discussion. This is how thinkers and artists (and hackers) worked for a long time, before we wrongly convinced ourselves that being interruptible improves productivity.

paul2• 13 years ago

It's not about solitude so much as the ability to control the contents and direction of our thoughts. Being responsive on email often requires giving up that control, fragmenting our attention and preventing the formation of larger thoughts. It provides short term gains, but we don't see what we're losing.

wrongc0ntinent• 13 years ago

I don't think it's about "quiet" - if you meant it literally - the right kind of distraction can be a sort of mental noise cancellation mechanism. Though this tends to work better in solitude, for obvious control reasons.

rtpg3• 13 years ago

A few days? People get upset if you haven't replied in an hour.

I've solved this problem by always taking forever to answer e-mails. If it's important, people just call me.

Whether this is good or not is questionable, however.

Someone• 13 years ago

Knuth agrees with that. That's why he doesn't guarantee rapid replies to almost anything (http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html)

And, relevant to the topic: he is quite productive, but I don't think he would make it in academia at his current output rate. It does help that he splits his work into separate papers, though, and that he publishes 'dull' papers about his tooling, too (IIRC, the original plan was to have two volumes of TAOCP. Now, we have 4 plus fascicles plus some books about the software he wrote to lay out his books and create the fonts therein)

TrainedMonkey• 13 years ago

Brain is remarkably adaptable. I would not go as far as labeling new type of academia as deficient. Sure it is different, does it make it better or worse? Toss a coin.

Somewhat related story: I work with someone who recently got a PHD. That person can concentrate and work on a hard problem even when there is conversation going on. Only when name of the person is called do they interrupt their work and start paying attention.

001sky3• 13 years ago

Brain is remarkably adaptable.

So, waterboarding is consistent with an environment conducive to academic research?

andrewflnr2• 13 years ago

What is being discussed here is precisely the scenario when their name is being called, specifically the frequency with which it's called (if I may stretch the illustration). That your colleague is one of those who can concentrate with other conversations happening is wholly irrelevant; AFAIK, whether one's concentration is helped or hindered by ambient noise is genetic.

mcguire• 13 years ago

Here's an experiment for you: when they're doing that, call out their name every five minutes or so. See how long it takes before they try to kill you.

chubot2• 13 years ago

It's a problem, but I think if you really value time, you can make it.

I've found that the best way to spend less time on e-mail is to send it very infrequently. I used to send tons of e-mail at work, and that was valuable to me at the time. Now I choose very carefully what to reply to, because every message I send means I will get something in return. It's pretty astoundingly effective.

Another strategy is to keep an odd schedule. I generally get to my desk around 2pm, so I'm sufficiently out of sync with people who get to their desk at 9 or 10am. It's also good because there so little (bike) traffic that I can space out and think on the commute.

eitally2• 13 years ago

Ability to be successful while functioning like this is wholly dependent on your role and the culture of the company you're working for or leading.

Systemic33• 13 years ago

I loved the ending: "He has never been tempted to buy a television, but was persuaded to watch The Big Bang Theory last year, and said he wasn't impressed."

The show is despite what some think, not a celebration of science, but a ridicule of science, and takes the stereotypes to new levels.

Edit: I also watch the show, but as the article that GuiA links to mentions, the show wnats you to laugh at the nerds, and not the actual jokes they make. You could argue its a Star Trek vs. Star Wars kinda thing, but i personally liked Community far more, because it really captured the fun in being nerdy, and didn't put nerds in one big collective box.

PS. I don't dress up, play fantazy card games, go to cosplays, read comics, etc. I'm an engineering student, i get drunk in the weekends, I code in .NET and Python, I love coffee, wine, cars, motorcycles, etc. Not anywhere near the steretypical hollywood nerd.

GuiA• 13 years ago

Re: Big Bang Theory, I enjoyed this post:

http://butmyopinionisright.tumblr.com/post/31079561065/the-p...

rschmitty• 13 years ago

That guy went way overboard. I share some of the "nerds" hobbies and I don't mind the jokes at all

Jtsummers4• 13 years ago

I haven't watched Community, but that is a long form version of my description to others (when asked) of why I don't watch The Big Bang Theory. I gave it a few episodes, I caught more when others watched it. It never clicked for me why I would be considered a part of the target audience when you often don't laugh with the characters, but at them. Thanks for the link.

avrilkiki3• 13 years ago

The purpose of TBBT is not to entertain nerds, it's to acclimatize everyone else to the new normal where nerds hold a form of status. In 2013 nerds can be very rich, their fields can be very influential, and their intelligence can be useful to normals.

