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Ask Slashdot: Advice For Budding Scientist?
New submitter everithe writes "Dear Slashdot, I am nearing the end of my undergraduate years and hoping to continue on in academia, probably focusing on condensed matter physics. Recently I've noticed some alarming pessimism among Slashdotters about the state of science — that fraud is rampant and that people honestly trying to do science are less likely to be recognized and obtain tenure. Obviously I am very interested in doing real and useful science, but am worried that this could conflict with my ability to put food on the table. My question is, how bad is it really, and do you have any advice for how one just starting out might survive in such an environment?"
Those cases are all exceptions. Look around at your department, or the next one over. They're not full of crooks (probably.) The vast majority of upper-level academes are just committed nerds: think about how many cases you've heard of, and then how many universities there are, and how many professors, postdocs, and graduate students at each. Life goes on.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Plagiarize,
Let no one else's work evade your eyes,
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes,
So don't shade your eyes,
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize -
Only be sure always to call it please 'research'.
Patents do not affect scientific research at university institutions. I know first hand of PLENTY of research based directly on methods and techniques which are patented, and nobody gives it a second thought.
The biggest problem with academia is the number of people vying for a very limited number of positions/jobs. Be prepared to go to where the work is, and that may mean the other side of the world (Europe, Asia, Australia, etc). Also be prepared to spend a fairly long time in a non-tenure track position, and to have to relocate multiple times from temporary position to temporary position.
Disclaimer: I am a current PhD student leaving academia to go into industry, my brother is a Post-doc in Physics looking for a tenure track position for a while now.
....probably focusing on condensed matter physics....
Well now. You're prepared for a seven figure career on Wall Street..
Sonny, don't waste your life in academia! You'll be 50 before you do anything worthwhile. And in the meantime, you'll be teaching an ever dwindling group of people who want to learn your subject or worse - engineering students.
On Wall Street, you'll be a god! You'll rake in the big bucks, great cars, great women, great math, and people will be impressed!
Condensed Matter? They'll ask, "You mean like my condensed orange juice? Or condensed milk - in a can?"
Yeah, get laid describing that! OTOH, "I work on Wall Street! I also have disposable Porches. Well, not disposable. I donate them to poor slob doctors.'
"Oooooooo! Take me back to your place now!"
See? And when you make it big, retire with your money and finance your own research - no need to publish or perish, no bullshit classes to teach - no engineers, no begging for funding - unless Tropicana wants help, and best of all, fucking young chicks won't get you fired! It'll get you promoted!
Come with me to the Darkside! UNLIMITED POWER! POOOWWWWWWWWEEEEEERRR!
Most of the talk of fraud is from religious nuts, climate change deniers etc. so just ignore these idiots.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
They say that evloution can't be true because the bible says it. And that global warming must be wrong because they like driving an SUV, and because they know they are nice people they cannot be impacting the environment. Most people you meet within science won't be at all like that.
If it's what you want, go for it. You may struggle for a few years early on, very few jobs are awesome (pay wise) to start but over time it will get better. Also remember, you're never too old to try something new (with the exception of a few career fields like fighter pilot), if your dream job doesn't work out, you may be able to find another one that you enjoy but never realized existed (science majors have many more options open to them than say, business majors). Success is never guaranteed, but if you don't try, you'll never get anywhere.
I too would one day like to be an Academic Scientist, and maybe I will get there, I am just taking the extra long route right now ;)
Best of luck to you.
Find great mentors. I recommend Richard Feynman.
You can't go wrong getting his perspectives on science (besides his actual science, which has some relevance to condensed matter physics). I don't know anyone who describes learning about nature better. If what he says doesn't resonate, you might consider leaving the field. If it resonates, you may find you don't care about other people's opinions as much and just enjoy the pleasure of finding things out.
There are many hours of videos of him online free.
Cheating and fraud is not rampant, and has never been. The vast majority of scientists never go close to any unethical line. Most cheating is likely found out too, sooner or later, and sooner the more flagrant and potentially important it is. Your career will not be affected in any way by the existence of fraud in the field.
What is a concern, however, is the sheer amount of young researchers and the relative lack of positions for them. Academia is an up-or-out kind of system, and at every step of the career ladder you are competing with dozens or hundreds of other qualified people. To put it bluntly, do go into science as a career if that where your hearts desire lies, but also make sure you have some idea of what to do instead if it doesn't work out.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
While I can't provide much specific information, I can tell you some general advice.
Background: My father is an internationally prominent plant scientist and former air pollution researcher. He's also worked at several universities in important positions (department head, etc.). One things that he's mentioned repeatedly (if not often) is the fanatical importance that most scientists and university personnel seem to place upon what's "accepted." Bluntly, this is a pretty blatant problem of inflated egos (endemic to universities and such, in general), but highly educated people are also quite good at pretending they're being rational, rather than emotional about decision-making. The essence of the problem is that if you come up with an idea that's contrary to the current "status quot" belief, and if you promote it shamelessly (as you should), you'll prick the egos of others and be ostracized, criticized, and (if possible) discredited. Furthermore, the success of a scientist seems to be about 40% skill/talent and about 60% political adeptness. Of course, an ethical and self-aware scientist will put away his pride and fear and publish good work regardless of what others think--and sometimes that will pay off in the end. Below is how it might do so.
