I believe this point has already been made elsewhere on substack by Dr. James Lyons-Weiler and Dr. Vinay Prasad. As someone who is still currently in academia, I want to add additional perspectives on what I am seeing.
Peer review is failing and getting worse
So this point was already made by the two substacks cited above. There are serious problems with science and politics becoming intertwined. I would like to give my additional perspective both as a scientist and as an editor.
First of all, we are already seeing that COVID-19 papers already got top billing in top medical journals regardless of the quality of the paper. I read papers with major flaws that were in top tier journals. (Sorry no I didn’t save the links - honestly there was so much to track back then that I just didn’t have the bandwidth.) With COVID-19 papers getting top billing, papers on other medical topics got relegated to lower tier journals. I know - I have a friend whose paper went from accepted to declined in order to make space for COVID-19. Was her paper suddenly less significant? No.
Second, the peer review system is suffering. The past few years (even before COVID-19) saw the rise of more online, open-access journals. So many more options to publish your work compared to when I was a student (and I’m not that old!) With more places to publish, there are more papers flooding the peer review system. And with more papers to peer review, there is a greater burden on the academic peer review environment. You just can’t find peer reviewers these days. And no, they are not paid. Papers sit for months before sufficient reviewers can be found.
Training of the next generation is not looking good
Something is happening to PhD students. I’ve seen a gradual decline in student commitment throughout my time as a faculty person. Students don’t understand that a PhD training position that comes with a stipend is a full-time job. They only want to learn what is taught in class and don’t want to learn by experience. They expect that their coursework will cover everything they will ever need to know in their careers, but since science is supposed to move forward, that just won’t cut it. They don’t read independently unless a paper is assigned to them. Thinking independently is hard. Often they want projects handed to them rather than designing their own projects. Now, of course not all students are like this, but the proportion of students that fit these negative characteristics grows by the year.
Why is this? Colleagues at another institution have said they see a sense of entitlement. Is that a “everyone gets a trophy” sort of syndrome? There is also this generation that was “taught to the test” - in other words, a generation where there was so much emphasis on standardized testing in schools that teachers literally took weeks off of actual teaching just to review for tests.
Understand this: PhD scientists have to be independent thinkers. They don’t have people telling them what to do. They generate the ideas. So if the next generation doesn’t want to think independently, or doesn’t know how… we have a problem.
The negative aspects of remote work…
Mainstream media is full of articles about this so I won’t get into all the issues those supposed studies have made. I will focus on academia specifically.
There were days that professors would hang out in the halls with their coffee/tea (or maybe their wine and whiskey) and just talk… and they’d come up with really awesome approaches to important scientific questions. Connections would be made and collaborations strengthened. Students could randomly wander into professors’ offices and have deep conversations about science.
Those days are gone. A lot of faculty haven’t returned to the office, despite leadership’s pleas to do so. They come in to teach and attend mandatory meetings, and they go straight home. Zoom is great for research meetings - data can be shared readily. Zoom is also great for accommodating busy schedules. But now that most meetings are on zoom… why come into the office at all, when you can stay home in your jammies, keep up on laundry, etc?
Full disclosure - I would love to stay home and see my kids more. I love wearing jammies. But I know the grad students want to see their professors so I drag my butt in. But here’s the thing - part of being a faculty person is some degree of independence, and that’s hard to take away.
I honestly don’t know how the scientific enterprise will recover from these things.
Just wanted to say thanks for posting this. It's always good to read another person's perspective.
I have read elsewhere about the "publish or perish" dilemna, where there is a lot of pressure on professors to publish, so they publish as much as they can, regardless of whether it covers new ground or actually says something new. I got the feeling that the college management pushes this, to perhaps generate money or bragging rights for the college, as well as to use it as a large measuring stick when they decide which professors to promote or grant tenure to. Also probably to use in recruiting more fee paying students and grants, etc.
Thanks for that. Although I have never been in academia, I have a BSc and a professional qualification.
My brother and sister in law both have PhD's. But it took my sister in law's husband to research on the vaccines and I doubt my sister in law would have resisted.
My brother in law and his wife took the vaxxes sadly.
Anyway, it seems to me that those who get a PhD think they have arrived whereas they have only just started on an ongoing journey of discovery. Putting Dr. in front of their names only highlights the wish to be thought of highly because of a title.
It also seems to fool the masses into accepting what people say because of their position or qualification, not because of what they are actually saying/writing.
As a Building Surveyor (now retired) I could argue putting BS in front of my name. But that could mean something else!