Normals, however, don't understand how to relate to nerds in a post-high school environment. Their previous social training has been to simply ostracize and bully. TBBT teaches normals a new way of relating to nerds: tolerate them, make friends with them, turn a blind eye to their social awkwardness and weirdness, and trade your cultural capital for the nerd's intellectual and financial capital.

Nerds can be useful to normals. Nerds can be good friends if you understand how to handle and bracket their awkwardness. They can even be good boyfriends if you understand how to handle them--Leonard can benefit Penny with his intelligence, devotion, and wealth even if he isn't cool.

TBBT isn't aimed at nerds, it's a primetime mainstream TV show.

The author is right that the public is laughing at the nerds not with them. However TBBT still represents a sea change in the public representation of nerds--now nerds are not to be ostracized, rather they are to be tolerated.

mietek• 13 years ago

I completely agree with the expressed sentiments, both regarding TBBT and Community, which is a fantastic show.

EpicEng9• 13 years ago

Meh, still funny, and the jokes are often more clever than your typical network fare.

EDIT: I love that I get downvoted for saying that I like a show. You guys must be a blast at parties.

antiterra2• 13 years ago

Yeah. Really clever jokes like saying "Nintendo 64" then pausing for laughter.

doorhammer3• 13 years ago

I don't watch the show, personally, but it's irritating that everyone has to come down on things like this. People spend their time doing all kinds of crazy things. If it's fun and you enjoy it, then I think that's great. There are worse ways to spend your time.

Apparently, that's not good enough, though. Everyone has to critique how other people enjoy themselves.

I've read books on algorithm analysis and I just excitedly purchased a book on discrete mathematics through haskell. Know what else I've read? The entire Sookie Stackhouse series. So friggin what?

My life was so much easier to live when I decided that it was okay to peacefully allow other people enjoy things that I don't.

(oh yeah, I don't think the parent post was saying bad things; it just seemed like a decent place to say it :) )

TheZenPsycho3• 13 years ago

I remember when hacker news had a culture that was embarrassed about making contentless unproductive comments like this.

The article is about Peter Higgs and the current academic environment. The Hacker News thread contains a prolonged debate about the merits of some TV show.

and then this comment.

jordanb• 13 years ago

A quote from a friend of mine:

"Arrested development is smart jokes at the expense of stupid people; the Big Bang Theory is stupid jokes at the expense of smart people."

judk5• 13 years ago

AD is a string of junior high puns and callbacks/inside-jokes. Smart jokes on a teenager scale, I suppose.

dl82• 13 years ago

The main thing I don't like about BBT is that it's generally not funny. Look how the show holds without its laugh track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKS3MGriZcs

judk5• 13 years ago

It's not fair to just remove the laugh track, you need to re edit to change the pacing to avoid the silence.

eli_gottlieb8• 13 years ago

One goes to conventions while wearing a cosplay. At the convention, one might also play a fantasy RPG or CCG/TCG, read comics, watch shows, or go to a rave. One will most likely partake of all this while really, really drunk.

fargolime10• 13 years ago

He doubts a similar breakthrough could be achieved in today's academic culture, because of the expectations on academics to collaborate and keep churning out papers.

The opposite of an Einstein or Higgs. Academia no longer tolerates deep, unconventional thinking. Physics used to be a hobby, now its an industry to be protected from major change. For example, if you have basic knowledge of relativity you can go to http://finbot.wordpress.com/2008/03/05/dark-energy-obviated/ and use the steps there in conjunction with generally accepted equations (from the Usenet Physics FAQ) to see that free objects launched upward from Earth at close to the speed of light must accelerate away from us, solving the big mystery of dark energy. But even assuming this idea is valid it couldn't make it into a respected peer-reviewed journal today. Ideas for hunting dark energy particles, however, would be welcomed, since those could lead to lucrative grants.

jbri2• 13 years ago

Reading your link, it appears that the author just flatly assumes that space is not expanding, and everything else stems from that assumption.

