It's a lot different in academia vs industry for hard sciences. I currently work in industry, we have no options in the things we research but we are funded to the Moon. There is of course some amount of bowing we have to do in order to keep them quiet but that's about it.
In academia you have to secure your own funding constantly or your project just ends essentially. Academic institutions also look at metrics like impact factor and papers published/time that also effects the availability of funding. I know that people have had to stop pursuing doctorates due to funding issues. Politics in academia is notoriously horrendous.
Yup, this is every job. Your skills at performing a task are only a small part of success. The bigger part is being able to make friends with the right people.
Edison and Tesla come to mind. Edison wasn't the best when it came to electrical engineering but he was good at talking. Tesla was brilliant and is the father of modern electrical engineering but his best friend was a pigeon. During their lifetimes, Edison was much more successful than Tesla was.
Yeah, while I can relate to her plight, its pretty much the same situation when you do research in the industry and you want to get ahead in your career. Some things are different, but politics are still politics.
Completely ignoring qualification altogether in favor of nepotistic back scratching is actually not just being a member of society. IMO, HR should hide the identifying information of candidates from people making the hiring decisions so all they've got is the qualifications on the resume to judge them by.
That’s just not how the world works though… you will have to work with at least 1 person at a job (your boss), so you should be able to work well with at least 1 person. That doesn’t come through with just a resume.
So get a written interview in or a voice call if you really have to "like...get their vibe man!" But who you know hiring has to fucking stop. It is intentionally making worse decisions because you don't like someone as much as someone else.
I'd rather hire someone I know is a decent, stand up guy that is easy to work with even if they are not as qualified as a rando, as long as they're qualified enough. I'm sure this is not always the case, like maybe I need a specialist for a single thing or a consultant or whatnot. But I put a lot of value on personality in general.
Though I guess it also depends how easy it is to fire someone if they're not what you wanted.
IMO, HR should hide the identifying information of candidates from people making the hiring decisions
That would shift towards another metric of whose resumes look the best. That might be an improvement, but we'd still be talking about how much bullshit there is in making your resume perfectly tailored to a particular opportunity. And at that point we're still talking about the skills that go into a grant application or a submission of a paper to a conference. That's the soft skills that make science possible, even if submissions are anonymized.
That just what being a member of society is, lots of overhead.
I think it's mostly that you can't expect people foreign to your field to understand how valuable your work is, you need to communicate it to them. Then there's a fine line between popularization and bullshiting that your sense of ethics will make you cross or not depending on the situation.
I appreciate the sentiment but no - in the case of hard science it shouldn't be.
Yes, BS exists everywhere, yes we all have to do it, yes yes yes but this is science. Only facts should matter, only agreed truth should be the topic the rest of it is very obviously poisoning the entirety of the effort to understand our world.
Saying "so what we all have to deal with it" is not the point. If you're talking about seminary, that's maybe closer(?) to the gist than, say, marketing. Or if you're a systems analyst for the USPS it's similar maybe. But people out in the world doing non-scientific things have already agreed long ago that it doesn't really matter what they find or how they find it (so long as it leads to more money, the only source of "truth") - science does not.
All the bullshit and pointless politics and ladders and so on she's talking about in the quote are just ways to say "money" (or "power") for science which is an anathema.
Only facts should matter, only agreed truth should be the topic the rest of it is very obviously poisoning the entirety of the effort to understand our world.
I don't understand how you'd prioritize things using only facts, and not some kind of extrinsic value system that assigns weights to those facts.
Let's say you have a huge infrared telescope sitting at a Lagrange point, between the earth and the sun. How would you determine what it should be observing at any given time? There's only 8760 hours in a year, and the telescope was designed to last for 5 years, with the hope of 10 years. How do you divide up that finite resource?
Now do the same for every particle collider, double blind medical study, paleontological excavation, test nuclear reactor, etc., fighting for a finite amount of science money, and you'll have no choice but to define priorities according to projections and uncertainties and value judgments.
Are committee meetings immune to runaway political madness? Who's on the committee? How does the committee make decisions? Can those decisions be revisited?
I'm not convinced that today's state of science is any different than in eras past, tracing all the way back to kings and wealthy patrons throwing their political and economic might behind their preferred scientific endeavors.
One thing is how the world is, and another is how the world should be. The person you're replying to accurately depicts how the world is as of today, but isn't saying that is how it should be, which is what you're arguing.
"How do we stop the world's smartest people from realising what we're doing?"
"Let's make them fight among themselves and call it a meritocracy; we'll limit their funding and let them keep themselves busy with political infighting!"
This is why good teams are essential. One person to do all the bullshitting, and the rest of the team to actually get stuff done while the bullshitter deflects all the other bullshitters.
"Bullshitting" is an essential skill, not a distraction. The greatest idea in the world is meaningless if nobody knows about it.
Marketing, scmoozing, etc gets a bad rep. But no matter how good your output, product, research, etc is, it has very little value or impact if people don't get on board.
If you can't play the game, team up with someone who can. And don't forget that while that schmoozer may not have your technical skills, they have a skillset you do not.
Also, he got shit done. He wasn't a technical genius, but he and the team he built could pitch the shit out of products. Apple's value has rarely been in its technical superiority, but in branding.
"Asshole" is the word for a guy who likes to cut people off in traffic. I think there's probably a more appropriate word for someone who emotionally manipulates you over the course of years so you're continually a nervous wreck and can be destroyed any time it's convenient for him. Seriously if you haven't watched the interview I linked at least look at the first couple of minutes.
And at the end of the day, who did this behavior actually benefit? Steve helped make Apple a lot of money, sure, but where did most of that money go? It didn't go to the employees he abused, that's for sure. But maybe Apple products ended up benefitting society as a whole, and without Steve we wouldn't have had that? Well you already said that more often than not Apple's success didn't have anything to do with technical superiority.
The fact that people like this (Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, etc) often head successful companies isn't an example of how beneficial they are, it's an example of how broken our system is.
It shows how important having a charismatic person is to make any venture a success. We're all humans with limited time on the earth. We can't possibly experience everything. All we see and do is filtered out of necessity. A charismatic advocate of a product/movement/idea can get people to pay attention.
The best musician in history is probably unknown because they didn't have a good manager/agent.
The greatest painting ever made was probably thrown away because nobody ever knew about it.
In my personal experience I've had to go out of my way to find every quality product I've ever purchased, from dishwasher detergent to heat pumps, and none of them were the ones with the highest advertising budgets. You're right that we all have limited time and can't possibly evaluate every single thing that exists, but hype men don't help with that. The professional liars and manipulators that work in advertising only add to the noise and make it take longer to arrive at a conclusion. For example the fact that there are the 12 different brands of space heaters that come in different sizes and shapes and at different price points despite all performing the exact same way. It's like that with literally everything, from bar soap, to maple syrup, to sunscreen.
I think this way because I am autistic. I honestly cannot imagine feeling the need for hype men. The phrase "you need hype men" sounds to me like "you need your abuser, you cannot live without them".
Something like 35% of autistic people attempt suicide because of what the original post describes (and not just in science, but in every aspect of the world). And yeah, I think if I had to work for someone like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk I would as well.
I'm very much the same way. Sales people are just give me hints of what not to trust and usually fold under any sustained inquiry about their product. Skilled sales people know when to turn me over to their subject matter expert. We get to geek and I actually learn a thing or two about their product and, often times, the state of the industry.
One of the things the above post doesn't include are the people who championed her. Between Elliot Barnathan, the cardiologist whose lab she was initially hired into, to David Langer, the resident who was able to get her a job in neurosurgery department, she was lucky enough to have someone who could do the hype while she did her work brilliantly.
In the publishing world, a great editor can recognize the genius of a writer, give quality feedback, and protect them from the moneyed interests.
I don't know if I'd call these people hype men, as they were so much more than hype, but they definitely hype the genius of the patronee.
You "need" them because the society we live in is built around them. It's the same reason you are forced to learn how to mask - you "need" to mask to survive, to put food on the table, to have a home and a bed to sleep in. This world is commanded by the manipulators, shaped and molded by the manipulators, and if you don't have the skills to swindle your drop of money in the form of a grant in research or investment into your company, your project just dies. Everyone hates it (except the manipulators), but that's just how things are at the moment.
I've noticed that everywhere I've worked I have connected with a person like that, for better or worse. I'm really bad at the people part of things but great at technical stuff. Unfortunately for the non people savvy it's hard to distinguish who is trying to use you vs who really wants to team up with you and help you as well as themselves... Yes Apple needed a Jobs to sell themselves, but it seems Jobs viewed Woz as an end to a goal, and not the partner/ human being who helped him get there.
Yep. We've got me a technical guy who loves deep diving in theory and understanding the why of everything, and a smooth talking ex-Navy guy who is good at thinking on his feet and has great mechanical acumen. Last but not least, we have the guy who uses a sick day whenever there's work scheduled, and then shows up the next day and goes on some libertarian rant about how any progress we've made since the 19th century is a sign of our country going down the toilet. Dream team baby
I often describe the team like we're doing a heist. There's the planner, the face, the muscle, and so on. We'll have a social problem and I'll tell the face to go talk to the other team for us.
