Scientific problems and obstacles inhibiting global progress

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Several recent studies have clearly shown that Pcd students are three times more likely to have mental health problems than the general population. 1 in 10 Pcd students admits to having thought about suicide in the past two weeks.

The reasons for these studies are not specified, but many will easily name them themselves: the workload for graduate students is huge, the salaries are extremely low (in some countries, more than half that of technical personnel without higher education), and confidence in the future is almost completely absent. All this is connected with the historically developed situation, which made the system of science in modern society unbearable for the scientists themselves in almost all countries.

The PhD itself (conditionally a doctoral degree, it meant different things, gave different rights in different countries and was formed slightly differently, but on the whole it was needed in order to give a person the right to become a "professor" and have the right to fully teach in higher educational institution) appeared in the 19th century, and began to spread at the beginning of the 20th. Not all universities began to issue PhDs at the same time, and the criteria for issuing were always different in different universities. Moreover, they differ even now (which plunges many into depression in itself: for example, in my case, in order to obtain a PhD, TWO articles of the first authorship in a scientific journal with an impact of at least 2 are required, and in Europe, many universities do not require scientific articles at all and issue PhDs without them).

However, as PhDs have grown exponentially throughout the 20th century, the histories of today's aging professors, when they earned their degrees, and those of today's graduate students, are radically different. Literally 50 years ago, getting a degree almost automatically meant that you became a "professor" - so, for example, in the movie "X-Men" one of the main characters with the nickname "Professor Xavier" receives his degree, and they immediately begin to call him a professor … He jokes like this:

- Oh, what are you, you can't call me a professor yet, I haven't officially started teaching yet …

This his slip of the tongue probably causes more than one crooked grin among today's graduate students and … postdocs. Especially postdocs, because the word "postdoc" itself did not exist until the end of the 20th century, just as there was no such, let's say, underprofessionalism.

While the number of degrees awarded was relatively small, and the expansion of existing universities and the opening of new ones associated with the economic and technological upsurge of the middle of the 20th century was rapid, almost every defended graduate student received a professor position at the university and really, as it were, became a professor after the defense. Of course, he still had a long career path within the university, but it could be argued with a certain degree of certainty that, in any case, he would be able to stay in science one way or another.

When the exponential growth of issued PhDs crossed with a halt in the expansion of funding for the scientific sector, the following changes took place: firstly, competition for the PLACE of a professor arose and began to intensify, which in itself was almost unthinkable at the beginning of the 20th century for a defended graduate student. How is it - defended, but did not get a job? What is it like? But like this. There are no seats. Everything has already been stolen before us.

Secondly, the position of the so-called substitute arose - a powerless and low-paid hard worker mule, on whom in today's science almost all scientific office work falls (and the part that does not fall on the shoulders of the postdoc is on the shoulders of the graduate student). Disenfranchised because postdocs are contractors, the contract is limited to 2-3 years, and as a rule is not extended. A person who has just defended himself with great effort is told something like the following:

- We will hire you, so be it, but only for 2 years, only with such a salary, and after graduation go wherever you want, but in terms of conditions and career advancement, we can not give you anything at all, this is your problem.

Agree, this is already very different from the joyful situation of Professor Xavier, who just completed his diploma in the science fiction film X-Men.

Do you think that's all? That's not all. Ha. As a rule, postdocs cannot be concluded more than three times. That is, you have exactly three (or even fewer - sometimes only 2) attempts to get a professor position after graduating from your PhD. The first postdoc, i.e. the first two years when you work hard, trying to bring your resume to the form that will allow you to get a professor position, and the second postdoc (which you also need to look for yourself - which means six months flying out to write a resume, search for vacancies, interviews, etc.)). If, after the second postdoc, you could not get a job as a professor, most likely it will never work at all. Where to go after that? Nobody cares where you want. You will most likely not be hired into the industry, because by this time you are already 35-40, and you have exactly zero work experience outside the academy; but at the academy they won't take you anywhere either, because you haven't reached a professor, and third-fifth postdocs have not been accepted, they will hire a young better instead of you. Well, that is, you can go taxi or get a job as a technician. Welcome to the real world of science, Neo! Congratulations on your PhD and your ruined life.

But that's not all. Today's competition in science due to overproduction of PhDs is so great that even a post-doc job is hard to find. That is, people are literally ready to work for food, be discriminated against and bullied, just in order to continue working in science. This situation is possible because today many postdocs find a place not in their own country, but in a foreign one. Moving is accompanied by stress, in a foreign country, a person, as a rule, is very poorly oriented, and if a visa is tied to a scientific supervisor, all conditions have been created for the postdoc's complete psychological and material dependence on the boss in the lab. After all, even to change jobs, for the next postdoc, you will need a letter of recommendation from the boss, and possibly a personal telephone conversation with this boss … and without recommendations, they don't take it now - behind your back there are still a hundred or two newly defended young scientists, from which it is easier to mold what pleases.