I can't provide specific examples of theory-based conflict off the top of my head, but I can illustrate the power of politics (i.e. university politics, scientific community politics, etc.) in science by noting that because my father was able to obtain more grant money than his superiors at UC Riverside, the university decided to close down the department that he headed: the air pollution research department. Of course, this meant a prolonged job hunt and a big move for my dad and his family (including me). (UC Riverside's leaders thereby got rid of the "troublemaker.") If you aren't aware, Riverside is about 60 miles outside of LA and obviously has air quality problems to rival nearly anywhere else. A lesson to be learned from this is that no matter how good a scientist you are, and no matter how good you are at procuring what you need to do good work, ultimately it's the ego of those who provide you with land, labor, and capital that will determine how successful you are. Therefore, it's proven extremely important to foster good will amongst those who can help you do good science. The ethical way to do this (as far as it's been demonstrated to me) is to use your science to help people with real-world problems as much as possible, and show others that helping you is in THEIR best interests.
My dad now works as a farm adviser (associated with UC Davis), and it's proven very useful to go out of his way to help his "client base" (farmers, primarily) see the value of what he does by helping them to increase their production, and thereby their personal wealth. Essentially, it's good to do a good job, but it's better to "go the extra mile" to bring your good work to those who can make profitable use of it. This strategy has seen my father summoned (from the US where he lives) to China, Italy, Chile, Brasil, Uruguay, Japan, and probably others that I don't recall. By inventing means to help farmers grow their crops cheaper and more reliably (including new methods of testing for nitrogen levels without a mass spectrometer), he's made himself indispensable to the industries and institutions (universities, etc.) that he serves. It hasn't made him "rich," but it has given him job security and a good living for his family.
So, the bottom line here is something like:
Do the best possible work you can, but make sure it's actively helping people who need it. That way, when you annoy the scientific community or your academic "superiors," you'll already have people to guard against you being politically maneuvered out of position, since losing you will also cost them money and other resources. Science for the sake of science is good and useful (eventually), but in order to keep it up, you have to provide others with very good reason to help you keep at it.
I hope that helps.
--Dane
Obviously I am very interested in doing real and useful science, but am worried that this could conflict with my ability to put food on the table.
Pick any one.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
"The squeaky wheel gets the most oil", and the words "The vocal minority" seem to apply here.
There are rare cases of scientific fraud which bring out the doomsayers who you'll find pessimistically posting in every article. The reality is there are hundreds of thousands of academics around the world doing real science that brings real benefits to our lives every day. Their results alone should be proof that you can make survive in that chosen industry.
Don't Become a Scientist. It isn't worth it.
There is a fair bit of nasty backstaby fighting in some subfields, but maybe you could just avoid such subfields.
There is a much larger problem that real academic science jobs aren't nearly numerous enough accommodate the glut of PhDs. Anyone studying a STEM degree should plan on "selling out" to industry after their PhD or first post-doc. If possible, avoid the subfields that industry doesn't care about.
If you find yourself with a PhD in a not particularly applicable subfield, then you're basically faced with several choices :
(1) Retool back into an applied subfield. (2) Accept a teaching position at a crappy school that doesn't want you "wasting time" on research. (3) Emigrate to a poorer country who's university system is still growing. If you emigrate, then plan on staying permanently, you'll lack the financial resources to retire in the first world after you raise kids or whatever.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
And the reason why nobody gives a second though to patent infringement in academia is because research use of patented inventions in academia is subject to an exemption from infringement. It's perfectly legal.
That said, it's probably imprudent to let mere facts get in the way of an anti-patent rant on here :)
If everyone intelligent did it
Except that you know perfectly well that will never happen. The only way you can claim it will is by resorting to a "no true Scotsman" denial of reality.
and so risking repeating others, it seriously isn't that bad. There's a fashion for showing how cynical you are, and how the world's going to hell and everyone's on the make and blah blah blah. It really isn't particularly bad. What you do have is a *lot* of politics, which circles around getting funding if you're a professor, and circles around getting postdoctoral positions if you're not. This does lead to both a conservatism -- which, regardless of what people might tell you is the valid approach for science; something has to be tested to oblivion for people to believe it, even if that means you're likely risking your career doing something too whacky too young -- and to a regrettable amount of brown-nosing and nepotism. There's also a distressing focus on publishing and getting citations, so if you work in a field with a lot of interest but with relatively few people you'll struggle to attract as much attention as someone who picked an easier course. What I've found increasingly annoying recently is that my career is being judged by anonymous referees on journals who clearly just don't know what they're talking about -- I get the very strong impression that they're PhD students very early on in their PhDs -- and I find that offensive. But the point I would make is this is no different from any other field and any other job, and at least in academia you can be sure that the people you're working with are at least as smart as you are. Except some of the referees.
From my experience in academia -- ten years now since I started my PhD -- the people you'll encounter are very smart, dedicated, professional in their attitude to their work; but you'll have to play the game to a certain extent, attending conferences, networking, making sure the right people know who you are, work in fields which are attracting funding but which aren't glutted or flashes in the pan (in my field that was probably braneworld cosmology; it attracted enormous funding for about five years or so and then it died out, and people who focused exclusively on braneworlds during their PhD find it a bit tough to get new positions), and make sure you put a professional face on all your work, and that you can always defend every choice you've made and every bit of work you've done. So, no different from any other job you want to do well in.
As for money, no, this isn't the best-paid job, but I get extremely irritated when people complain about it, because it's also really not that badly paid, and we get fantastic benefits. Unless you're unlucky with your lab you have fairly flexible hours, you're doing a job you love (and you better had, because if you don't love it you'll be very much better off doing something else), and there's enormous opportunity for travel, which is fully funded. If you're lucky you get generous allowances while you're away, too. We got an absurd amount to visit Toronto when there was a conference there in the mid 2000s -- something like $60 a day to eat. So we ate cheap during the day and had plenty in the evenings for a big meal and some drinks. I think we even ended making money on it...
So basically I'd say it's no worse than any other field. It can be very political given the funding situation, but that happens anywhere and in any job, and generally you've got the advantage that your boss isn't a moron, which is sometimes hard to say if you pick other career options.