Ok so what happens when the bullshitter gets all the recognition and nobody believes you when you try to prove otherwise? Document and take legal action?
This is how any new field of work or science starts out. Then, as money starts to be made, the field comes to the attention of the money- and power-hungry who slowly take it over and transform it into something they can control with politics and shenanigans.
These people didn’t have the intelligence or passion or drive to create, but they know how to play people to get what they want.
Unfortunately the good people too often let themselves be shmoozed by them and that’s their “in”
This might sound pedantic, but it isn't, it was actually naive: I expected a better environment in academia when I was young.
Why? Because academia is supposedly full of bright people, and I assumed they would be bright enough to be cooperative (because academia advances more when we are, and they supposedly love knowledge); unattached from superficiality (like judging people by their looks, money, etc., because they should know an interesting person can come in any "package"); relatively ethical (as bright people should figure out something close to the categorical imperative, although with unique details); a non-dogmatic, eager to learn and correct their ideas —over preferring recognition and pettiness— attitude (again, just because I assumed their intelligence must guide them towards appreciating knowledge and authenticity over much more ephemeral and possibly worthless things such as prizes, fame, etc.).
I was wrong, so wrong. It's painful to remember how I felt when I realized it...
But I think the premises weren't entirely off, I just imagined people much wiser and more intelligent than they are, myself included. Anyway, I fully understand why others are shocked too.
I'm sorry you went through that. I grew up around academics -- a few of my parents' friends were professors and one was a research chemist, then I had several former professors as teachers in high school; the message from them was always clear -- academia is awful because of politicking, backstabbing, and the neverending need to be publishing something next week no matter what you did last month.
The quote, often misattributed, "Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low." has always stuck with me because of this. As I watched my wife pursue her postgraduate work in Chemistry, I was granted the unfortunate privilege of seeing it first hand. She now works as a children's librarian and is much happier.
The thing is, “research” doesn’t speak, humans do. If a tree falls in the woods… and so on. Part of being a scientist is communicating what you’ve done, otherwise no one else will know. It’s a skill that has to be developed in some more than others, and it was a key part of my training as a scientist. I don’t really like that part as much, but I do it because it’s what makes my work have any impact.
The people with the money don't understand the science. If you can't convince them that your science is worth investing in then why would they give you money? What's really shocking is that a Nobel prize winner isn't smart enough to understand that.
The problem is not that one has to communicate the significance of research. However since the people with money don't understand the science, they can easily be mislead. And there are also big trends when it comes to funding so you can participate in the buzzword olympics to secure your funding. And this is where you leave the path of just communicating your research and its potential honestly.
The second point where this Nobel prize winner is very right is that it's all about networking, all about names. I don't know why we can't just publish research under a pseudonym, a number would suffice. This would make publishing and reviewing less susceptible to bias.
Same reason why we name amps and volts after Ampere and Volta. It's about recognition and legacy. Imagine you discover some new form of matter, a specialized region of the brain, a key component of time travel, or some algorithm that accurately describes any human interaction. Something revolutionary. Would you be content if it wasn't named for you? Ormr Matter, Ormr's Area, Ormr's Theory of Inverse Relativity, Ormr's Equation for Social Simulation. This is really just the extreme case, but I think it works well to demonstrate the point.
Competence is judged by their ability to communicate the purpose and results. Lack of social skills also detracts from the audience who is willing to review it.
Valid to a degree, but there's such a thing as placing too much value on the person presenting it rather than the content of it. It seems like too common an occurrence.
Not an academic, but this is spot on for how I’ve felt as a top performer getting nowhere. This realization helped me reorient my aspirations to what I find truly matters to me: my family and hobbies. I’m a solid individual contributor. Over the years, my work has saved us millions and been adopted across the country, which is reward enough. The speaking engagements and schmoozing, I’ll leave that to the extroverts in the boys club.
Same. It physically hurts to see talentless suck-ups play the bullshit game and climb the hierarchy, whereas you get punished and kept down for pointing out the bullshit. My best decision ever was to escape the hell that is the field of software development, and instead get into teaching. Now my reward for a job well done is seeing my students succeed and I love it so much.
I know that feeling all too well. Funny enough, I’d thought about going into software dev because I thought it’d let me work alone more comfortably. Along the way I found a way to learn dev but apply it to my job instead, making me pretty unique at what I do. It lets me innovate, do deep research, and work on my own while being pretty openly anti-social. Luckily I have a boss who sees the value in me.
I can’t tell you the number of once-interns and junior managers, stuck-in-a-rut folks, that I’ve quietly influenced to senior or higher positions. It really does feel incredible! I call it “leading from the back.” I’ve been wanting to write a book on it - the introverts and individual-contributors who quietly (and happily) influence without being seen.
+1 on the book idea. Sounds like a delightful read. I have a similar philosophy as well that's worked for me. I've never once cared about getting credit or props, I make my boss/team look like geniuses. That naturally tends to reward you as well. Great individual contributors are actually pretty rare. Out of hundreds of engineers I've worked with closely, only a few were brilliant in the way you described.
If you're looking for related reading, perhaps for inspiration, there's a great book called
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, by Susan Cain.
I work as an engineer for a huge financial company, so I relate. I was a scrappy upstart who worked himself through the lowest tiers of my industry towards the top. I'm also neurodivergent.
I can speak on for days about how bosses don't care who's doing the work as long as it gets done.
As a top performer, you're likely to feel that people should perform at the standards you set, and your natural first instinct is probably to try to train and educate your coworkers. You soon realize that they either don't give a shit or they're offended that you're giving them advice. No problem, we live in a hierarchical society, so you tell your boss about the problems you face, they'll have your back, right? Wrong. You're rocking the boat, and the boss' job is to keep the boat afloat.
Now, instead of rocking the boat, you start to wonder if you there's a way you can change the current of the water so the boat goes in the proper direction. That's where wisdom and skill meet. There's an incredible amount of depth involved in influencing people and change. I wish it wasn't the way of the world, but it is. Being brilliant is only half the battle.
@clearedtoland@fossilesque It makes perfect sense if you consider it. Imagine a closed system with two top performing components, where every other component is contributing to the system’s overall success. If one of these two top performers is able to connect and leverage all the other system components to amplify their work, but the other works in isolation, which is really producing more successful output when you measure the total system?
That's a pretty contrived setup. If the two top components are not factored into the performance of the whole and they are both defined by their ability to improve other components, then the one doing it's own thing is not, in fact, a top performer. It's task is to support others and it fails to do so.
And what if the loner's task is foundational? It doesn't have much direct output, but if he's gone and everything else goes to shit? Those ones are very hard to measure. I know, that's been my job for a good portion of my career. And things like that are common. Expecting a given performer, say an engineer, to also be good at public speaking has always struck me as impractical.
@maniclucky Yes, it's a contrived example. Its contrivance was to pose the point, which is:
Given two system components of comparable value, but different system impact, one still differentiates with regards to the surrounding system.
Also, given that the system itself is the body of recognition, the component with greater system impact is not only leveraged better, but also better positioned for being noticed doing it.
Also, a system can't see self-isolated participants. Not respectfully.
My problem with your example is that the loner didn't have comparable value. If it was supporting other things, then it failed. If it was doing something non obvious, it shouldn't be compared to the support. It feels fallacious, though I can't name one specifically.
System sight is itself an issue. Many companies evaluate an employee solely on some performance metric, typically tied to money. Because it's easy (and lazy).
I've had several positions where my task was to keep things running. I added no value, I prevented loss. And those positions get screwed because they're very difficult to quantify worth and very hard to see (and if it doesn't create money, they don't care). You only notice them when something goes wrong. Such an employee may keep everything running all year and get a "meets expectations" because there's an upper limit on how much contribution the system sees, and the system doesn't want to put in the effort to see better. I may have had to climb over an air handler to get to a transducer to calibrate, but that's not sexy and even if I report such effort, it's what I'm supposed to do (even if I wasn't, weekend nights are weird).
No one is going to write down "keep machine running 80% of the time" because people unassociated with the task will insist that 100% is the expectation, despite that being unreasonable.
A system built of people is not a black box. We can see them and evaluate them based on the task they're supposed to do, but the evaluators don't want to put in the effort to do their tasks in a way that means more work for them.
There's a comment to be made also about scope creep for a position so that a company doesn't have to hire marketing and engineering if they can get the engineers to do it. Despite them being suboptimal for the task. Something something down with unrestrained capitalism.
Ok. I've lost the plot at this point and made my point. Have a good one.
@maniclucky The issue I think that you're having here isn't that you're not making good points. Your points seem correct to me.
I think what's going on is that you're saying "there's nuance", and there clearly is, but I'm deliberately presenting a simple verbal model in order to be quick and to the point.
I do agree with you largely, but I think my point stands: two equal contributors to a system differentiate when just one contributor is friendlier to their host system. That becomes the edge.
You're correct. I think I was chafing at the systems in question predisposing friendliness to mean modes that I personally am unskilled at or uncomfortable with despite my value.
