Is Scientific Research Worthwhile?

[jacob]

@paxprobellum - Right now we have a system that's basically feeding on the dreams of young brains until 90% of the get frustrated and give up. The remaining 10% become the next professors. The market system already works to some extent. This is why there are relatively few Americans in grad school. They've done the math...hmm let's see 25k in grad school or 100k at Goldman Sachs, what should I choose ....
This means that US research is to a large extent carried out by foreigners on F-1 and J-1 student/research visas. For many of them the work conditions the US citizens reject are better than what the foreigners find in their home country(*).
The way it works is that each your your boss has to sign a DS2019 form lest you be shipped back because your visa is canceled. Clever, eh, ... we also refer to this as the intercontinental brain slave trade. The problem being that the US spends the most money on research, so it's very easy to find one of these positions. Also, at least in my field, if you want to make a career out of science, you gotta spend at least one tour in the US.
So in a sense, the system works beautifully from the perspective of the system.
If there was only one apprentice for each master, academic research would be MUCH more expensive. Imagine that you had to pay someone with a hard science master degree 50k/year at industry level instead of getting the same person as a grad student stipend at 20k. There'd be fewer students. This is to some extent what you see in Europe, but the ratio is still not 1-1.
However, admitting fewer students into grad school would be a solution.
Another solution would be to rely less on grad students and postdocs to do the research and more on staff scientists which are an order of magnitude more effective than a first or second year grad student. Not everybody needs to be a professor. This would mean going from the current situation of short contracts to indeterminate contracts---you can keep doing science here as long as you work satisfactorily, you're not out in 730 days.
(*) However, this creates a large systemic risk and also a national security issue (because it creates strategic dependencies on non-nationals). If you have much of the research brain power in a country with inherent connections to another country, all that needs to happen is that conditions of said other country improves sufficiently and then the brain drain will move the other way. You already have Indians moving back home because their economy is doing great compared to the American one and Chinese going home because their pay packages are comparable or better than what they're offered in the US.

[paxprobellum]

However, admitting fewer students into grad school would be a solution.
I agree, but that's not really a solution if you consider research to be important. Maybe we don't need as many theoretical physicists (.oO), but I know several colleagues who need MORE students, not less. (That is, they have funding for another grad student or two, but don't have anyone to fill that spot.)
Another solution would be to rely less on grad students and postdocs to do the research and more on staff scientists which are an order of magnitude more effective than a first or second year grad student. Not everybody needs to be a professor.
I agree. However, I have a feeling the statement "Not everybody needs to be a professor" would sound a lot like "Not everybody needs to be paid commensurate with their training" to someone finishing up grad school / post doc. I don't think people really get into science for the prestige -- don't take the money away too!
That being said, I see the trend of "fewer students, more 'professional' scientists" in labs these days. I think we need more professorial types, rather than more underlings. Research requires independent thought -- in general, if you're not "at the top", you aren't contributing (much) to the direction of research in the lab.
Department Head << Not involved in day-to-day in lab

Professor << Independently determines research goals, grants, etc.

Staff / PostDocs << Limited independent thoughts on project

Graduate Students << Project is dictated, methods may be independent
Thus, adding more underlings really only adds more "brute force" to current research aims. We need more breadth, and collaboration, between independent researchers. To me, that means:
1) Hire more professor-types

or

2) Paradigm shift

[jacob]

I think what "went wrong" in my career is that my grad student formative years actually happened at the "professor"-level. Here are some intellectual resources, now go see what you make out of it and pursue whatever you find interesting. As a result, when I got my PhD, I was ready to run independent research projects. I had largely worked for myself with a little help from my supervisor in connecting me with other relevant people. I hadn't merely been instructed to work on some part of my supervisor's project.
Oh, if only I had been an engineer where you can go straight from grad school to faculty because there's no overcapacity(**). Anyway, as a result of that, during my postdoc period, I felt that I was 1) simply doing time; and 2) not too happy with people who treated me as a kind of advanced grad student ("you go work on my project, I need to finish this"). I think I got spoiled in grad school. The progression you describe is closer to the "glorified tech"-kind of PhD I described above.
(**) It's eyerollingly annoying that postdocing is referred to as "training". I'd like to know why professors in engineering and economics apparently don't need any such so-called training.
As for "Not everybody needs to be paid commensurate with their training" I think this is already the case. People are paid according to supply and demand which often has little to do with how much they know or how smart they are but a lot more to do with whether they work in a particular field, for a particular company, or got hired at a particular moment.