Alarming pessimism is the defining trait of Slashdot culture... Science is like any field, and the majority of scientists are like the majority of other professionals - there is plenty to complain about, and plenty to be thankful for. If you want to see how it really works, I suggest trying to attend a small conference or summer school. The Les Houches schools are very good if you can go abroad, otherwise a school which is at least two weeks and has fewer than one hundred participants, mostly students, is ideal. You will meet people doing similar things to what you will be doing in the near future if you stay in physics, and you will learn a lot about the field beyond the textbook and canonical examples level of undergraduate studies. Which is not to disparage the textbooks - if you don't have Altland and Simons' book you should get it, it's fantastic.
Mod up on the travel aspect - if you're not willing to move away from your home country then you're in the wrong field and may well find yourself struggling to get work. If you refuse to move from your home city then you're shit out of luck. Academia is extremely unstable up until you get a permanent position, and there aren't many of them going around and you very rarely get a chance to pick where your permanent position will be. (Exceptions exist; schools like Cambridge and Oxford in Britain have a long history of hiring their own - although even that can't be assumed for Oxbridge graduates, not least because there are so many of them - and I get the impression a few of the Ivy League are similar. But even there, people generally have to move around.)
Most of these problems occur in "sciences" such as psychology or sociology. As a physicist, myou have little to fear.
Thanks for taking the time to discuss this, I feel strongly about it and really like learning more on this matter. If possible, as you gain expertise, would you mind updating your blog with more details? It is extremely helpful for me. kamagra
. . . the state of Society, less so . . .
Actually, the state of science is in the state it always is . . . unknown. That is why we need scientists to at least be able to chip away at some pieces of the Grand Puzzle.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The amount of money you'll be able to get in academia depends vastly of where you are, who you work with, and what you do.
Assuming you're in the US, it will vastly depend on which university you are in. Try to get close to a team in a prominent university. Getting a good job in academia is mostly a matter of relations.
Academics have a variety of motivations, and a common one in my field was indeed to see that work used - by other academics, principally. In which case the same scenario applies - research use does not infringe.
Basing any work on patented work is a reasonable means to obtain cross-licensing agreements if you improve upon the base invention. That's a good start for commercialising an academic venture.
Runaway!
Seriously, there are lots of great careers for someone in your position to pursue, why go into something where the deck is completely stacked against you? Even if you do succeed it will take longer, and not be to the level of where you could have been in an another career track. Take it from someone who has been through that ringer, if you do go for a PhD it should only be because you have a plan for an immediate exit from academia when you finish it (i.e. you are just "getting your union card").
The fact that you are questioning tells me you might not truly want this, and the only, only time I would ever suggest someone follow this track is if they have an unbelievable burning desire for it. That's what it will take!
"I'm not afraid" you say? You will be.
Your accusation of thoughtcrime is based solely on doublethink...
As a disclaimer, my undergraduate degree and PhD were in chemistry, rather than physics, and in the UK, not the US.
When I started my PhD I was planning on staying in academia. By the end of it I was desperate to leave it behind forever. Organic chemistry is somewhat notorious for having some very strange ideas about what constitutes an acceptable work/life balance. It's generally accepted (and emphasised most strongly by the more successful and/or ambitious groups) that as a PhD student or a post-doc, your work is your life. Six days a week is standard, and if you're not still in the lab by at least 7 o'clock in the evening then you're a slacker. As an aside, this leads to extremely poor time management practices, since the accepted solution to any perceived problem is "throw more lab hours at it"; this is partially due to the nature of the field and organic chemistry still being a touch unpredictable and requiring large amounts of experimental work to offset this, but it's an endemic part of the working culture. It also leads to people being in the lab just to be seen to be in the lab, rather than using their time productively. It's ridiculous.
There was a study commissioned by the Royal Society of Chemistry a few years back looking at why chemistry had such a poor retention rate of women. Physics has a low proportion of female academics, too, but then it has a relatively low proportion of female undergraduate students. Chemistry, on the other hand, has roughly equal male and female intake at undergraduate level, but the further up the ladder you go the further the ratio becomes skewed in favour of men. So what's up with chemistry? The conclusion was that the field fosters tribal attitudes to adversity (your PhD is a trial by fire!) and very masculine support systems, and that long term prospects are not very conducive to family life. I remember reading a related quote from a US professor which, to paraphrase from memory, said: "I can give you a list right now of all my former [chemistry] students who had a good handle on their career prospects. They're in my 'recommendation letters to medical schools' folder."
Funding is short for post-doc places and shorter for academics. But there's always industry jobs, right? Wrong. The jobs barely exist. Where they do exist, they're poorly paid, unstable and have poor promotion prospects. Anecdotally, when I was looking for jobs at the end of my PhD the going rate for an organic chemistry industry job (post doc experience preferred) was around £22-24k. That's less than what a sociology student going for any of the generic graduate schemes at a thousand different companies can expect to get straight out of their undergraduate degree, and with less opportunities for advancement to boot.
So if you want to have a life outside of your work, pursue hobbies or outside interests, start a family, buy a house, be relatively financially comfortable - a career in chemistry (I won't generalise to "science", that would be overreaching) is a very, very poor choice. It won't change, either, because there will always be someone who will be willing to work 12 hour days 6-7 days a week for the prospect of just one more publication. Is it worth it? That's obviously up for individuals to decide, but depressingly enough the smartest thing I could have done with 9 years of scientific training at world class research institutes was to use it as a springboard to get the hell out.
I'm much happier now.