@maniclucky It's chafing to me, too. I'm not very good at it, I'm sure that's kind of obvious at this point ;)
I just notice it a lot because, I guess, I wish I were better at it? Or better at being personable? But, it's so expensive for me in terms of effort, it wears me out so fast.
Read some Foucault for an explanation, that's just being human. You don't stop being human just because you follow scientific ideals. All human endeavors will follow human dynamics.
Seriously. I read this and all I could think was "what a dick".
Disclaimer, I have not read the full source material and am only basing this off the quoted image.
I fully understand not being interested in having to attract your own funding, it's awful. But the rest of it is not limited to the academic or scientific pursuits. Being a decent enough person so people want to support you? Developing good work that people want to hear about it (ie conferences)? (By the way, you submit your own work to conferences and they are judged to be invited blindly, ie names removed), being able to hold your tongue when you know someone is wrong in order to keep peace? Understanding that hierarchy exists?
These are not things that are antithesis to good science, and if no one had ever taught her these things that's a failing on her younger days.
No. Science is the only human effort that specifically defines what human is. If we allow that "sure being human is going to mess up science" then we have failed before we even started.
I'm really surprised, although this is becoming kind of common so perhaps I shouldn't be, to see all the comments saying effectively "yeah, so?"
Science doesn't define what humans are. Humans are, then science plays catch up to try and define what that even means. Science is a human endeavor, a framework of thought, it doesn't exist in a vacuum, it cannot exist without humans thinking, talking about it and doing it.
For a lot of people, I would think that the answer to "what is a human?" Would be closer to religious and philosophical definitions than scientific ones.
The fact that this is considered brutally honest is part of the problem. I think it's just regular honesty. Academia's standards for honesty are too low.
This is the fucking world. Like it or not it's about putting yourself out there and networking. Doesn't matter how bright you are. I wish it wasn't but it is.
My cousin works (sometimes) as a truck driver. He's certified for any size truck, flammable/biohazardous goods, the lot. He'd be making good money if he could stop telling his bosses to fuck off.
I was in IT for 20 years. In order to succeed, I had to become 50% therapist.
To put it bluntly, science costs money, and persuading people who control money to spend that money is itself a skill.
Or, zooming out, science requires resources: physical commodities, equipment, the skilled labor of entire teams. The most effective way to marshal those resources is with money, and management/sales skills are necessary to get those resources working together in concert.
As someone who can see the flaws in the capitalist model and doesn't agree with it in its current form... This is just silly. In any socioeconomic system there will be limited resources. People will still have to convince those that control the resources to give them the resources. The biggest difference between science in a capitalist system versus in a socialist system is that the end result of the science might benefit the common person more.
For instance: Superfest. Near unbreakable drinking glasses made in Eastern Germany that didn't sell well internationally due to lack of profit potential. Basically, the entire glass industry revolves around the principle that glass can be broken. When your glass breaks, you buy a new one. But if your glass doesn't break then you don't need to buy a new one and therefore you do not. So if everyone buys Superfest then the industry dies since no one needs to buy glass any longer. And this is great for the people, great for the environment, but terrible if you're a profit driven company. But whether it's a state-owned endeavour or a for-profit organization, you'd still need to convince someone to invest in your work.
If you've ever heard of "publish or perish", than you've heard of the main outcome of managerialism applied to academia and research. There are many critiques, I won't mention them all. And if you hate bureaucracy, filling out all those endless forms as if your job is to fill out forms, that's because of managerialism. You're writing the inputs for that system to work. That goes for the healthcare system too, and for many others.
What we have put forward in this speaking out essay, is, that in its attempt to counter the apocalyp-
tical pictured neoliberal competition, the management of a typical university is responding in a
Derridean self-harming reflex of power. The university risks turning itself into a mere corporate
factory of publications and diplomas, in which quantity is mistaken for quality and control for
freedom, thereby derailing itself further and further from its societal function and orientation. By
mimicking a hypercompetition inside the organization in order to adapt to the imaginary of a sur-
vival-threatening hypercompetition, the modern university has been turning the competition
against itself, resulting in a vicious suicidal circle of repression (Derrida, 2003: 100). Worryingly
and sadly, the university, that self-declared bastion of autonomous, free, and critical thinking, has
been transforming itself more and more into a remarkably oppressive and straitened bureaucratic
organization (McCann et al., 2020). https://dspace.library.uu.nl/bitstream/handle/1874/427450/1350508420975347.pdf?sequence=1 (PDF)
As managerialism changes the operating paradigm from producing scientific knowledge to "scoring points", there are long-term consequences that lead to the failure of the system. If you don't get the importance of a paradigm shift, read Donella Meadows.
Science was political in non-capitalistic societies, as well. That's the point of my second paragraph: science requires resources and however a society steers resources to productive uses, a scientist will need to advocate for their research in order for it to get done.
Isn't it great when the social institutions regulating people who want to do science promote people with the skills of salesmen over people with the skills for doing science.
Unfortunately, it's for the best. If you're serious about research you have to present yourself. Especially if you're the first person to discover it, you're the most - possibly only - qualified person to talk about that thing.
Part of scientific communication is giving elevator talks. You have to be able to argue for funding.
Not to mention, if you never develop those skills, you're just opening yourself up to getting a worse financial incentive for the same amount of work
It's politics, not sales, even highly productive sales people struggle with the politics of moving up. I could sell hot sauce in hell, but getting my bro dawg boss to like me enough to promote me into his weird club of bro dawgs and not use me as a scape goat for his own mismanagement and incompetence is not a cross over skill from getting someone to spend $15.99 on a neck pillow with the cost of $0.17.
Yes but didn't we all know that at some point before choosing that career? How do you get roughly 22 years into it - a PhD - and not know that academia is essentially a political rodeo and your research is going to be affected heavily by it? Didn't anyone whisper it to you confidentially in the back of some elective?
It most definitely shouldn't be, it's clearly poisonous to the idea of science, but it wasn't like a secret either. Like, it's "not ok" that that's the case, it's not something we should wave away as "just human things" - it should be addressed, it should be fixed. But it wasn't unknown.
There is no alternative if you actually want to do science and don't have millions of dollars to buy labs and materials and instruments. Science gets done in spite of everything she is describing.
I think it's the degree of bullshit that increases gradually. To speak from experience, when you are a grad student you get a feeling like there's corruption but overall your project seems like it's important and making a real contribution (hopefully). You also don't have to worry about where the money is coming from. Sometimes the grant as a whole is total bullshit but there is enough discretionary spending included that great science comes out of it. But you don't realize this until you're writing grants, and by then you're maybe too deep in the game to pull out. Essentially, you end up becoming a manager once you get tenure. There is no epiphany; it's more like a slow creep.
Many people I know get into it because of their idealism and desire to change the academic system for the better. They invest into this career, year after year, because it's always one more step until they can finally use their influence to change the system from the inside.
It's definitely unknown to the vast majority of the tens of thousands of college freshmen who sign up to be STEM majors. Usually by the time they figure it out it's already far too late to change their majors without rearranging their entire lives
It's also the only viable route to doing science for most people. So even if you're aware of the problem, you just have to grit your teeth and play the game if you want to pursue your passion.
Depends on the program you are in. The view from being a doctoral student to being a postdoc to being research/lecturing staff is very different. Not all advisors expose their students to the realities of higher levels of academia. And when a woman or minority is being mentored by a white man, they may not be aware of biases that can affect the student's later career.
I mean, maybe I had a different view, but that was known to myself and the people I was in school with as early as highschool. As a part of the landscape, like, yes you can pursue a career in academia but. Publish or perish, etc.
I'm sorry, but this has nothing to do with capitalism. If we were under a king, you'd still have to schmooze the king. Socialism may give you money to feed yourself, but it won't pay you to do science. An economic system doesn't prevent you from needing interpersonal skills.
Socialism wouldn't pay you to do science, but it would give you a universal basic income, so you could do science without needing to be paid if you wanted
Most science can't be done on a basic income, you need funds to buy equipment, to operate equipment, and maintain equipment. Most science also can't be done alone. You have to be able to sell others on your ideas, in any economical system that is not post-scarcity.
Across the board, we have let people who are primarily motivated by accumulating wealth and power accumulate wealth and power unchecked, and then make all the rules for how everything around them works.
These are the last people you want making the rules if you desire sane and sustainable social environments.
The best thing we could collectively do for ourselves is strip and block these kinds of people from positions of authority on the sheer basis that they seek it so eagerly, tell them to their faces WHY, tell them they can't have it back and that they can ONLY have it back when they stop wanting it so badly, no matter HOW HARD they cry about it and then treat them with the same kind of disdain they've treated people who don't want to play by THEIR rules for centuries.
If you want to be in any creative field like art or literature, you have to be able to run a social media business. It's like 80% PR and 20% the creative work you actually want to do.
Probably for their own use, for whenever they'd come back to glance again the book. In fact, it might have helped them to find the page if they chose to post it to social media some time afterwards.
For a line or two, sure, but for that long I'd just mark the beginning and ned of the passage or maybe just draw a line in the margin the length of the info.
