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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!
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.
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
Don't Become a Scientist. It isn't worth it.
Anything related to math, e.g., applied maths, theoretical maths, and statistics, is in high demand in finance, let alone other sectors, especially if you've got a base degree or focus that matches, e.g., an S.B./S.M. Bioengineering/Biology or an M.D. if you want to do principled biomedical work. In fact, with the right position, you could easily spend all day publishing biostatistics papers in Biometrika, Biometrics, the Journal of the American Statistical Association, and the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society on, say, models that analyze the effects of some treatment or drug under development, yet get paid more than someone doing the same thing in academia.
Touching on your overall concerns and questions, here are a laundry list of things that I found useful during my graduate years, with respect to a career in academia:
- Take some time to really figure out what you want to study and, ultimately, do in the future while you're in graduate school. If you don't have a firm plan, it's not a bad idea to stay in graduate school longer, provided you have grant funding from your adviser or a fellowship, to pursue other options or investigate other disciplines.
- If you are committed to being a researcher, figure out why the top scientists are where they're at today and maneuver yourself accordingly. For example, within machine learning, people like Michael Jordan, David Blei, Zoubin Ghahramani, Bill Freeman, etc. are successful because they have a somewhat strong statistical background and statistics makes up a large portion of prominent pattern recognition schemes; if you were in, say, computer science or electrical engineering and wanted to be a prominent contributor to the field, it would probably be wise to pursue an S.M./Ph.D. Statistics or an S.M./Ph.D. Applied Math to ensure that your skill set is highly developed. With respect to condensed particle physics, on the theoretical side, you'd probably be well-served by pursuing an S.M. Mathematics, with a focus in differential geometry, topology, and algebra, while, on the practical side, having some programming knowledge wouldn't hurt.
- If you're wanting to do research within academia, determine, as early as possible, where you would ultimately like to obtain a faculty position. This will dictate where you should complete your terminal degree, since, once you graduate, unless you do some incredibly amazing work in your early years, happen to work with someone very famous, or are nearing retirement with a large body of work, you will mostly be constrained to moving laterally, slightly up, or down compared to your alma mater's ranking. As an example, if you want to work at Stanford, it'd likely be good to do your Ph.D. at either Stanford, UIUC, MIT, Harvard, Cornell, or UC-Berkeley.
- If you're unable to get into a really good school during your first round of graduate applications, and you know that you'd like to teach at one, either settle for a somewhat mediocre school to start out with, especially if they offer you a research assistantship, or pursue a second undergraduate degree at your alma mater. During this time, you should ascertain how the current crop of graduate students at the good schools got admitted. If it was based upon publications, find out what journals the "best" publications are in your field are being sent to and start targeting those venues, if possible, before you reapply. If it was based upon internships, try to do more of those at better institutions/labs. If it was based upon the "old boys network" and recommendations from a trusted source, surreptitiously determine, e.g., by looking at publication records, if anyone you're either working with or that knows you well happens to have either collaborated with someone at or graduated from a better university and if they can put you in touch. (I say surreptitiously because, if you chose the mediocre graduate school route, blatantly asking someone like your committee adviser about moving to better university, especially when that move is