For the past 15 years I've had an, let's call it unusual, job working in the astronomy department at the University of Arizona. First as a student employee (research assistant) and now for a private start-up, though my "office" unofficially remains on campus.
So, I've seen a lot of the goings on in the department, and while I'm certainly not plugged into the faculty grapevine, I see what goes on.
Fraud? No. It's a friendly and cordial place to work really. If there has been any fraud, it has been either very minor or done by people who weren't around very long. But, astronomy is not like physics or biology. Sure, the grants are still very competitive, but it is expected that you will be looking for the unknown, so somewhat fanciful ideas aren't immediately shunned. Maybe you wont get to use your first choice 10m telescope, but there are many others available.
The state of astronomy is changing, though. I had a lengthy chat with my boss about this recently. He's about to turn 80, so he's been at this since the Apollo days. Back then, space research got a lot of funding, but that's not true any more. Often, to get a grant you need to try to show how this idea of yours could conceivably help industry. The problem is that a lot of astronomy falls into the fundamental research category. You just want to see how the universe functions. It is a lot harder to get money for that these days. There are subcategories where it is easier, though. I work in the adaptive optics part of the department and this has obvious uses for, among others, the military. This means you can potentially get funding from the defense department, they get something they want, and you still get to do astronomy.
Having said all of that, do read what a lot of others have posted about the scarcity of jobs for scientists in academia. It's not good. My position is somewhat unique (in both good and bad ways that I wont get into here), so I haven't had to deal with this yet. And perhaps astronomy is somewhat more fortunate than regular physics in that there are fewer students trying to get PhDs, but getting a permanent job still isn't easy.
Elrond, Duke of URL
"This is the most fun I've had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"-Sam&Max
Your first mistake is asking slashdot. The typical slashdot reader thinks he has the IQ of Einstein, Feynman and Dirac combined, but in reality his knowledge is limited to how to make EMACS compile on OpenBSD.
Try out an actual physics oriented community. Reddit has a few: http://www.reddit.com/r/physics http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience. I'm sure there are plenty more.
One academic per family is enough.
Gently reply
Seriously.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I know young scientists tend to be a bit in the dark about sex and suchlike, but really! Budding is not the way that mammals produce offspring.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Recently I've noticed some alarming pessimism among Slashdotters about the state of science
So, you are going to make career decisions based on the mindset of a subset of the slashdot readership? For actual advice I would say do what you love and the rest will work itself out.
I'm not really sure where you have gotten the impression that fraud is rampant in science, except perhaps by confusing Slashdot with a real news source. At least in the field where I am a graduate student, Neuroscience, fraud is rare to non-existent. I would be much more worried about the political climate for funding. Depending on your field, software patents could also become a concern in the future.
People don't do advanced degrees like a PhD for the money (which isn't that great) or the recognition (which is hard to come by) but because they love the work.
Basically, if you love doing it, do it. If you hang in there, things will probably work out. If not, find something else to do with your life. A while ago I summed up in a blog post my thoughts on doing a PhD: http://computational-intelligence.blogspot.com.au/2011/11/hang-in-there.html
Just my $0.02.
You will see sciences ugly side eventually, and, if your successful, you will see it often. Put your big boy pants on and suck it up.
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
Just go for a PhD and think about an academic career again once you are in your last year. In my experience, you will be disillusioned about science within 4-6 months. Most projects don't work and most PIs have unrealistic expectations and no time for supervision. Salaries suck and long-term career prospects suck, in all fields. There is a lot of jobs in competitive fields but cut-throat competition and no jobs in the other fields. Also I think that fraud is more widespread that a lot of academics would like to admit but it remains anecdotal and it will certainly not have any impact on your career prospects if you are honest. This being said, this is I think the best and most stimulating job in the world (or at least one of them). And I personally work from 9.30 till 9.00 every weekday and some hours over weekends.
My best advice is to consider it as seriously as you would any other job. It helps to have a clear career plan and know where you are going. Too many students start thinking it will just happen. Once you know in which field you want to work, seek advice about the best labs and apply there. Visit as many labs as you can. Don't be afraid about moving to other countries/states and if an excellent opportunity presents itself outside of what you initially considered, take some time to think about it. The most important things are (1) that you choose a project that you like, (2) that the lab where you work is full of nice people and (3) that your boss is really famous in his field, not necessarily in that order. Don't go for second grade universities, it is not worth it. If you want your academic career to be full of opportunities, you need to do your PhD in one of the top 50-100 best universities of the world and in a really good lab for your field. That will keep most doors opened and put you in the most stimulating environment. This is not to say that good research is not done outside of these but simply that you are guaranteed to get maximal exposure to foreign ideas and people.
I'm just about to start a tenure track assistant professorship this summer at a research university. Yes, it was a long road to get there, and it continues to be one. For every undergrad that I've mentored, I've done everything I can to discourage them from going into academics. IF there is anything else you can see yourself doing that will make you happy besides being a professor, I would recommend it. It is a lot of thankless work, there is lots of competition, and no guarantee of making it. Getting there requires some luck, being good at politics, and being very good at what you do (hacks are recognized pretty quickly). IF there isn't anything else you can envision yourself doing that will make you happy, then go for it. Just remember that the reward is waking up and doing what you want to do every day (and I mean every waking moment of every day). Though there are many difficult people with whom you have to work, most people are fantastically smart, interesting, and passionate. For me, this was one of the two most important things for becoming a prof (I had spend 5 years in industry as a scientist and was bored silly by my coworkers' water cooler conversations). The other is the opportunity to think up and work on hard problems that no one else had ever done before.