[Radam]

These are all good questions.
Regarding oversupply of PhDs, I think a big problem is in miscommunication (whether purposeful or not) to students about their prospects. As society has become increasingly wealthy there is less need for young people to "work" and more need for them to become "trained" or specialized in technical skills. So perhaps the increase in PhDs is just the next phase of the trend that started with more college graduates starting mid-century.
I second Jacob's assessment about the PhD and self direction. My PhD process was largely self directed, as my advisor did not know much about what I work on. That is much more the norm in the program that I graduated from. I went straight into a professorship, and would have been very unhappy with a very structured post-doc. Incidentally, I ended up in an engineering department, although I am not formally trained as an engineer (my case is about as atypical as you can imagine).
Much of the adventure and (sometimes) profound enjoyment in research involves charting new intellectual territory and finding ways to address new questions that have never been asked before. When research is directed too strongly from above it becomes not much more than drudgery.
There are too many important questions to be answered and too many problems to solve. I work on environmental impacts of energy systems and the issues I work on will become ever more important. Even if I loose my current position and I take another position to ERE, I will likely start an independent research institute in my retirement. I am a generalist and a bit of a dilettante. I cannot stand to sit still intellectually, but (I imagine like Jacob) I hate even more to be told what to think about. When I think about what I would choose to "spend money on" I think that I want to buy the freedom to spend my days thinking about what I want to think about.
So for me ERE is not about abandoning the intellectual/scientific life, but being able to maintain it regardless of proposal success, tenure committees, department politics, etc. And also being able to purse it at a more sane pace than I am currently subjecting myself to.

[Stahlmann]

"You already have Indians moving back home because their economy is doing great compared to the American one and Chinese going home because their pay packages are comparable or better than what they're offered in the US."

0o

[Alphaville]

haaa haaa haaaa i just started reading this thread

“ murdered the chair, a committee member, his adviser, a fellow student, the vp of academic affairs, and her assistant. He then shot himself.”


thanks for necroing this from of the void

[Loner]

This thread summarizes many of the reason for which I said no to an offer to do a Ph.D. Research is worthwhile, but in many cases, it is just like many jobs: it is corrupted by everything that comes with it.

My need for independence and autonomy is very high, and I didn’t see a lot of it going around. Some professors even asked that their students (who worked with data that they could have analyzed from their home PC) work at the office all the time like they were kids (the specific words I overheard were: "I want to see them work, or else, how do I know they’re working?"). I believe that the point was, in part, for the professor to assign them tasks that had absolutely nothing to do with the students’ research (to be done for free, of course). No way in hell I was going to submit to that. ERE (as well as other personal projects) looked more worthwhile. Unsurprisingly, morale was low, and dropouts not uncommon.

After the master's, I started doing some gig work for a research chair, and doing the same work as Ph.D students (anyways, those I knew), but for 2-3x what they get paid per hour. I feel kind of bad because they didn’t look like they enjoyed it at all, and in most cases, they won’t make more than a master’s student once they’re done. (And they’re not going for professorships since, well, Ph.Ds are now dime-a-dozen, so competition is fierce, and disappointments, numerous.)

But overall, great thread. Stahlmann always finds pearl among the old stuff.

[plantingtheseed]

School taught the basics but much of the knowledge needed to make it in the industry were learned on the job. The degree got your foot in the door, but one had to prove himself on the job to keep it. It was not uncommon for one of the old timers to take you under their wings, being a mentor, and often that's how the real working knowledge would be passed on. Many of the new hires didn't make it and would move on to something else. (Similar to the passing rate of those who made it to graduation at school, over 90% didn't make it)

But if one could make it to 5 years in the industry, life got significantly better in terms of the compensation. Looking back now, maybe phd is something that one can pursue for enjoyment in retirement, if there is an interest.

[nomadscientist]

I'm aware of fields where it's drudge work already at PhD, but that wasn't the case in mine, and possibly isn't in many.

One issue is that people have different amounts of bargaining power at different stages in their career.

A PhD applicant has a surprisingly large amount of bargaining power. This is because profs need to fill PhD slots both because there is work to be done and because they need to spend their budgets, while a PhD applicant usually doesn't need to do a PhD: he is smart and young and can go be a consultant or a doctor or a businessman instead. So it's quite common for PhDs to be able to dictate ("suggest") their own projects and working conditions. Doesn't always happen, but it's not surprising to me when I hear of such bespoke arrangements.

This fades out over the course of the career, usually very quickly after the PhD. That's because there's much less budget for permanent jobs and the longer you spend in academia the more typecast you become and so options elsewhere shrink. If you're a consumer sucka with a mortgage and maybe kids on the way with bills paid on credit cards you are trapped. You will be working 100 hour weeks even if you hate the work and consider keeping full time employment a success.

If you make it past this stage work-life balance can improve, but quality of work for those interested in research probably declines further. The biggest drudges in academia are most professors who have the job of corporate middle managers but without the bonuses. They do not do research and the budget juggling/schmoozing/touting they do would be better rewarded in almost any other industry. Of course there are some real profs left, who can sit in their offices and ponder full time, only take a student when they've found a true apprentice, and only apply for grants when they have a real idea. I hear law profs still have this kind of deal. But it's not the norm.

So I see academia as a sort of fly trap for the intellectually curious. It's fun at the beginning but there's greater and greater lock-in as time goes by which the system has evolved to exploit. Since thinking of your university or lab as an "employer" or even learning about economics for interest's sake is considered very gauche, most remain trapped in this world mentally and do not acknowledge the changed reality.