I'm arguably good at a lot of those things but didn't want to persue a PhD because you can see the writing on the wall when you're deep enough into academia. There's a system in place and boy it can get dark and shitty in a hurry.
Sorry, unless you start your own sovereign country, you have to participate in society. Not everyone likes promoting themselves, disagreeing diplomatically, etc. Still, we play the game, even though I wish we didn't all have to...
your comment reminds me of a text I read a long time ago, comparing humans to ants and pointing that we're incredibly intelligent when alone, but we become less and less intelligent when in bigger groups, while ants seem not very intelligent when alone, but when in groups, they seem amazingly intelligent
That is true it is a big part of society and how to get along, and you would think that because this is one of the foundations of this society it would be a bigger part of someone's education. This shouldn't be something people should have to figure out on their own in order to feed themselves and their family
One semester of Schmooze 101 could go along way in helping an awkward yet brilliant scientist get the funding they need.
Well there are two alternatives that let you not do it. We either die of starvation alone and isolated, never cooperating with anyone. Or we club and bomb each other away in endless fight and war over resources. I like the being diplomatic, political and deliberative way much better than either of these, even if it can seem a bit hypocritical and tiring some times.
Do you not write the publishing fees into your grant proposals? And the paywall is just to access through the journal, you can generally just email the author and they will send you a PDF of the work - because the whole point is for the work to be known about and referenced in more work, which can only be done if it's read. The work being in the journal means that it's been peer-reviewed and is scientifically rigorous (which is part of what the fee covers)
The reviewers are not compensated, but the editorial staff that maintain the journal are (part of which is recruiting and maintaining a reviewing board, soliciting comments, sending articles for review/rewrite, etc), as well as the staff that organize and put together the conferences that each journal hosts, and all other aspects of maintaining a journal such as partnerships with libraries and schools, memberships lists, etc. Did you think the fee only covered the Internet hosting?
The resources you mentioned are hosted through Cornell by volunteers (who have other full time jobs), presumably Cornell has a rigorous in-house hosting system. And this is only for receiving the articles submitted to them that are pre- and post-print, they do not solicit articles or comments, nor do they have management of any journal publications or events.
I truly do not think you are grasping the enormity of the tasks required to run a journal. It is not simply forwarding the article to peer reviewers and then hosting it. There are legal aspects that go along with managing a journal, recruiting a review board for each article (making sure they are experts in the field, not just random reviewers), getting comments on each article, maintaining a job board for a student chapter, hosting events, hosting annual or biannual conferences, and so many more things. Each article doesn't just get put up online, it literally needs to be PUBLISHED which comes with it's own aspects, isbn numbers, doi number, fees, etc.
The paywall includes paying for the specific article, or becoming a member of the journal. Being member of the journal unlocks ALL articles in the journal (which didn't used to be the case prior to digital editions. I still have my physical journals editions of many journals I'm a member of because it used to be you only had access to the articles from the years you were actually a member and were sent the physical copies). Many people that publish will be members of the journal which lowers the cost to submit articles significantly, while also giving them access to the articles published. Additionally, instead of looking solely at the journal for the article, most people know to look at the source of the research for the PDF (ie, look for the author's university site or personal page to look for a link to a PDF) because generally whoever paid for the research wants the research to be available to be read, especially if it was paid for by taxpayers. And STILL if you find an article that you don't have access to, and your university is not a member to the journal or local library is not a member and neither can do an interlibrary loan for it, you can STILL simply email the author and ask if they can send it to you and chances are they will be more than willing.
So I'm still not entirely sure what the issue is, except an incredibly immature and naive desire to complain about information not being open access because grr I've been told all capitalism is bad, so I must apply it to everything because I don't know how to actually look for information and don't know how to think for myself grrr.
Woah, no one I know has ever paid a publishing fee. Where are you publishing? Anywhere that asks for money is a scam journal. Also, a PhD is fully funded by nature, so all fees for anything should come from your program.
Most well regarded journals in STEM require a publishing fee. That is not the case for the humanities and I believe social sciences, which are always free.
In the off chance that I get to writing a paper, I'm just going to publish it in one of the free ones and add a license to it that prevents the money grabbing ones from using it.
If noone looks at it, it's their loss.
You can only win one battle.
And you have to choose what you push for.
This problem wouldn't have existed, had enough people migrated to open journals during the internet boom.
And if reviewers are not being paid anyway, they might as well start working with someone that's not a money sink.
Of course I can't say much in this regard, as I have never been a reviewer (probably not even qualifying), but I'd rather be associated with an organisation that focusses on giving a better service than on wringing funds and work out of all that deal with them.
Not exactly, you should do what interests you. I meant as in look at accepted papers for tips on organization, flow, how to explain your methodology and present figures etc. Really great research can suffer sometimes if no one can understand your methodology or your motivation for your experiments. But of course besides that it’s helpful if the presented work is meaningful and impactful for your field (your project advisor can help scope this)
I think this is a very interesting take, but I am curious about how the career in youtube is better than the academia as she describes it.
Obviously, the discrimination against female and writing without proper acknowledgement is absolutely unacceptable, but I have never heard about anything like this in my field.
However, I feel like youtube is likely a more competitive landscape than grant writing. I think it is very likely the administrative overhead for youtuber is more than 15%, and youtuber needs to get the interest of people completely ignorant of the subject, not just experts, plus battling the unpredictbility of youtube algorithm.
Of course, I am not trying to downplay the problem she mentioned, but I am just wondering how youtube is a better alternative career, considering her goal to do "serious and innovative science".
Seeing this, it applies everywhere including something as trivial as a retail job. I wonder if that's why I too dislike that sort of backroom politicking so much.
And this is actually a good thing that it's taught at Penn, as it doesn't lie to you and say, "just get high grades and you'll be the best in the world!"
Would have been nice if my university taught us that
Yeah, it's an important skill to both be able to communicate your achievements and to be able to interpret achievements of others correctly (i.e. be able to see through their bs) in any job setting.
"bUt PaRtIcIpAtInG iN sOcIeTy!", people with imposter syndrome who don't believe enough in their own abilities to be comfortable with the idea of merit alone judging advancement.
These are just people skills. Of course you're gonna have to make people like you if you want to work with people. Half the brain is dedicated to networking with other brains.
And it's not actually that hard to agreeably disagree with someone. You say your thing, and then you do your little song and dance to make sure they know you respect them, and you go on your way.
A little bit of humility goes a long way. Hard scientists aren't above a little compassion, a little bit of care for explaining themselves to the public and to money movers.
What's the point of underlining like that? I mean you highlight something to make it stand out, but when everything stands out nothing does. If you really must highlight such an obscene amount of text, maybe draw a vertical line next to the paragraphs instead, and add a note in the margin about why you marked it. If you need to find the passage again you could also put a postit on the page. But underlining with a pen? That's just poor style.
It doesn’t matter the industry you’re in the
Schmooze classwill be there to make sure you have to bow to them.It’s always hilarious how excited project managers are about sending their socially awkward developers to conferences like Pokémon off to battle
I choose you, Shyentist!
Shyentist used Facts and Data
...
It's not very effective.
Bloviator uses "lie!"
"We'll be 100% self driving in a year!"
It was very effective!
... He confused himself
But also the customers
???
Profit
It's a lot different in academia vs industry for hard sciences. I currently work in industry, we have no options in the things we research but we are funded to the Moon. There is of course some amount of bowing we have to do in order to keep them quiet but that's about it.
In academia you have to secure your own funding constantly or your project just ends essentially. Academic institutions also look at metrics like impact factor and papers published/time that also effects the availability of funding. I know that people have had to stop pursuing doctorates due to funding issues. Politics in academia is notoriously horrendous.
That just what being a member of society is, lots of overhead.
Autistic people often face these challenges even outside of science.
Yup, this is every job. Your skills at performing a task are only a small part of success. The bigger part is being able to make friends with the right people.
Edison and Tesla come to mind. Edison wasn't the best when it came to electrical engineering but he was good at talking. Tesla was brilliant and is the father of modern electrical engineering but his best friend was a pigeon. During their lifetimes, Edison was much more successful than Tesla was.
Yeah, while I can relate to her plight, its pretty much the same situation when you do research in the industry and you want to get ahead in your career. Some things are different, but politics are still politics.
Completely ignoring qualification altogether in favor of nepotistic back scratching is actually not just being a member of society. IMO, HR should hide the identifying information of candidates from people making the hiring decisions so all they've got is the qualifications on the resume to judge them by.
That’s just not how the world works though… you will have to work with at least 1 person at a job (your boss), so you should be able to work well with at least 1 person. That doesn’t come through with just a resume.
So get a written interview in or a voice call if you really have to "like...get their vibe man!" But who you know hiring has to fucking stop. It is intentionally making worse decisions because you don't like someone as much as someone else.
I'd rather hire someone I know is a decent, stand up guy that is easy to work with even if they are not as qualified as a rando, as long as they're qualified enough. I'm sure this is not always the case, like maybe I need a specialist for a single thing or a consultant or whatnot. But I put a lot of value on personality in general.