My dad is also an academic. Watching his path was quite inspiring for me, through I didn't appreciate all he had done until I was set on doing the same. He worked wherever he could that would allow him to write grants and do the work he wanted to do. It wasn't until he was 50 that he landed his first profship. He's now been a prof for over 15 years, works harder than before due to department responsibilities, graduate students and post docs, and loves every minute (almost). That showed me that if you keep at it long enough, eventually things would work out.
If you decide to go for the academic life, good luck and enjoy every step along the way. Just don't worry too much about the sad state of affairs for doing basic research.
Some fields are more likely to be fraudulent.
You can't really fake physics (at least I think), so I think you'll be fine on that aspect.
Although getting tenure job IS difficult.
My department (biological sciences) just went through a faculty candidate search this year.
We have two positions open and each position received 200+ application. So expect very high competition.
These people were all highly qualified good scientists, each has done 1-2 postdoc, etc.
That personally got me discouraged and I'm trying to go to MD/PhD to have some back up plan.
Now, I am in a different field, but I think I can give some hints.
First of all, people often want to see things as fraud/not fraud. But that is rarely true. Scientific work has different degree of rigidity depending on who does it and what the goal is. You can see the scale as something like "Fraud", "Criminal negligence", "Bad study", "Meh", "Good study", "Impressive study" and "This should be in nature/science/what-ever-the-top-publication-of-your-field-is". You have to consider the whole scientific process to see where a paper falls. Even if you do flawless statistics and report everything in detail your study can be crap if you choose the wrong methods. What would be fraud from a skilled researcher might just be an oversight from a less skilled one.
Secondly, this is such a tiny, unimportant, part of why you are getting into science/getting a PhD. If I was to give you any advice when you are getting into science it would be the following:
1. Make sure you love the field. If you are not ready to spend a whole weekend in the lab sweating while everybody else is out having fun it's not a very good path to take. Overtime is pretty much the norm where I work.
2. Make sure you love your adviser. He/she can make or break your career. And you are going to spend more time with him/her than your girl/boy friend, should you have one, over the next 7 years.
3. Make sure you have a backup plan. A majority of those with a PhD does NOT work in academia. You need to know stuff that lets you survive outside a university. Management, economics, applied science... Pretty much anything will do, as long as you can go out the doors and feel confident that somebody out there will hire you.
4. Remember that you are investing many productive years into this. Statistics says that your lifetime earnings will go down. Be ready to see your friends that went out in industry earn twice as much as you do.
Most academics want their work to be used.
Sure, if they're some kind of engineer. In physics, patentable inventions are frequently a side effect of figuring out useful methods (but are often only useful to other people in research), but the goal is often some little piece of knowledge about how the world works.
I seriously doubt that you will ever be challenged putting food on the table. You might have trouble buying new Beemers and the like. But if you are a good scientist chances are that you will be very much sought after and have job security as good as any super star in any field. Build a big name and you will be an asset to academic institutions even if you don't do much at all. To them your name on a door may be a great selling point to attract students and funding. Like all other fields you will be in competition despite it not being so obvious in academia.
fraud is rampant and that people honestly trying to do science are less likely to be recognized and obtain tenure
Dr. Weatherman PhD here. The above is mostly rubbish amplified by the media and those philosophers in Insane Clown Posse.
The first thing you need to realize is that all universities are different, and the requirements for obtaining tenure vary dramatically from place to place. I would presume for condensed matter physics you're not going to be at a small liberal arts college, teaching a heavy load to undergraduates, but you will be seeking out a research intensive (call them R1) university where you will, if you are lucky, interview well and get an offer with a nice startup package so you can begin to build your research program. While I am tenured at a school which tries to be both undergrad focused and research focused (the best - or worst - of both worlds) I have a pretty good feeling for what the R1 schools require. While it still varies from place to place, your national and international reputation in the field will be a major factor in determining tenure, as well as your ability to land grants and publish (the latter tends to help the former).
If I were you, I'd be asking myself the following questions: Am I willing to work 60-80 hours a week for 7 years at (comparitively speaking) low pay doing what is necessary to obtain tenure? And doing basically the same things afterwards (maybe at a slightly less vigorous clip) to obtain promotion etc.? What aspects of academia interest you the most - research? Teaching? Service? Are you willing to post-doc for a few years while putting your resume out there and interviewing? Would you settle for a non-faculty position at a research lab?The job market - in general - is pretty bad right now in academia in the US. I don't know specifically about your specific field of interest, but there are generally a lot more applicants than open positions, and in many cases, retirements are not being filled with new searches at state funded schools whose state funding has been shrinking every year. If I were you, I'd go for it and get the PhD if it's what you love to do. As much as I bitch about the job to my colleagues I consider myself to be a lucky bastard to have such a cool job where I get to do nifty science (for me, on supercomputers) and do everything I can to get those around eager weather nerd undergrads onto their own career path, whether it be grad school, the private sector, or, god help me, TV. So anyway I say go for it if you really really love learning new things and want to never stop trying to answer questions about the world around you. For me, that's mostly what it's all about.
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
If you are passionate about science like me (I am in my 4th post-doc year in biophysics), do it! But not for the money. You will spend more time at work than anywhere else, and probably work at home too (because you enjoy it!), so pick a field you love and enjoy it! You will not be as well payed as your friends, but will have enough to live comfortably. Money does not make you happy. But a fun job to go to every day will! If you are good, you will have no trouble finding jobs. And you can always start working for a company if you chance your mind, even after 6 years or so as a postdoc.
Money is a bitch of a self-replicator with little regard to its hosts. At some point it'll change from useful symbiont to pathological menace in whatever field you go into.
