In fact, in the life sciences, the back and forth is getting more common, and will increasingly get so as the models for research, esp in large scale biology change. On the CS side there are any number of examples as well.
As a grad student in neuroscience I think there's some validity to the argument, though. Academic research in my field can be tightly circumscribed by 5 year grant cycles, competition for tenure track positions, etc. I wrote about numerology of this here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=470181
I believe this numerology may be a source of generalized conservatism and incrementalism in academic science. And academic science has a different set of objectives than industry, and perhaps also a larger long-term payoff, when done well.
1/73 of the newly minted Ph.D.s should reasonably go on to start a lab of their own (from your linked comment)
Playing devil's advocate:
Isn't this winnowing process necessary to identify those capable of starting a successful lab?
Research worth doing is, after all, extremely difficult - perhaps the only way to identify such individuals is to train them up to the cutting edge, then let them attempt to do independent research (get a PhD) and see who fails (does a useless PhD).
(My own view is somewhere in the middle, but I'm interested in your opinion on this).
Isn't this winnowing process necessary to identify those capable of starting a successful lab?
Sure, some winnowing is necessary -- but do you (or the devil you're advocating for) think only one out of every 73 newly minted Ph.D.s is capable of starting a successful lab?
On the other side, who is the 1 out of 73 who gets the tenure-track job in research? It seems quite often departments make decisions based on number of papers the candidate has, and the brand of journals those papers appear in. Optimizing for these parameters can, I think, be very different from optimizing for deep and/or transformative science. The best postdocs can optimize for all parameters at once, but this is a very difficult row to hoe, and usually requires a bunch of luck to succeed.
I'm not saying that the system is broken. Good science is getting done, by good people. I'm saying that from my (admittedly limited) vantage point, the system is unnecessarily adverse to certain kinds of science, to the possible detriment of human knowledge and the public good.
(Whew! That was a fun soapbox to get on, thanks for the invitation...)
Do you think only one out of every 73 is capable...?
Less, actually. The evidence being that of those who make it, many barely make a single useful contribution over a lifetime of research. The question is really about whether more than 1 in 73 deserve to be able to try - and my opinion is that, really, no. But there shouldn't be 73 in the pool to start with.
PhD training should start earlier (maybe after Sophomore year of college), and should be much shorter and more intensive. I think that peer-reviewed articles (and not a dissertation) should be the standard by which a PhD is judged (this is the case in many European countries).
But I agree with you that the quality v. quantity balance seems a bit skewed.
We need fewer PhD students, and their studentships should be redirected toward paying more to the good ones and their supervisors, toward more funding for their projects (I believe this was your point in the linked comment). We need fewer journal articles (maybe), but deeper contributions.
Yet: so far, it's what we've got. It works pretty well. Yeah, it sucks to be a PhD going through the grind, watching the 4th-years in the lab slowly deflate as they realize they're going to have to get real jobs. But perhaps we were all crazy to believe we could really make a career out of trying out crazy ideas and telling other people about them.
This is my point, actually. I'm not expert enough in the issue to believe strongly that I'm right -- but this is my intuition. I don't really care if the extra funding goes toward projects, etc. I just want to see people have to optimize less to get up the next level in the pyramid, so that they can push their work in better alignment with 'pure science' rather than maximizing chances of publication within 2-3 years (especially strong pressure on the postdocs). Something like a 5:1 ratio, rather than 73:1 (or whatever the real number is), seems better to me.
Yet: so far, it's what we've got. It works pretty well.
Agreed. I just don't like miscellaneous calls for 'increased science funding'. That just expands the pyramid, fat base and all. I would like the pyramid to be shaped more like an imperial battle cruiser [1].
In any fucked up system, one should look first to the incentives, right? Which takes us to the journal system itself. To me it seems hopelessly outdated, at least in some areas. So here's a thought experiment:
Science (especially now) seems to be largely about gathering data, doing a simulation, or inventing a method (to either gather or analyze data). The data-gathering papers would be more useful as commits to a giant database in the sky, the simulation papers to a giant VCS, and the methods to a giant wiki. Indeed, within the labs I've seen, something like this is in place internally.
It would free up the journals to publish articles about the interpretation of analysis results, and reviews of larger bodies evidence to compile them into deeper theories - which rightly belong in journals. Peer-review would be done by upvoting (!) So what would PhDs be optimizing for? Commits x Votes.
Yep, I just suggested that academia should be redone in the image of HN (I'm probably not the first).
The "winnowing process" is all about limiting participation (and competition).
Dr. Menand is effectively arguing that Ph.D. candidates are not putting up a huge investement to learn more (that happens in the first 3 years) or to contribute more (a single good research paper takes about a year), but simply wasting time on a larger dissertation. (If he thought that Ph.D. students were learning lots, and making a useful contribution, then he wouldn't have written the article).
This huge investement is there to protect the cushy status of academics. To fortify the ivory tower against the contributions of dilettantes. Menand seems to think this is a good thing, but that it has been taken too far - being more selective of Ph.D. students would be more effective than making the Ph.D. a real grind.