Though I guess it also depends how easy it is to fire someone if they're not what you wanted.
That would shift towards another metric of whose resumes look the best. That might be an improvement, but we'd still be talking about how much bullshit there is in making your resume perfectly tailored to a particular opportunity. And at that point we're still talking about the skills that go into a grant application or a submission of a paper to a conference. That's the soft skills that make science possible, even if submissions are anonymized.
I think it's mostly that you can't expect people foreign to your field to understand how valuable your work is, you need to communicate it to them. Then there's a fine line between popularization and bullshiting that your sense of ethics will make you cross or not depending on the situation.
I appreciate the sentiment but no - in the case of hard science it shouldn't be.
Yes, BS exists everywhere, yes we all have to do it, yes yes yes but this is science. Only facts should matter, only agreed truth should be the topic the rest of it is very obviously poisoning the entirety of the effort to understand our world.
Saying "so what we all have to deal with it" is not the point. If you're talking about seminary, that's maybe closer(?) to the gist than, say, marketing. Or if you're a systems analyst for the USPS it's similar maybe. But people out in the world doing non-scientific things have already agreed long ago that it doesn't really matter what they find or how they find it (so long as it leads to more money, the only source of "truth") - science does not.
All the bullshit and pointless politics and ladders and so on she's talking about in the quote are just ways to say "money" (or "power") for science which is an anathema.
And in the social sciences, we're really fucked.
I don't understand how you'd prioritize things using only facts, and not some kind of extrinsic value system that assigns weights to those facts.
Let's say you have a huge infrared telescope sitting at a Lagrange point, between the earth and the sun. How would you determine what it should be observing at any given time? There's only 8760 hours in a year, and the telescope was designed to last for 5 years, with the hope of 10 years. How do you divide up that finite resource?
Now do the same for every particle collider, double blind medical study, paleontological excavation, test nuclear reactor, etc., fighting for a finite amount of science money, and you'll have no choice but to define priorities according to projections and uncertainties and value judgments.
Necessary evils, such as committee meetings, vs. runaway political madness suppressing actual work.
The former is implied by organization, the latter is more prevalent than ever in the state of modern science (because money).
Are committee meetings immune to runaway political madness? Who's on the committee? How does the committee make decisions? Can those decisions be revisited?
I'm not convinced that today's state of science is any different than in eras past, tracing all the way back to kings and wealthy patrons throwing their political and economic might behind their preferred scientific endeavors.
One thing is how the world is, and another is how the world should be. The person you're replying to accurately depicts how the world is as of today, but isn't saying that is how it should be, which is what you're arguing.
What if everyone else is just one person with all the other bodies?
"How do we stop the world's smartest people from realising what we're doing?"
"Let's make them fight among themselves and call it a meritocracy; we'll limit their funding and let them keep themselves busy with political infighting!"
Annoyingly insightful.
This is why good teams are essential. One person to do all the bullshitting, and the rest of the team to actually get stuff done while the bullshitter deflects all the other bullshitters.
PROVIDED the bullshitter doesn’t turn inward. A PM with those skills unleashed on the team is hell, and is guaranteed to drive talent away.
"Bullshitting" is an essential skill, not a distraction. The greatest idea in the world is meaningless if nobody knows about it.
Marketing, scmoozing, etc gets a bad rep. But no matter how good your output, product, research, etc is, it has very little value or impact if people don't get on board.
If you can't play the game, team up with someone who can. And don't forget that while that schmoozer may not have your technical skills, they have a skillset you do not.
It wasn't Woz or Jobs. It was both.
It's funny you use Woz and Jobs as an example when Jobs regularly emotionally manipulated and abused his employees and stole Woz's money.
I wonder why schmoozers have a bad rep 🤔
Jobs was an asshole.
Also, he got shit done. He wasn't a technical genius, but he and the team he built could pitch the shit out of products. Apple's value has rarely been in its technical superiority, but in branding.
"Asshole" is the word for a guy who likes to cut people off in traffic. I think there's probably a more appropriate word for someone who emotionally manipulates you over the course of years so you're continually a nervous wreck and can be destroyed any time it's convenient for him. Seriously if you haven't watched the interview I linked at least look at the first couple of minutes.
And at the end of the day, who did this behavior actually benefit? Steve helped make Apple a lot of money, sure, but where did most of that money go? It didn't go to the employees he abused, that's for sure. But maybe Apple products ended up benefitting society as a whole, and without Steve we wouldn't have had that? Well you already said that more often than not Apple's success didn't have anything to do with technical superiority.
The fact that people like this (Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, etc) often head successful companies isn't an example of how beneficial they are, it's an example of how broken our system is.
It shows how important having a charismatic person is to make any venture a success. We're all humans with limited time on the earth. We can't possibly experience everything. All we see and do is filtered out of necessity. A charismatic advocate of a product/movement/idea can get people to pay attention.
The best musician in history is probably unknown because they didn't have a good manager/agent.
The greatest painting ever made was probably thrown away because nobody ever knew about it.
Hype men are necessary.
In my personal experience I've had to go out of my way to find every quality product I've ever purchased, from dishwasher detergent to heat pumps, and none of them were the ones with the highest advertising budgets. You're right that we all have limited time and can't possibly evaluate every single thing that exists, but hype men don't help with that. The professional liars and manipulators that work in advertising only add to the noise and make it take longer to arrive at a conclusion. For example the fact that there are the 12 different brands of space heaters that come in different sizes and shapes and at different price points despite all performing the exact same way. It's like that with literally everything, from bar soap, to maple syrup, to sunscreen.
I think this way because I am autistic. I honestly cannot imagine feeling the need for hype men. The phrase "you need hype men" sounds to me like "you need your abuser, you cannot live without them".
Something like 35% of autistic people attempt suicide because of what the original post describes (and not just in science, but in every aspect of the world). And yeah, I think if I had to work for someone like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk I would as well.
I'm very much the same way. Sales people are just give me hints of what not to trust and usually fold under any sustained inquiry about their product. Skilled sales people know when to turn me over to their subject matter expert. We get to geek and I actually learn a thing or two about their product and, often times, the state of the industry.
One of the things the above post doesn't include are the people who championed her. Between Elliot Barnathan, the cardiologist whose lab she was initially hired into, to David Langer, the resident who was able to get her a job in neurosurgery department, she was lucky enough to have someone who could do the hype while she did her work brilliantly.
In the publishing world, a great editor can recognize the genius of a writer, give quality feedback, and protect them from the moneyed interests.
I don't know if I'd call these people hype men, as they were so much more than hype, but they definitely hype the genius of the patronee.
You "need" them because the society we live in is built around them. It's the same reason you are forced to learn how to mask - you "need" to mask to survive, to put food on the table, to have a home and a bed to sleep in. This world is commanded by the manipulators, shaped and molded by the manipulators, and if you don't have the skills to swindle your drop of money in the form of a grant in research or investment into your company, your project just dies. Everyone hates it (except the manipulators), but that's just how things are at the moment.
I've noticed that everywhere I've worked I have connected with a person like that, for better or worse. I'm really bad at the people part of things but great at technical stuff. Unfortunately for the non people savvy it's hard to distinguish who is trying to use you vs who really wants to team up with you and help you as well as themselves... Yes Apple needed a Jobs to sell themselves, but it seems Jobs viewed Woz as an end to a goal, and not the partner/ human being who helped him get there.
ok, everyone has hype men now. Everyone is charismatic now. Now what, will the greatest be found? We're just back to square one.
Yep. We've got me a technical guy who loves deep diving in theory and understanding the why of everything, and a smooth talking ex-Navy guy who is good at thinking on his feet and has great mechanical acumen. Last but not least, we have the guy who uses a sick day whenever there's work scheduled, and then shows up the next day and goes on some libertarian rant about how any progress we've made since the 19th century is a sign of our country going down the toilet. Dream team baby
I often describe the team like we're doing a heist. There's the planner, the face, the muscle, and so on. We'll have a social problem and I'll tell the face to go talk to the other team for us.
Ok so what happens when the bullshitter gets all the recognition and nobody believes you when you try to prove otherwise? Document and take legal action?
Seconded. The “face man” gets to be the public face and thereby a lot of the social credit and perhaps most of the work credit as well.
We see people like this all the time in management who take all the credit for the work from those who actually did the work.
This "have to play political games to get ahead" bullshit seems to apply almost everywhere.
Yeah, humans are social animals which create social systems everywhere they go. This shouldn’t shock anyone.
They do. However, the quality of a person's work should be more important than their schmoozing skills. Not a shock, but definitely an annoyance.
This is how any new field of work or science starts out. Then, as money starts to be made, the field comes to the attention of the money- and power-hungry who slowly take it over and transform it into something they can control with politics and shenanigans. These people didn’t have the intelligence or passion or drive to create, but they know how to play people to get what they want. Unfortunately the good people too often let themselves be shmoozed by them and that’s their “in”
I know this term is overused, but it's essentially enshittification. It didn't start with the internet.
This might sound pedantic, but it isn't, it was actually naive: I expected a better environment in academia when I was young.