So go do what you love best.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I appreciate your frankness and found this very useful. I do enjoy all the learning and the machines but am quite intimidated by the rest of the incredibly capable people around. I fear I may not have the same aptitude as they do, but it's heartening that you've managed to find a career path that makes you happy. That is, if things don't work out in academia for me, at least there are other viable options (:
I've seen far too many friends, far brighter and more talented than I am, become shells of their former selves by a PhD, chemistry in particular. The academic system in particular seems to take the very best talent and utterly destroy it, with science as a whole suffering as a result.
I'm midway through a graduate program and here are the things I wish I was told before I started:
With that said, don't let the naysayers get you down. There are good people in academia and always room for a few more. Good luck!
Hey mate, spare a sig?
Do you have a reason?
Like getting an MBA. You can make way more money through fraud with an MBA than a Phd. Phds are a waste of time.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I actually found this insightful. Thanks.
My wife got a Ph.D. in molecular biology. She did a postdoc and NIH and then started to look for job. She wanted to be a professor at a University. After talking to some of the recruiters at Universities we found out they were getting hundreds of resumes for each position. In addition, the research field is brutal. You constantly struggle for grant money and tenure is pretty much a thing of the past. Universities want you to come in with grants, they take half the money, then they boot you out if you lose your grants. You have to work crazy hours and be good at politics to succeed in science. It's a very stressful environment to be in. Another thing I ran into while doing research was that the number of teaching positions at Universities has gone up about 50% since 1960, however the number of Ph.D.s has gone up 500%. Of course there are commercial research positions as well, but at least in biotech there is a lot of turn over as companies come and go. She has friends that get laid off every couple years and spend six months to a year looking for a new job. There were also a lot of sales jobs where you go around and sell equipment to companies, which she didn't want to do. Do you really want to spend all that time in school to be a sales person? My wife eventually ended up with desk job with Genebank at NIH and no longer does research. Note that she was 31 by the time she got her first real job. That's a lot of time to put into education for not much reward. She is especially annoyed that she will never make as much money as I do in IT even though she has a doctorate degree and I have a master's in CS. We have encouraged our son not to go into science. Of course money may not be your primary motivation, but love of science tends to wane over the years.
While research itself is exempt from patent monopoly, the monopoly still precludes wide application for anything useful for 20 years.
Fraud has really taken over. At least here at MIT, I know of 3 profs in the physics department who got their tenure by fraud, and that's just the ones I know for sure, the actual numbers no doubt are worse.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
This was sobering, thank you. I guess I've a lot to think about, very carefully.
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
in US academia is part of the reason for that.
See also: http://disciplined-minds.com/
Lots more links: http://p2pfoundation.net/backups/p2p_research-archives/2009-October/005379.html
What we need is a basic income for all (or similar things), which would allow those with intellectual aspirations to live their lives at a graduate student level without senior academics having such life-and-death control over whether other thinkers can lead a life of thought. Likewise, those who wanted a life in the arts or a life raising children could focus on those things. Our society has become so materially wealthy by everything we have learned over the millennia that we no longer need to live by the old scarcity myths that there is not enough to go around for everyone to have a reasonable good life materially even if few choose to be materially productive) given modern industry, robotics, AI, cheap communications, youtube educational videos, etc.) And beyond that, we've even got at least another good 1000 years of exponential growth possible if we expand into space in the local solar system and build space habitats.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
1. when you check out phd programmes, dont simply go to a school just because its famous and its a top-ranked one. your choice of thesis advisor is most important, because he/she is the one who will open up opportunities for you eventually via networking, and he/she is also the one who has the potential to bring you as far as where you want to go. for my case, i'd pick someone who is one of the masters of the trade. and of course, do some background check on the person. i wont go for someone who doesnt care for his/her student at all totally, no matter how good he/she is. by the way, dont try to run away from teaching duties during your graduate training. learn to love it, because it's all part of the trade. in fact, you'll sometimes learn beneficial things frm your juniors/students =) this is rewarding therefore hahahahah
2. fraud is not rampant; in other words, rare. the general consensus is that most of us here are honest pple making an honest living. thus said, even negative results can also be published because it shows that something's not working or perhaps we shld be looking at some other regions of interest, like what i've published on PRD. for us, sharing is caring. to say fraud is rampant is perhaps due to the fact that every time a fraud comes up, it becomes widely reported by your best friends the journalists, and sometimes fraudsters become even more famous than your nobel laureates, hence their "recognition". sometimes, even what seems to be fraud as reported may not be fraud, simply because of rivalry between rival research groups all aiming to become the first to publish whatever results they're going after, and this is probably one way they kill each other off. again, this statement may not be entirely accurate, anyone can feel free to correct what i've said, thanks =D
black sheep is everywhere. if fraud is "rampant" in science, i dont know how anyone may like to describe the financial sector, when in some circumstances what seem to be corruption morally turns out to be legal after all.
3. tenure is nv easy to achieve. there are pple who travel around the world giving talks and presentations, hoping to impress their future employers after their postdoc, and it's usually tough luck. the job market in academia is not really looking good for the foreseeable future, because there are just simply too many pple applying for a small number of openings in various faculties. thus said, dont be disheartened when at the end of your postdoc eventually you have problems looking for a tenure position. it happens and will happen to most of us. you may probably like to check out non-tenure positions, and yet at the same time publish papers with your colleagues in any lab you're interested to work in (pretty much translates to "doing something for nothing" roughly). with sufficient experience and maybe a few impressive publications, as well as some luck in networking, you may just land that position you've been craving for all the time. oh, networking is impt. eat this. seriously.
4. dont worry too much abt "food on your table". unless lady luck shines on you all the time, you pretty much struggle a bit when you start off initially, just like the rest of us. the money may not be awesome, but it's enough to make ends meet. again, do what you love doing, the wealth will come eventually. i'll love to see you bear this in mind. you're doing this in the first place for a reason, and it's because you love it. there is no meaning in life if you do something you hate just for the money. thus said, it's just like a calling. not everyone on earth has this privilege to go this far like most of us here.