The author provides another article to attempt to support that assumption, but their argument for that is incomplete, and while their alternative appears to offer explanations for some observations, it ignores other things (like cosmological redshift). Add in the fact that that the article appears targeted towards laypeople and there's no scientific paper to be found suggests that it's more psuedoscience and thought experiments than actual scientific investigation.

It seems unreasonable to claim that academia would reject the idea out of hand when no-one's even written a paper to attempt to submit to a peer-reviewed journal. I suspect the reason academia ignores the supposition is not commercial interest like you claim.

fargolime10• 13 years ago

I've been a student of that blog. It doesn't ignore cosmological redshift. Rather, the dark energy solution notes that space measurably expands, but in a relative (it depends on the observer) way as opposed to the absolute (observed by all observers) way that is generally accepted today. When space measurably expands (whether relative or absolute) you have cosmological redshift.

Space itself not expanding is the absence of an assumption. Today it's generally accepted that space itself expands, an assumption.

Add in the fact that that the article appears targeted towards laypeople and there's no scientific paper to be found suggests that it's more psuedoscience and thought experiments than actual scientific investigation.

Thought experiments are scientific investigation. Nothing in the rest of your point actually suggests pseudoscience.

chunky1994• 13 years ago

In reading that link here are just a few things that seem to be wrong with it on first glance.

(In the link attempting explain the flatness problem), one cannot just assume all galaxies are moving towards each other without first positioning a center (of those galaxies). That in itself invalidates the rest of the flatness argument, which is required for the article on your link.

This was based on a precursory read, so it may not be entirely right

fargolime10• 13 years ago

There's no need for a center. Take the infinite universe as it is, and steadily decrease all the distances between the galaxies. There you have it: all galaxies moving towards each other with no cosmic center. It's definitely possible in principle.

anaphor• 13 years ago

On the other hand, with total freedom to think, most of us might not get much done, see: http://www.pitt.edu/~druzdzel/feynman.html

amerika_blog• 13 years ago

School is an obedience/memorization test, the exact opposite of the real-world applied thinking skills that are needed.

Private schooling is bad; public schooling is even worse. That's where ideology substitutes for academics as well.

Memorizing 20 ways to do something, and then finding a way to cram in each one on a test in an "applied" situation, leads to indiscriminate use of technique and poor debugging skills.

purringmeow2• 13 years ago

I am interested in what kind of alternative are you offering? How do you give basic knowledge to the majority of people?

adamnemecek• 13 years ago

Because you can criticize things only if you have a better alternative.

TheZenPsycho3• 13 years ago

Well, first you need a sorting hat. Then you have different houses that cater to particular styles of learning. If all goes well, one of the students will figure out how to vanquish evil.

visakanv• 13 years ago

I anticipate that a lot of it will come through other means. Check out http://www.youtube.com/crashcourse, it's doing a fantastic job of making knowledge fun, interesting, engaging and cool.

ahomescu1• 13 years ago

Here's what I always thought it would work best: free education up to 4th grade (reading, writing, arithmetics, AKA the basics), then free libraries everywhere. It's sad that we already have a lot of public libraries, but few people visit them voluntarily.

Jtsummers4• 13 years ago

Private schooling is bad; public schooling is even worse. That's where ideology substitutes for academics as well.

Not picking on you, but this comes up a lot about public education as a tool for brainwashing. Often the implication is it's by those "liberal teachers". I must say, based on the voting record in the US, those teachers are incredibly ineffective brainwashers.

gscott2• 13 years ago

My kids come home brainwashed from school all of the time. I have to sit them down and have them think about what is being taught to them so they can look at it objectively and make their own decisions.

InclinedPlane• 13 years ago

Speaking as someone who tends towards analytical, rational, and critical thinking with a background in independent studies from a very diverse background the "brainwashing" aspect of institutional education was blatantly obvious to me.

A good example is the approach towards history, which tends towards typical "revisionism" in attempts towards being "corrective" against narratives which were historically dominant, but in isolation such revisionism becomes indistinguishable from bias. In the '90s when I was in college, for example, we read a lot about things like the horrors of the nuclear bombings of Japan and of the internment of citizens of Japanese ancestry during WWII. We didn't read much about the Rape of Nanking or the practice of "comfort women" though. This biased narrative had a predictable outcome. In class discussions it became obvious that a lot of students held the view that Japan was a victim during WWII and America was the "bad guy".