Why? Because academia is supposedly full of bright people, and I assumed they would be bright enough to be cooperative (because academia advances more when we are, and they supposedly love knowledge); unattached from superficiality (like judging people by their looks, money, etc., because they should know an interesting person can come in any "package"); relatively ethical (as bright people should figure out something close to the categorical imperative, although with unique details); a non-dogmatic, eager to learn and correct their ideas —over preferring recognition and pettiness— attitude (again, just because I assumed their intelligence must guide them towards appreciating knowledge and authenticity over much more ephemeral and possibly worthless things such as prizes, fame, etc.).
I was wrong, so wrong. It's painful to remember how I felt when I realized it...
But I think the premises weren't entirely off, I just imagined people much wiser and more intelligent than they are, myself included. Anyway, I fully understand why others are shocked too.
I'm sorry you went through that. I grew up around academics -- a few of my parents' friends were professors and one was a research chemist, then I had several former professors as teachers in high school; the message from them was always clear -- academia is awful because of politicking, backstabbing, and the neverending need to be publishing something next week no matter what you did last month.
The quote, often misattributed, "Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low." has always stuck with me because of this. As I watched my wife pursue her postgraduate work in Chemistry, I was granted the unfortunate privilege of seeing it first hand. She now works as a children's librarian and is much happier.
At the top of academia everyone is tenured. Everyone has proved their intelligence. It is so political because there is so little at stake
I only read the first sentence and the last. Just like every reviewer ever. Be well.
I'm genuinely confused how everyone is reacting to this. What good is research that no one cares to hear?
The research should speak for itself. Assuming the person judging it is competent, it shouldn't need to be "sold".
The thing is, “research” doesn’t speak, humans do. If a tree falls in the woods… and so on. Part of being a scientist is communicating what you’ve done, otherwise no one else will know. It’s a skill that has to be developed in some more than others, and it was a key part of my training as a scientist. I don’t really like that part as much, but I do it because it’s what makes my work have any impact.
The people with the money don't understand the science. If you can't convince them that your science is worth investing in then why would they give you money? What's really shocking is that a Nobel prize winner isn't smart enough to understand that.
The idea is that those people shouldn’t be the ones with the money.
Then the academics should get better at taking it from them :)
The problem is not that one has to communicate the significance of research. However since the people with money don't understand the science, they can easily be mislead. And there are also big trends when it comes to funding so you can participate in the buzzword olympics to secure your funding. And this is where you leave the path of just communicating your research and its potential honestly.
The second point where this Nobel prize winner is very right is that it's all about networking, all about names. I don't know why we can't just publish research under a pseudonym, a number would suffice. This would make publishing and reviewing less susceptible to bias.
Same reason why we name amps and volts after Ampere and Volta. It's about recognition and legacy. Imagine you discover some new form of matter, a specialized region of the brain, a key component of time travel, or some algorithm that accurately describes any human interaction. Something revolutionary. Would you be content if it wasn't named for you? Ormr Matter, Ormr's Area, Ormr's Theory of Inverse Relativity, Ormr's Equation for Social Simulation. This is really just the extreme case, but I think it works well to demonstrate the point.
Yes. I recognize that most people don't think this way, though.
Very well put. That’s a big reason why the world is on fire: People trusting bad actors too easily because they know how to talk good.
At that point it should become a problem of educating, not politicking.
Competence is judged by their ability to communicate the purpose and results. Lack of social skills also detracts from the audience who is willing to review it.
Valid to a degree, but there's such a thing as placing too much value on the person presenting it rather than the content of it. It seems like too common an occurrence.
Not an academic, but this is spot on for how I’ve felt as a top performer getting nowhere. This realization helped me reorient my aspirations to what I find truly matters to me: my family and hobbies. I’m a solid individual contributor. Over the years, my work has saved us millions and been adopted across the country, which is reward enough. The speaking engagements and schmoozing, I’ll leave that to the extroverts in the boys club.
Same. It physically hurts to see talentless suck-ups play the bullshit game and climb the hierarchy, whereas you get punished and kept down for pointing out the bullshit. My best decision ever was to escape the hell that is the field of software development, and instead get into teaching. Now my reward for a job well done is seeing my students succeed and I love it so much.
I know that feeling all too well. Funny enough, I’d thought about going into software dev because I thought it’d let me work alone more comfortably. Along the way I found a way to learn dev but apply it to my job instead, making me pretty unique at what I do. It lets me innovate, do deep research, and work on my own while being pretty openly anti-social. Luckily I have a boss who sees the value in me.
I can’t tell you the number of once-interns and junior managers, stuck-in-a-rut folks, that I’ve quietly influenced to senior or higher positions. It really does feel incredible! I call it “leading from the back.” I’ve been wanting to write a book on it - the introverts and individual-contributors who quietly (and happily) influence without being seen.
I would read this book! Even a blog post, I’d 100% be interested
For something that I really hesitated to post, that was really encouraging to hear. Thanks!
+1 on the book idea. Sounds like a delightful read. I have a similar philosophy as well that's worked for me. I've never once cared about getting credit or props, I make my boss/team look like geniuses. That naturally tends to reward you as well. Great individual contributors are actually pretty rare. Out of hundreds of engineers I've worked with closely, only a few were brilliant in the way you described.
If you're looking for related reading, perhaps for inspiration, there's a great book called
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, by Susan Cain.
I highly recommend it.
I work as an engineer for a huge financial company, so I relate. I was a scrappy upstart who worked himself through the lowest tiers of my industry towards the top. I'm also neurodivergent.
I can speak on for days about how bosses don't care who's doing the work as long as it gets done.
As a top performer, you're likely to feel that people should perform at the standards you set, and your natural first instinct is probably to try to train and educate your coworkers. You soon realize that they either don't give a shit or they're offended that you're giving them advice. No problem, we live in a hierarchical society, so you tell your boss about the problems you face, they'll have your back, right? Wrong. You're rocking the boat, and the boss' job is to keep the boat afloat.
Now, instead of rocking the boat, you start to wonder if you there's a way you can change the current of the water so the boat goes in the proper direction. That's where wisdom and skill meet. There's an incredible amount of depth involved in influencing people and change. I wish it wasn't the way of the world, but it is. Being brilliant is only half the battle.
@clearedtoland @fossilesque It makes perfect sense if you consider it. Imagine a closed system with two top performing components, where every other component is contributing to the system’s overall success. If one of these two top performers is able to connect and leverage all the other system components to amplify their work, but the other works in isolation, which is really producing more successful output when you measure the total system?
That's a pretty contrived setup. If the two top components are not factored into the performance of the whole and they are both defined by their ability to improve other components, then the one doing it's own thing is not, in fact, a top performer. It's task is to support others and it fails to do so.
And what if the loner's task is foundational? It doesn't have much direct output, but if he's gone and everything else goes to shit? Those ones are very hard to measure. I know, that's been my job for a good portion of my career. And things like that are common. Expecting a given performer, say an engineer, to also be good at public speaking has always struck me as impractical.
@maniclucky Yes, it's a contrived example. Its contrivance was to pose the point, which is:
Given two system components of comparable value, but different system impact, one still differentiates with regards to the surrounding system.
Also, given that the system itself is the body of recognition, the component with greater system impact is not only leveraged better, but also better positioned for being noticed doing it.
Also, a system can't see self-isolated participants. Not respectfully.
My problem with your example is that the loner didn't have comparable value. If it was supporting other things, then it failed. If it was doing something non obvious, it shouldn't be compared to the support. It feels fallacious, though I can't name one specifically.
System sight is itself an issue. Many companies evaluate an employee solely on some performance metric, typically tied to money. Because it's easy (and lazy).
I've had several positions where my task was to keep things running. I added no value, I prevented loss. And those positions get screwed because they're very difficult to quantify worth and very hard to see (and if it doesn't create money, they don't care). You only notice them when something goes wrong. Such an employee may keep everything running all year and get a "meets expectations" because there's an upper limit on how much contribution the system sees, and the system doesn't want to put in the effort to see better. I may have had to climb over an air handler to get to a transducer to calibrate, but that's not sexy and even if I report such effort, it's what I'm supposed to do (even if I wasn't, weekend nights are weird).
No one is going to write down "keep machine running 80% of the time" because people unassociated with the task will insist that 100% is the expectation, despite that being unreasonable.
A system built of people is not a black box. We can see them and evaluate them based on the task they're supposed to do, but the evaluators don't want to put in the effort to do their tasks in a way that means more work for them.
There's a comment to be made also about scope creep for a position so that a company doesn't have to hire marketing and engineering if they can get the engineers to do it. Despite them being suboptimal for the task. Something something down with unrestrained capitalism.
Ok. I've lost the plot at this point and made my point. Have a good one.
@maniclucky The issue I think that you're having here isn't that you're not making good points. Your points seem correct to me.
I think what's going on is that you're saying "there's nuance", and there clearly is, but I'm deliberately presenting a simple verbal model in order to be quick and to the point.
I do agree with you largely, but I think my point stands: two equal contributors to a system differentiate when just one contributor is friendlier to their host system. That becomes the edge.