Oh yes. How could I have forgotten. Not only a recommendation is important for finding a postdoc position after defense (as well as finding a professor position - if it came to life like that). The correct resume is also important. What is the right resume? This

- as many articles as possible where you are included by the author

- the greatest possible impact factor of these articles

- as much as possible the citation index of these articles

- as many conferences as possible where you made presentations

- as many grants received as possible.

In this case, "as much as possible" means, literally, as much as possible. That is, the quantity. Nobody is interested in quality, there is no time - until you read 250 resumes (this is not a joke) of applicants for your position as candidates for postdocs, you will swell in general, what is there to understand about some qualities of scientific work … In general, you should have time to look through these 250, in principle.

What is "as much as possible" in numbers?

Well, here's the case of my American friend. When I was with her, she was a second postdoc and looked first for a professor position, then for a tertiary postdoc, and then (after six months of unsuccessful searches) ANY JOB IN GENERAL with the following resume:

1. More than 20 articles

2. Average Impact 5, last article by first authorship Impact 11

3. High citations

4. More than 20 conferences

5. Two grants received and worked out.

All this did not help her in any way to find a job in science either as a professor or a postdoc, and she eventually found a job in the industry, and there was a 50-50 chance there with a different candidate, but in the end they took her. She almost cried with happiness, "Lord, how tired I am during these six months from the feeling that I will have nowhere to go, Lord, I finally HAVE JOB."

So here we come to the most important thing, which makes today's science a problem. From my point of view, such a system based on evaluating the work of an average scientist through the number (articles, impact factor, citations, conferences, etc.) leads to a situation that

successful scientist = narrow-minded scientist who does not conduct serious research

Because any conference, any writing of an article (with all the ensuing consequences - to issue, submit to the journal, subtract the requirements of each individual journal, correspondence with reviewers, answers, corrections, etc.) is TIME. Time, divorced from the actual research work. In other words, the more a person writes articles and travels to conferences, the less he works on a serious scientific project.

This situation was created gradually during the 20th century, and there are still scientists working who managed to fit in and get a place without such difficult problems, so there is still some kind of meaningful scientific activity. However, if you think carefully about the numbers, things get worse exponentially. This means that each next year is twice as bad as the previous one.

The exponential overproduction of PhDs has led to problems not only at the level of employment of graduates and postdocs, but also at all other levels. The number of articles submitted to journals has increased insanely (after all, the measure of a scientist's assessment is the number of articles!); all the magazines are very loudly shouting that they are being filled up with tons of waste paper, which they do not have time to thoughtfully sort out. Plus, most of the submitted articles are also of low quality, since they come from China, India and other such countries where there are fewer requirements for the quality of the article than for the quantity. In China, the salary of a scientist directly depends on the number of published articles. In this case, we come to the situation that the job of a scientist is to write as many articles as possible as quickly as possible.

NOT scientific work. This work no longer has anything to do with science.

Needless to say, how much such a situation literally provokes falsification of research results, shallowness of articles and, in general, any methods of increasing article productivity to the detriment of science? Falsification will also allow you to increase your impact factor and citation rate, since this is also vital for you - vital, i.e. for survival.

By itself, the number of scientific articles began to grow exponentially - people do what life requires of them, and if society told the scientist "we want you to publish more articles," then the scientist … releases more articles. The situation has gotten to the point where the so-called "predatory magazines" have arisen - these are online magazines that can be paid to easily publish your article; Such magazines target the oppressive feeling of a race for the number of articles, and scientists go to great lengths to get published, and become victims of such magazines. Journals charge a huge amount of money from scientists for publication, and then disappear from the network a few months later.

Many countries recognize that this situation leads to a decrease in the quality of scientific work in general and the quality of specialists in particular.

Solution? No one has come up with a solution yet, because by and large everyone does not care what is done in science, suffering scientists have no time to do something other than writing as many articles as possible and looking for work, and the governments of all countries at the moment are generally grave saw the development of science and want to invest diminishing resources in something else.

In theory, we have a huge publicly funded resource (scientists) that could be thrown into solving burning problems (climate destruction, the growth of diseases, aging of the population, etc.), but as long as the assessment of a scientist's activity is the number of articles, this resource will be go nowhere - solving such serious problems requires collective efforts and long-term reliable funding with OTHER CRITERIA FOR EVALUATING THE PERFORMANCE OF INDIVIDUAL SCIENTISTS. Others.