Similar phenomena exist in many other forms throughout the educational establishment. People who have gone through the educational system have a very strong tendency towards a very particular set of view points. Ironically many of them believe that this is because those viewpoints are objectively superior to the alternatives rather than that they've simply been indoctrinated in them over a period of years.

dinkumthinkum2• 13 years ago

I think you are trying to make some kind of point about education or something ... I mean it's cute but teaching kids about arithmetic, or memorization as you call it, is a very different thing than what is being discussed here, namely the state of academic research and university expectations, etc.

I actually am not sure what's here ... I think it is sort of like the typical anti-academia stuff but seems to be more like anti-education ... I dunno ... What's better, watching a bunch of blogs on YouTube about how to build another blog in Node.js? Who knows.

3327• 13 years ago

Stagnation is not only a manifestation of economy but every other field such as science. We have seen rapid growth in the past century and some forces be it policy, or expectation and pressure for faster growth will ultimately contribute to a stagnant period in terms of growth vs growth to the prior.

a3voices• 13 years ago

We're not genetically different from early Man, who got nothing done except for basic survival and raising a family. Being unproductive is the default.

tokenadult• 13 years ago

Thanks for submitting this. This was a good introduction to Higgs. It was reading the comments here after reading the article that reminded me of a paper by Leif D. Nelson, Joseph P. Simmons, and Uri Simonsohn, "Let's Publish Fewer Papers,"

http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/~uws/papers/fewer.pdf

suggesting that psychology, and maybe other disciplines, could be improved if scholars published less often than they now do. "We agree that it is impractical, but it is just a thought experiment. Still, we stand behind the notion that the ideal is much closer to 'a paper a year' than to 'publish as many papers as you can.'"

ChristianMarks5• 13 years ago

Higgs isn't alone in remarking that he would not have had the time today to conduct the kind of work he did in the 1960s. Brian Greene has remarked that today’s grant-driven academia would not have allowed Einstein the luxury of a decade in which to develop his General Theory of Relativity.

Eric Weinstein wrote that, "We have spent the last decades inhibiting such socially marginal individuals or chasing them to drop out of our research enterprise and into startups and hedge funds. As a result our universities are increasingly populated by the over-vetted specialist to become the dreaded centers of excellence that infantilize and uniformize the promising minds of greatest agency." [1]

Weinstein's "deviants and delinquents" include "von Neumann [skirt chasing], Gamow [hard drinking], Shockley [bigoted], Watson [misogynistic], Einstein [childish], Curie [slutty], Smale [lazy], Oppenheimer [politically treacherous], Crick [incompetent], Ehrenfest [murderous], Lang [meddlesome], Teller [monstrous] and Grothendieck [mentally unstable]."

Higgs's observation suggests that the systematic stamping out of non-conscientious non-conformists is a byproduct of over-scheduling them. (Scheduling has to be considered independently of effort, ability and experience. [2]) Weinstein's deviants benefited from a historical period during which they had sufficient time and freedom to pursue their greatest work (von Neumann, who didn't need any time, is an exception).

But I imagine that time is a luxury even for the deviants and delinquents who find themselves displaced from academia into startups. So what is really needed is a startup culture that provides for years of uninterrupted development and focus. (Not to mention a hiring process that actively selects for displaced deviants, but that's another post.)

[1] http://www.edge.org/responses/q2013 Edge 2013 : WHAT SHOULD WE BE WORRIED ABOUT?

[2] http://www.nber.org/papers/w16502 Don't Spread Yourself Too Thin: The Impact of Task Juggling on Workers' Speed of Job Completion. Decio Coviello, Andrea Ichino, Nicola Persico. NBER Working Paper No. 16502

cvet• 13 years ago

As a student in a Ph.D. program, I can't help but think I'm caught in the grant-driven world and am being steered away from deeper consideration of big ideas. It's an easy track to get stuck on, mostly because grant-proposing is a game, identifying a minor unexplored area is relatively simple, and there are short-term rewards for doing so.

What's really getting at me is the arrogance of established "experts." It's kind of baffling (because it should be about curiosity, not certainty), and when you come across someone who has made it through the academic system and still retained curiosity, independent-mindedness, etc., it's a really refreshing sight.