5. even if everything doesnt work out for you in the end, touch wood, your training in physics pretty much allows you to do a lot of things. if at the end, money is all that you're seeking, then you can still pretty much run simulations for financial institutions and they will gladly pay you obscene amounts of cash and drown y
Thanks for the advice. Perhaps I should start going out and talking to people more, as uncomfortable as that prospect might be.
It's a dirty little secret that the media does not like to talk about.
Simply put, offshore workers are much cheaper. Expect to be forced to train your H-1B replacement.
Also on the theme of women being too smart and self-respecting for a career in science these days: http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science ... Pursuing science as a career seems so irrational that one wonders why any young American would do it. Yet we do find some young Americans starting out in the sciences and they are mostly men. When the Larry Summers story first broke, I wrote in my Weblog: "A lot more men than women choose to do seemingly irrational things such as become petty criminals, fly homebuilt helicopters, play video games, and keep tropical fish as pets (98 percent of the attendees at the American Cichlid Association convention that I last attended were male). Should we be surprised that it is mostly men who spend 10 years banging their heads against an equation-filled blackboard in hopes of landing a $35,000/year post-doc job?" ... What about women? Don't they want to impress their peers? Yes, but they are more discriminating about choosing those peers. I've taught a fair number of women students in electrical engineering and computer science classes over the years. I can give you a list of the ones who had the best heads on their shoulders and were the most thoughtful about planning out the rest of their lives. Their names are on files in my "medical school recommendations" directory. ..."
"What about personal experience? The women that I know who have the IQ, education, and drive to make it as professors at top schools are, by and large, working as professionals and making 2.5-5X what a university professor makes and they do not subject themselves to the risk of being fired. With their extra income, they invest in child care resources and help around the house so that they are able to have kids while continuing to ascend in their careers. The women I know who are university professors, by and large, are unmarried and childless. By the time they get tenure, they are on the verge of infertility.
A "basic income" for all might help in correcting this situation.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I'm a graduate student in condensed matter experiment, and I'm not at all worried about my future job prospects. Yes, it is very difficult to get one of the ~10 top-ranked tenure track positions that come open every year in a given sub-field, which would require at least one very-intense postdoc (and to some extent a lot of luck). It's somewhat less difficult to get a tenure track position as a second-tier school, and if you're good at teaching there's plenty of opportunities at smaller universities and liberal arts schools. There are however, tons of companies that hire physicists every year, especially ones who specialize in the more applied side of CME (magnetics, semiconductors, devices, etc). That's what I'm interested in, mostly because I would rather not work 60+ hours a week for the next 15 years. Physics is great fun, but it's not the only thing going on in my life. Outright fraud in physics is astoundingly rare. There's Heinrich Schoen and that's about all I can think of in the last few years. It's not a perfect world -- there are some assholes and also well-meaning people who write papers which are flat-out wrong for one reason or another. However, the vast majority of people who work in the field are honestly trying to do good work. I don't think you have anything in particular to worry about.
The fact you are interested in the subject is a good start. If you want to do a PhD for simply studying 'cool' stuff- go for it! (the definition of cool depends on your personal interest).
Ask a lecturer in condensed matter any experts (s)he knows, and send them an email, prospective CV, and offer to meet up. When you meet them, see if you can get along with them. I went to 2 interviews, one was a brief chat and the other was an interrogation. I subsequently worked for the former.
From what I've seen fraud is not rampant. The fact that scientists who are caught fabricating results end up in the news shows it is rare. I recently found out several results of mine were wrong (summary of the problem: garbage in, garbage out). I told my supervisor this, the reason for the error and he accepted it. I had to redo some calculations, and more annoyingly some guys I work with had to as well, but making sure the results were accurate was more important. We learned from the mistake and move on.
The USA may be different, and I hear funding can become an issue in some cases. That said, in condensed matter I can't see this being an issue.
Have gnu, will travel.
Preferably underneath a lake. The water helps to both fuel the fusion reactor as well as hide its tell-tale heat and radiation signature.
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
This is advice for science in general, but especially for the notion of "rampant fraud". Many of the people who make that allegation are not themselves involved in science. The vast majority of people working in science are in it because they love it, and they work within established ethical standards. However, like any industry, science does have some bad apples that rise from time to time for varied reasons.
As for tenure, if you're only finishing your undergrad now you have a long time before you will be worrying about such a thing. Some schools are doing away with it altogether. Be more concerned about staying on top of the field you want to go in to. Even more so, know what the funding situation is for that kind of work, and how to get yourself in on the funds available.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/04/06/139231/majority-of-landmark-cancer-studies-cannot-be-replicated
http://www.thelocal.se/39070/20120213/
So far, around 150 children in Sweden have developed narcolepsy from the Pandemrixswine flu vaccine, but that number could rise, according to Tomas Norberg, chair of the Swedish Narcolepsy Association (Narkolepsiföreningen).
http://dangerousprescriptiondrugs.weebly.com/flu-vaccine--narcolepsy.html
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=10
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Legislative_Exchange_Council
The source you linked to, while having some valid points, is from 1999. Many things (particularly salaries) have changed quite a bit since then.
That said, thanks to the repeated crappy economic decisions this country has been making for decades, many of the criticisms in that source are still very valid. I certainly wouldn't take it as gospel at this point, though.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
A career in the sciences is far less likely to be touched by fraud than more commercial endeavors. "Follow the money" as they say. Each discipline is its own community, however, and the level of political infighting, the need to struggle for funding, the publication pressures, etc, vary greatly. External pressures are different, too, but condensed matter physics is about as far from the front lines of the culture war as one can get :-)
I do wonder what mythical past the recent critics of science (and of academia in general) are comparing us with. Government funding has always been in the mix. Corporate funding has always come with strings attached. Read Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle to get a sense for the underlying drama of research as a creative exercise.