What, my ~7 paragraphs isn't simple? /s
You're correct. I think I was chafing at the systems in question predisposing friendliness to mean modes that I personally am unskilled at or uncomfortable with despite my value.
@maniclucky It's chafing to me, too. I'm not very good at it, I'm sure that's kind of obvious at this point ;)
I just notice it a lot because, I guess, I wish I were better at it? Or better at being personable? But, it's so expensive for me in terms of effort, it wears me out so fast.
Read some Foucault for an explanation, that's just being human. You don't stop being human just because you follow scientific ideals. All human endeavors will follow human dynamics.
Seriously. I read this and all I could think was "what a dick".
Disclaimer, I have not read the full source material and am only basing this off the quoted image.
I fully understand not being interested in having to attract your own funding, it's awful. But the rest of it is not limited to the academic or scientific pursuits. Being a decent enough person so people want to support you? Developing good work that people want to hear about it (ie conferences)? (By the way, you submit your own work to conferences and they are judged to be invited blindly, ie names removed), being able to hold your tongue when you know someone is wrong in order to keep peace? Understanding that hierarchy exists?
These are not things that are antithesis to good science, and if no one had ever taught her these things that's a failing on her younger days.
Miss me with that thought terminating cliche.
No. Science is the only human effort that specifically defines what human is. If we allow that "sure being human is going to mess up science" then we have failed before we even started.
I'm really surprised, although this is becoming kind of common so perhaps I shouldn't be, to see all the comments saying effectively "yeah, so?"
Science doesn't define what humans are. Humans are, then science plays catch up to try and define what that even means. Science is a human endeavor, a framework of thought, it doesn't exist in a vacuum, it cannot exist without humans thinking, talking about it and doing it.
So if I ask you to define what a human is, you’re not going to draw at all from any previous scientific studies?
I doubt it. Not to get too ontological, just saying science (biology, psychology, anthropology) very much do define what human is.
For a lot of people, I would think that the answer to "what is a human?" Would be closer to religious and philosophical definitions than scientific ones.
The fact that this is considered brutally honest is part of the problem. I think it's just regular honesty. Academia's standards for honesty are too low.
This is the fucking world. Like it or not it's about putting yourself out there and networking. Doesn't matter how bright you are. I wish it wasn't but it is.
I'm trying to imagine a job where being a disagreeable antisocial recluse is an advantage and I'm coming up blank.
That is hardly the idea the author is trying to give...
IT Business Analyst
IT is super hierarchical and requires immense political skills to get anything done.
My cousin works (sometimes) as a truck driver. He's certified for any size truck, flammable/biohazardous goods, the lot. He'd be making good money if he could stop telling his bosses to fuck off.
I was in IT for 20 years. In order to succeed, I had to become 50% therapist.
Am currently in IT, can confirm.
Overnight security guard
Owner of Twitter?
To put it bluntly, science costs money, and persuading people who control money to spend that money is itself a skill.
Or, zooming out, science requires resources: physical commodities, equipment, the skilled labor of entire teams. The most effective way to marshal those resources is with money, and management/sales skills are necessary to get those resources working together in concert.
notes down: "capitalism is the problem"
👍
As someone who can see the flaws in the capitalist model and doesn't agree with it in its current form... This is just silly. In any socioeconomic system there will be limited resources. People will still have to convince those that control the resources to give them the resources. The biggest difference between science in a capitalist system versus in a socialist system is that the end result of the science might benefit the common person more.
For instance: Superfest. Near unbreakable drinking glasses made in Eastern Germany that didn't sell well internationally due to lack of profit potential. Basically, the entire glass industry revolves around the principle that glass can be broken. When your glass breaks, you buy a new one. But if your glass doesn't break then you don't need to buy a new one and therefore you do not. So if everyone buys Superfest then the industry dies since no one needs to buy glass any longer. And this is great for the people, great for the environment, but terrible if you're a profit driven company. But whether it's a state-owned endeavour or a for-profit organization, you'd still need to convince someone to invest in your work.
Going to start you off with Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Managerialism
If you've ever heard of "publish or perish", than you've heard of the main outcome of managerialism applied to academia and research. There are many critiques, I won't mention them all. And if you hate bureaucracy, filling out all those endless forms as if your job is to fill out forms, that's because of managerialism. You're writing the inputs for that system to work. That goes for the healthcare system too, and for many others.
Managerialism is the "capitalist organization science". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management
As managerialism changes the operating paradigm from producing scientific knowledge to "scoring points", there are long-term consequences that lead to the failure of the system. If you don't get the importance of a paradigm shift, read Donella Meadows.
Science was political in non-capitalistic societies, as well. That's the point of my second paragraph: science requires resources and however a society steers resources to productive uses, a scientist will need to advocate for their research in order for it to get done.
Capitalism is always the problem
This world is very difficult for people like me who are a little on the spectrum, since moving and shaking is what gets you places
Isn't it great when the social institutions regulating people who want to do science promote people with the skills of salesmen over people with the skills for doing science.
Unfortunately, it's for the best. If you're serious about research you have to present yourself. Especially if you're the first person to discover it, you're the most - possibly only - qualified person to talk about that thing.
Part of scientific communication is giving elevator talks. You have to be able to argue for funding.
Not to mention, if you never develop those skills, you're just opening yourself up to getting a worse financial incentive for the same amount of work
It's politics, not sales, even highly productive sales people struggle with the politics of moving up. I could sell hot sauce in hell, but getting my bro dawg boss to like me enough to promote me into his weird club of bro dawgs and not use me as a scape goat for his own mismanagement and incompetence is not a cross over skill from getting someone to spend $15.99 on a neck pillow with the cost of $0.17.
Yet another flawed system run by humans. Humans always ruining nice things.
The system was literally invented by humans and follows our shitty nature perfectly.
Yes but didn't we all know that at some point before choosing that career? How do you get roughly 22 years into it - a PhD - and not know that academia is essentially a political rodeo and your research is going to be affected heavily by it? Didn't anyone whisper it to you confidentially in the back of some elective?
It most definitely shouldn't be, it's clearly poisonous to the idea of science, but it wasn't like a secret either. Like, it's "not ok" that that's the case, it's not something we should wave away as "just human things" - it should be addressed, it should be fixed. But it wasn't unknown.
There is no alternative if you actually want to do science and don't have millions of dollars to buy labs and materials and instruments. Science gets done in spite of everything she is describing.
Fair, but how does someone take on that career and not know that?
I think it's the degree of bullshit that increases gradually. To speak from experience, when you are a grad student you get a feeling like there's corruption but overall your project seems like it's important and making a real contribution (hopefully). You also don't have to worry about where the money is coming from. Sometimes the grant as a whole is total bullshit but there is enough discretionary spending included that great science comes out of it. But you don't realize this until you're writing grants, and by then you're maybe too deep in the game to pull out. Essentially, you end up becoming a manager once you get tenure. There is no epiphany; it's more like a slow creep.
Okay. I dunno, for me it was expressly stated by many people.
Many people I know get into it because of their idealism and desire to change the academic system for the better. They invest into this career, year after year, because it's always one more step until they can finally use their influence to change the system from the inside.
So they’ve agreed, as it were, to the politics, the metrics, etc that come with it. Hopefully they can in fact change it, or part of it anyway.
It's definitely unknown to the vast majority of the tens of thousands of college freshmen who sign up to be STEM majors. Usually by the time they figure it out it's already far too late to change their majors without rearranging their entire lives
It's also the only viable route to doing science for most people. So even if you're aware of the problem, you just have to grit your teeth and play the game if you want to pursue your passion.
Well, hopefully this will help change things then. It’s definitely not new.
I think that's what she's trying to do.
Depends on the program you are in. The view from being a doctoral student to being a postdoc to being research/lecturing staff is very different. Not all advisors expose their students to the realities of higher levels of academia. And when a woman or minority is being mentored by a white man, they may not be aware of biases that can affect the student's later career.
I mean, maybe I had a different view, but that was known to myself and the people I was in school with as early as highschool. As a part of the landscape, like, yes you can pursue a career in academia but. Publish or perish, etc.
Sadly not just the USA.
Sadly not just science, either.
Isn't this true for all jobs? Specially corporate jobs? It's still horrible, but that's capitalism for you.
The same problem exists in socialism
You need to convince people what you’re doing is worth doing. Whether that is economically or societally
I'm sorry, but this has nothing to do with capitalism. If we were under a king, you'd still have to schmooze the king. Socialism may give you money to feed yourself, but it won't pay you to do science. An economic system doesn't prevent you from needing interpersonal skills.
Socialism wouldn't pay you to do science, but it would give you a universal basic income, so you could do science without needing to be paid if you wanted
Most science can't be done on a basic income, you need funds to buy equipment, to operate equipment, and maintain equipment. Most science also can't be done alone. You have to be able to sell others on your ideas, in any economical system that is not post-scarcity.
These scientists aren't schmoozing for a paycheck. Research is expensive. They're getting funding for equipment and personnel.
Across the board, we have let people who are primarily motivated by accumulating wealth and power accumulate wealth and power unchecked, and then make all the rules for how everything around them works.