That being said, a lot of what I do is unfulfilling and I've discussed several times leaving the academic world for some kind of tech startup life, although I'm not sure if that is a pipe dream or grounded in reality.

zzleeper• 13 years ago

Btw are u an economist? Nicola Persico's work is really good but those papers are hard to find casually =)

ChristianMarks5• 13 years ago

No. A historical figure in mathematical logic and complexity theory recently suggested that I earn a second Ph.D. in economics. It probably should have been the first, instead of mathematics. I work on agent-based simulations as a hobby. (No jobs in that area.) I make an effort to read whatever I can, but it isn't nearly enough.

RamiK2• 13 years ago

"Brian Greene has remarked that today’s grant-driven academia would not have allowed Einstein the luxury of a decade in which to develop his General Theory of Relativity."

Academia has been a force for stagnation well before the 1900s. e.g. Einstein wasn't working in Academia when he released his 1905 General Theory of Relativity paper. He spent 1901-1908 working in the patent office while releasing papers outside of Academia. Only in 1908 he was appointed lecturer in acknowledgment of his existing works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Patent_office

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annus_Mirabilis_Papers#Special...

If you want to figure out what's wrong with Academia I suggest asking economists who deal with incentives and market forces as a subject of research as opposed to the anecdotes of a few well-meaning physicists. Yes, the physicists are clearly smarter. But with few exceptions they're just not trained or equipped to asses these problems.

sampo4• 13 years ago

1905 General Theory of Relativity paper

Special relativity. On general relativity he worked from 1907 to 1915.

rtpg3• 13 years ago

So what is really needed is a startup culture that provides for years of uninterrupted development and focus. (Not to mention a hiring process that actively selects for displaced deviants, but that's another post.)

Years? a lot of great research is done as the culmination of baby steps, and papers can be published at midpoints. Even Einstein, from his patent office published at least 5 papers in 7 years. That's a pretty decent rate considering it wasn't even his fulltime job, and a PhD student working as such would probably be considered proficient(then again, I'm not aware of the paper rate of physicists).

I've met a lot more people in research who would just do nothing without deadlines than hidden geniuses that are hindered by their deadlines. Granted, I've met few geniuses too.

I'm really curious as to what task really requires years of uninterrupted work that cannot be segmented and presented for feedback.

sampo4• 13 years ago

Of Adrew Wiles (of the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem fame), Wikipedia says:

"He dedicated all of his research time to this problem for over 6 years in near-total secrecy, covering up his efforts by releasing prior work in small segments as separate papers."

ChristianMarks5• 13 years ago

I take that as an indication that I am correct. There are the examples of General Relativity and Grigory Perelman's solution of the Poincare Conjecture, not to mention recent advances on the twin prime conjecture.

eli_gottlieb8• 13 years ago

Look, you have a point, but we've swung to the other extreme. Nowadays, you're supposed to start building up your publication record while in undergrad if you want to have a really competitive background for an academic job.

vorg4• 13 years ago

So what is really needed is a startup culture that provides for years of uninterrupted development and focus.

Not just startups, but any worthwhile project really. From an interview with Rich Hickey:

"I started [Clojure] while on a sabbatical I had given myself. Not a break from work, but a break to work, as a completely free person. I gave myself leave to do whatever I thought was right, with no regard for what others might think, nor any motivation to profit. In releasing it, I had the normal expectations for a new language—that ten to a hundred people might use it. Maybe I would get some help or code contributions. It has taken off, and subsequently demanded far more time than the sabbatical I planned. So, I’m trying to recoup some of the investment I’ve made. Had it been a financially motivated undertaking, I’m sure Clojure would not exist, but I don’t regret having invested in it."

http://codequarterly.com/2011/rich-hickey/

oeqa3• 13 years ago

That's an interesting link. I always assumed that Rich Hickey came from academia, given that he made a successful programming language. Are there any biographical articles talking about his background?

weland7• 13 years ago

So what is really needed is a startup culture that provides for years of uninterrupted development and focus.

Just a few wild ideas, what do you think about these alternatives:

1. A more socially-responsible business environment, so that startups aren't the only icon to pray to?

2. Different funding schemes for research on high-arcing topics?

3. Reducing the "everyone NEEDS to get a degree" hype?

A lot of the instant gratification behind phenomenons like the startup culture is responsible for much today's bullshit in academia (I've seen a ton of it before I left it). IMHO, the issues run a lot deeper than how academia is (disastrously) managed.

moggie• 13 years ago

What are those issues?