A good bit of luck is needed to follow the narrow path to tenure. (I stepped off long ago.) A good bit of luck is needed to bubble to the "top" of any organization of any type. The difference with the sciences is that there are innumerable interesting detours and niches along the way. Having a graduate degree in a STEM field is an advantage for pursuing many future options. And the journey has been a hell of a lot of fun!
Ultimately the question becomes "compared to what?" How will you put food on the table if you forgo grad school? And is a seat at a smaller table enough for you?
It's no accident that many early researchers were gentlemen of means and leisure.
Find a way to wealth, then do what amuses you.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Do NOT let posts you read on the internet (yes, even slashdot) discourage you. Who knows what the back story is. Maybe they did see fraud or got screwed over or they could just be full of shit. But don't live your life based on other peoples anecdotes. All the people with awesome careers are too busy doing awesome stuff to post on internet forums. Find something you think you might like to do and give it your best shot. If you're doing science outside of the third world you won't starve. You might not have fancy cars and a big house but if your work fulfills your life, that makes you a true 1%er.
Surprisingly accurate. ;)
While I was an undergrad and then pursuing a PhD (Which I didn't finish. Sysadmin work paid so much more.), I'd get into a research group based on my physics skills, and then end up being most appreciated for my blue collar skills.
At least in experimental physics, having experience in electronic construction, machine shop work, prototyping and troubleshooting can be a great edge. While the other grad students are trying to get that experience, you're already able to build and maintain lab equipment.
And if, like me, you end up doing other things than tenure track academia for a living, those abilities will nearly always let you get a job. Maybe not something glamorous, but definitely good enough to put food on the table.
I currently repair lab equipment (and vacuum pumps that are as grimey and nasty as any car engine) for a chemistry department. I enjoy it greatly.
Is it glamorous? No. Am I going to change the world? No.
Do I get to help grad students with the technical problems that come up in building and using experimental gear? Yes. Do I save groups huge amounts of money by repairing and adapting gear they couldn't afford to buy new? Yes.
Do I get to go to occasional symposia and keep up with what research is being done? Oh hell yes!
And I contribute to science in a ways I didn't expect. Perhaps even more than if I'd ended up some aging nameless postdoc/scientist endlessly running samples in a surface science facility.
That really depends on the license terms. In a lot fields (particularly those related to physical things) adding a patent license isn't too big a problem provided the holder isn't being a dick about it. Alas, some holders are scummy and either won't license at all or are usurious about what they charge for it. OTOH, some potential licensees are also just as bad.
It's worse with software, where the pace of innovation's been faster and patents have been awarded rather too easily in the US. There have been things that were patent-worthy, that have seriously pushed innovation forward in the area by rather a lot (e.g., some of the advances in compression and encryption have been really stunning) but not nearly as many of them as there have been patents and that's just encouraged various sorts of leeches and other sorts of low-lifes.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
I'm in the UK, not the US. I'm a post-doc in CS.
As many others have pointed out, fraud is rare. It probably makes for good headlines, but I have never personally seen or heard of an instance of fraud.
The negative side of academia (for me) is the growing trend of heavy focus on metrics, e.g. the number of papers published (sometimes weighted by impact factor), or the number of citations a paper receives. This is generally a result of top-down meddling by the government and distracts scientists from doing good work. I disagree with it and try to avoid thinking about this game.
I have not chased publications, but my career is going just fine.
Some people claim that you have to work 60+ hour weeks etc. to be a successful academic. In my experience, this isn't true. Some people do work those hours, but most of them have poor time management skills and are not very productive. I don't see anyone working significantly more hours than myself achieving more over an extended period. They tend to get tired, burn out a bit, and spend a lot of time procrastinating. You can be a successful academic by working reasonable office hours, plus the extra hour here or there, maybe a weekend day occasionally, and then a little extra around deadlines. You just need to be organised and disciplined.
So, don't believe all the negativity you read. I love my career, and I love the flexibility that academia gives me. I work with tons of creative people in a relaxed environment where I set my own hours, have a large say in what I do, and get to work with intelligent students who keep me on my toes!
Oh, the money sucks ;-) It's enough to comfortably live on, but compared to industry (and given the sacrifice of doing a PhD in the first place) it is a serious financial sacrifice. I am considering going back into industry at some point in order to build some savings.
Hope that's of use.
RS
And, yet, you should be careful about which academics you listen to, as well. Many folks go straight from undergraduate work to graduate work to a post-doc, and so on, without ever experiencing industry (and if you're gonna protest, "What about that summer I spent working for IBM?" then you're part of the problem) or, often, any part of the world of work as the rest of us understand it. (And, again, "I worked in the library shelving books for work-study," ain't it.)
Given all that, "Gee, the work's not so hard and the rewards aren't so slight," might not be very accurate. Asking the rest of us, who've actually worked in the "real world" (for some definition of "real world") and also watched academics in action from close range (parents and partner and working at research institutions), might be useful.
It's possible to find a rewarding (and not just financially rewarding) job that let's you use your skills and brainpower to change the world for the better. I'd argue that it's not even that hard to find one, depending on your skills and talents. If you want to get a PhD, more power to you, but make sure that you understand the tradeoffs you'll be making.
If you do go for it, go in with the understanding that academia as we know it is facing a bunch of significant challenges -- funding, distance learning, etc. -- and it may go through some pretty radical changes in your lifetime.