These are the last people you want making the rules if you desire sane and sustainable social environments.
The best thing we could collectively do for ourselves is strip and block these kinds of people from positions of authority on the sheer basis that they seek it so eagerly, tell them to their faces WHY, tell them they can't have it back and that they can ONLY have it back when they stop wanting it so badly, no matter HOW HARD they cry about it and then treat them with the same kind of disdain they've treated people who don't want to play by THEIR rules for centuries.
If you want to be in any creative field like art or literature, you have to be able to run a social media business. It's like 80% PR and 20% the creative work you actually want to do.
why underline the whole thing
Well you see, if we made people read that irrelevant first sentence, and the beginning of the following paragraph, their heads might explode.
Probably for their own use, for whenever they'd come back to glance again the book. In fact, it might have helped them to find the page if they chose to post it to social media some time afterwards.
For a line or two, sure, but for that long I'd just mark the beginning and ned of the passage or maybe just draw a line in the margin the length of the info.
I'm arguably good at a lot of those things but didn't want to persue a PhD because you can see the writing on the wall when you're deep enough into academia. There's a system in place and boy it can get dark and shitty in a hurry.
Sorry, unless you start your own sovereign country, you have to participate in society. Not everyone likes promoting themselves, disagreeing diplomatically, etc. Still, we play the game, even though I wish we didn't all have to...
I prefer to say that humans are not very efficient at organizing. We’re just the most efficient so far for general problems.
your comment reminds me of a text I read a long time ago, comparing humans to ants and pointing that we're incredibly intelligent when alone, but we become less and less intelligent when in bigger groups, while ants seem not very intelligent when alone, but when in groups, they seem amazingly intelligent
That is true it is a big part of society and how to get along, and you would think that because this is one of the foundations of this society it would be a bigger part of someone's education. This shouldn't be something people should have to figure out on their own in order to feed themselves and their family
One semester of Schmooze 101 could go along way in helping an awkward yet brilliant scientist get the funding they need.
Well there are two alternatives that let you not do it. We either die of starvation alone and isolated, never cooperating with anyone. Or we club and bomb each other away in endless fight and war over resources. I like the being diplomatic, political and deliberative way much better than either of these, even if it can seem a bit hypocritical and tiring some times.
Even if you do start your own sovereign country, once you have more than one person you have to play politics. It's just the human condition
Do you not write the publishing fees into your grant proposals? And the paywall is just to access through the journal, you can generally just email the author and they will send you a PDF of the work - because the whole point is for the work to be known about and referenced in more work, which can only be done if it's read. The work being in the journal means that it's been peer-reviewed and is scientifically rigorous (which is part of what the fee covers)
The reviewers are not compensated, but the editorial staff that maintain the journal are (part of which is recruiting and maintaining a reviewing board, soliciting comments, sending articles for review/rewrite, etc), as well as the staff that organize and put together the conferences that each journal hosts, and all other aspects of maintaining a journal such as partnerships with libraries and schools, memberships lists, etc. Did you think the fee only covered the Internet hosting?
Except those are for pre-print and post-print and don't offer peer review
The resources you mentioned are hosted through Cornell by volunteers (who have other full time jobs), presumably Cornell has a rigorous in-house hosting system. And this is only for receiving the articles submitted to them that are pre- and post-print, they do not solicit articles or comments, nor do they have management of any journal publications or events.
I truly do not think you are grasping the enormity of the tasks required to run a journal. It is not simply forwarding the article to peer reviewers and then hosting it. There are legal aspects that go along with managing a journal, recruiting a review board for each article (making sure they are experts in the field, not just random reviewers), getting comments on each article, maintaining a job board for a student chapter, hosting events, hosting annual or biannual conferences, and so many more things. Each article doesn't just get put up online, it literally needs to be PUBLISHED which comes with it's own aspects, isbn numbers, doi number, fees, etc.
The paywall includes paying for the specific article, or becoming a member of the journal. Being member of the journal unlocks ALL articles in the journal (which didn't used to be the case prior to digital editions. I still have my physical journals editions of many journals I'm a member of because it used to be you only had access to the articles from the years you were actually a member and were sent the physical copies). Many people that publish will be members of the journal which lowers the cost to submit articles significantly, while also giving them access to the articles published. Additionally, instead of looking solely at the journal for the article, most people know to look at the source of the research for the PDF (ie, look for the author's university site or personal page to look for a link to a PDF) because generally whoever paid for the research wants the research to be available to be read, especially if it was paid for by taxpayers. And STILL if you find an article that you don't have access to, and your university is not a member to the journal or local library is not a member and neither can do an interlibrary loan for it, you can STILL simply email the author and ask if they can send it to you and chances are they will be more than willing.
So I'm still not entirely sure what the issue is, except an incredibly immature and naive desire to complain about information not being open access because grr I've been told all capitalism is bad, so I must apply it to everything because I don't know how to actually look for information and don't know how to think for myself grrr.
Woah, no one I know has ever paid a publishing fee. Where are you publishing? Anywhere that asks for money is a scam journal. Also, a PhD is fully funded by nature, so all fees for anything should come from your program.
Most well regarded journals in STEM require a publishing fee. That is not the case for the humanities and I believe social sciences, which are always free.
Oh I didn’t know, thanks. For some reason I assumed they were waived
In the off chance that I get to writing a paper, I'm just going to publish it in one of the free ones and add a license to it that prevents the money grabbing ones from using it.
If noone looks at it, it's their loss.
You can only win one battle.
And you have to choose what you push for.
This problem wouldn't have existed, had enough people migrated to open journals during the internet boom.
And if reviewers are not being paid anyway, they might as well start working with someone that's not a money sink.
Of course I can't say much in this regard, as I have never been a reviewer (probably not even qualifying), but I'd rather be associated with an organisation that focusses on giving a better service than on wringing funds and work out of all that deal with them.
Anti Commercial-AI license
If your field is computer science or eng, publishing in one of the A ranking conferences for your field is as good as top journal publishing
I would use accepted papers as an example, I find that usually helps
Not exactly, you should do what interests you. I meant as in look at accepted papers for tips on organization, flow, how to explain your methodology and present figures etc. Really great research can suffer sometimes if no one can understand your methodology or your motivation for your experiments. But of course besides that it’s helpful if the presented work is meaningful and impactful for your field (your project advisor can help scope this)
Sabine Hossenfelder has a video on this problem.
My dream died, and now I'm here. Why academia sucks.
I was thinking of this video as soon as I saw the post. She's really an interesting person.
I think this is a very interesting take, but I am curious about how the career in youtube is better than the academia as she describes it.
Obviously, the discrimination against female and writing without proper acknowledgement is absolutely unacceptable, but I have never heard about anything like this in my field.
However, I feel like youtube is likely a more competitive landscape than grant writing. I think it is very likely the administrative overhead for youtuber is more than 15%, and youtuber needs to get the interest of people completely ignorant of the subject, not just experts, plus battling the unpredictbility of youtube algorithm.
Of course, I am not trying to downplay the problem she mentioned, but I am just wondering how youtube is a better alternative career, considering her goal to do "serious and innovative science".
Seeing this, it applies everywhere including something as trivial as a retail job. I wonder if that's why I too dislike that sort of backroom politicking so much.
And this is actually a good thing that it's taught at Penn, as it doesn't lie to you and say, "just get high grades and you'll be the best in the world!"
Would have been nice if my university taught us that
I've got bad news about...pretty much every career path.
Yeah, it's an important skill to both be able to communicate your achievements and to be able to interpret achievements of others correctly (i.e. be able to see through their bs) in any job setting.
My supervisor talked of Barnum and Bailey. He wasn't wrong, but glad I got out.
Science should be a worthy endeavour, currently it's not. Sell out for more...
Underline tip
Throw a [ in the margin
For highlighting, highlight the tldr of each [ section, skipping over words deemed unnecessary to understanding it
"bUt PaRtIcIpAtInG iN sOcIeTy!", people with imposter syndrome who don't believe enough in their own abilities to be comfortable with the idea of merit alone judging advancement.
Lucky, not hero.
This is a person saying they don’t like what everyone else on the planet deals with daily.
Fortunately they were published enough to not have to care.
Not a scientist but I have been reasonably successful by proving my worth to the ladder climbers and then they pull me up behind them.
This is also a form of marketing yourself to the correct audience.
that's how it workes everywhere
These are just people skills. Of course you're gonna have to make people like you if you want to work with people. Half the brain is dedicated to networking with other brains.
And it's not actually that hard to agreeably disagree with someone. You say your thing, and then you do your little song and dance to make sure they know you respect them, and you go on your way.
A little bit of humility goes a long way. Hard scientists aren't above a little compassion, a little bit of care for explaining themselves to the public and to money movers.
I SE>
Sheldon Cooper?
What's the point of underlining like that? I mean you highlight something to make it stand out, but when everything stands out nothing does. If you really must highlight such an obscene amount of text, maybe draw a vertical line next to the paragraphs instead, and add a note in the margin about why you marked it. If you need to find the passage again you could also put a postit on the page. But underlining with a pen? That's just poor style.