Create2• 13 years ago

http://norvig.com/performance-review.html

http://www.giagia.co.uk/2010/03/23/ada-lovelace-day-2010/

xorbyte• 13 years ago

von Neumann is 'skirt chasing' but Curie is 'slutty'?

fsck--off• 13 years ago

Pierre was killed in an accident in 1906. In 1910-11 she had an affair with one of Pierre's former students, Paul Langevin, who was estranged from his wife but still technically married. The Wikipedia entry links to this page:

http://www.aip.org/history/curie/scandal1.htm

ChristianMarks5• 13 years ago

I'm paraphrasing Weinstein [insensitive!] from his answer to the Edge 2013 question. The wording of Weinstein's original requires more cognitive load (to associate the individual with the adjective he assigns) than necessary. My paraphrase closely follows Weinstein and attempts to reduce the reader's cognitive load, without endorsing Weinstein's choice of adjectives--which I do not endorse.

ericrweinstein• 13 years ago

"In the past, many scientists lived on or even over the edge of respectability with reputations as .... " is what I wrote on Edge.

Actually I don't think von Neumann or Curie had anything wrong with them in chasing the embrace of another. And yes, there is a major double standard in reputations. Curie after all chased love while von Neumann, it appears, chased sexual opportunity. Thanks for pointing it out. But the post was not insensitive. Most of these people are my heroes and I'm proud of all their accomplishments.

eli_gottlieb8• 13 years ago

Weinstein's "deviants and delinquents" include "von Neumann [skirt chasing], Gamow [hard drinking], Shockley [bigoted], Watson [misogynistic], Einstein [childish], Curie [slutty], Smale [lazy], Oppenheimer [politically treacherous], Crick [incompetent], Ehrenfest [murderous], Lang [meddlesome], Teller [monstrous] and Grothendieck [mentally unstable]."

You know what? You just made me feel a whole lot better about my life. Thank you.

Gottlieb/Sennesh [childish, mentally unstable, anime]

ChristianMarks5• 13 years ago

Glad to hear it! Going over the list and reading Higgs's comments made me feel less pressure to produce on infinitesimal time scales.

spikels• 13 years ago

The issue is Volume versus Quality. The conservatives (not political but professional) administering our research infrastructure find it much easier to greenlight an incremental (or inconsequential) project versus anything truly revolutionary. We need more Higgs and less incremental academic researchers - industry can do that better.

sushirain• 13 years ago

Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety nine percent perspiration. -- Thomas Edison

If smart people are not expected to get incremental results we may lose both incremental progress and ingenious leaps.

AKifer• 13 years ago

Something I noticed 'An atheist since the age of 10, he fears the nickname "reinforces confused thinking in the heads of people who are already thinking in a confused way. If they believe that story about creation in seven days, are they being intelligent?"' How someone [intelligent enough to get the Nobel prize] who knows relativist equations better than the average could argue that creating the universe in 7 days is stupid ? Didn't we know since Einstein discovered it that time can expand and compress depending of the environment ? And who can say that Earth local time is the norm ? Better back to pre-Gallileo time then, when everyone though Earth is the center of the Universe.

Create2• 13 years ago

"How should we make it attractive for them [young people] to spend 5,6,7 years in our field, be satisfied, learn about excitement, but finally be qualified to find other possibilities?" -- H. Schopper

The numbers make the problem clear. In 2007, the year before CERN first powered up the LHC, the lab produced 142 master's and Ph.D. theses, according to the lab's document server. Last year it produced 327. (Fermilab chipped in 54.) That abundance seems unlikely to vanish anytime soon, as last year ATLAS had 1000 grad students and CMS had 900.

In contrast, the INSPIRE Web site, a database for particle physics, currently lists 124 postdocs worldwide in experimental high-energy physics, the sort of work LHC grads have trained for.

The situation is equally difficult for postdocs trying to make the jump to a junior faculty position or a permanent job at a national lab. The Snowmass Young Physicists survey received responses from 956 early-career researchers, including 343 postdocs. But INSPIRE currently lists just 152 "junior" positions, including 61 in North America. And the supply of jobs isn't likely to increase, says John Finley, an astrophysicist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, who is leading a search to replace two senior particle physicists. "For the most part, I don't think departments are looking to grow their particle physics programs," he says.

http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previou...

A warning to non-western members about values at CERN:

"The cost [...] has been evaluated, taking into account realistic labor prices in different countries. The total cost is X (with a western equivalent value of Y)" [where Y>X]

source: LHCb calorimeters : Technical Design Report

ISBN: 9290831693 http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/494264

scotth• 13 years ago

Sounds like he was taking advantage of the system. I think I would've felt the same as the university: sack him if he doesn't win the Nobel.

_of• 13 years ago

He seems to be such a humble person.

dekhn2• 13 years ago

I attended grad school at one of the most prestigious institutions that exists. After I finished my PhD, I mentioned to somebody I had attended there and it had taught me to do science well.

THe person I was speaking to looked at me funny and said, "Oh no. You went there to learn how to write grants that get funded, so that you can manage a lab that carries out the next set of experiments, so you can write grants that get funded.". They were right: the value of my training program was in how to get funded, so I could do research.

Some of us saw the writing on the wall (grant funding for biomedical sciences doubled in a short period of time in the early to mid 90s, which greatly increased the rate of minted PhDs, which dramatically increased competition for slowly growing faculty positions).

I looked around, evaluated my options, and left for industry. I never regretted it. i still collaborate with academia, and write papers and do research, but my compensation structure and the options I have vastly outweigh those has I stayed in academia and become a soft-funded researcher.

Ultimately if your goal is to do blue-sky theoretical research you're going to have to work very hard to succeed. Maybe it's possible to do good theory and also be good at grantsmanship. I honestly don't know. But I decided not to play that game: there are LOTS of options out there.

Don't be stubborn and insist on your blue-sky theory job. Instead, be realistic and figure out what you want to do, and how to obtain the time to do it.

dominotw• 13 years ago

i still collaborate with academia, and write papers and do research

May I ask what you do for living?

dekhn2• 13 years ago

software engineer for google. I built Exacycle: http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2012/12/millions-of-core-... http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2011/04/1-billion-core-ho...

some of those projects have papers on their way to print.

alan_cx2• 13 years ago

I think this sort of problem starts at the top, with our time limited democracies. Democratic governments find it hard to implement long term thinking because its unlikely the current government will ever get credit for it. This results in policies which are short term enough to promote re-election. This bleeds down to the rest of society. Where it does happen, it tends to be compromised because one side has to make sure the other side carries the project on. This leads to committee style compromises.

So, in general, from what I can see, long term thinking in western democracies is rare, and where it exists, compromised.

Implication being that Chinese long term strength lies in its ability to plan in the very long term, which they do. I think the west needs to find a way in which we can also effectively and flexibly plan long term.

eli_gottlieb8• 13 years ago

Can we please stop promoting the "democracy sucks" meme? It's not as if the Chinese are actually planning in that long a term; they're using markets now like everyone else.

pbhjpbhj3• 13 years ago

It's not as if the Chinese are actually planning in that long a term; they're using markets now like everyone else. //

So, how long term are they planning, in years?

In the UK we get [a few] plans that encompass maybe the next 10-15 years at most. So presumably they've got that at least.

indigent• 13 years ago

I feel slightly validated for leaving academia after reading this article. When I was in grad school I was working with an adviser who was in the final phase of applying for tenure. She was under immense pressure to publish, and she totally passed all that pressure on to me and her other grad student at the time. It was the worst two years of my life. Ultimately we both left her charge, and she was denied tenure.

The "publish or perish" atmosphere at most institutions is toxic. I remember running some in-vivo experiments using our system and looking for data that validated our hypothesis, but when I found none I was ordered to "find anything" and rewrite the hypothesis to match it. This was so that we had something positive to submit to journals, regardless of what it was. The papers were utter trash, and I was ashamed to put my name on them. The absolute focus on publishing ends up creating what is essentially "journal spam."

I don't want to say that research is dead, but it's definitely in the doldrums at this point.

hacknat• 13 years ago

I think the reality is that more and more bright people avoid the Academy these days. I'm not saying I'm particularly bright, but I started out thinking I was going to be an Academic, but when I saw that I would have to deal with the same BS, politics, and hoop jumping that people in business deal with, I went with the option that was the same, but offered more money.

I think that's what the majority of the Academy has become for people now. If two jobs are pretty much equal, except in pay, which one will you take?

Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system

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