Re:An open discussion forum for ArXiv papers
by godelski on Sunday September 08, 2024 @09:33PM
(#41484770)
> Unfortunately, academics are still hindered by institutional inertia
As an ABD this has been a real pain point for me. Maybe I came into academia thinking what mattered most was the research. But now I'm the stereotypical PhD who passionately despises academia for its lack of being academic. I'm happy to have competition, but at the end of the day are we all not on the same team?
How the hell did we create a system where it is the norm that an advisor does not read a thesis, to read papers, to mentor? For that to be the norm among a committee? When I've had issues with getting works getting through review (even when they have high citations due to arxiv) I don't understand why it's acceptable for a response to be "keep trying" instead of "here, I read the paper and reviewer responses, let me help"[0]. It seems inefficient that we throw students into the deep end and watch them sink or learn to swim. I think there'd be a lot fewer dejected PhD students if there was a stronger focus on academics, mentorship, and collaboration over churning out ̶w̶i̶d̶g̶e̶t̶s̶ papers.
I think what pisses me off the most is thinking that research significance and success can be measured __purely__ through metrics like citation counts, H-indices, i10's, awards, etc. I'm not saying those are useless, but that we can evaluate without looking at the content? (as you say, actual quality of work) It's like we learned about Goodhart's Law and decided it was a feature not a bug.
(I know this is not always the case and there are many amazing advisors, but I'd be impressed if someone didn't know this is happening at least somewhere within their department.)
[0] If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a department to mint a PhD. These types of things should come from committees, not just advisors. Our annual meetings and review shouldn't just be going through the motions.
How the hell did we create a system where it is the norm that an advisor does not read a thesis, to read papers, to mentor? For that to be the norm among a committee? When I've had issues with getting works getting through review (even when they have high citations due to arxiv) I don't understand why it's acceptable for a response to be "keep trying" instead of "here, I read the paper and reviewer responses, let me help"[0]. It seems inefficient that we throw students into the deep end and watch them sink or learn to swim. I think there'd be a lot fewer dejected PhD students if there was a stronger focus on academics, mentorship, and collaboration over churning out ̶w̶i̶d̶g̶e̶t̶s̶ papers.
I think what pisses me off the most is thinking that research significance and success can be measured __purely__ through metrics like citation counts, H-indices, i10's, awards, etc. I'm not saying those are useless, but that we can evaluate without looking at the content? (as you say, actual quality of work) It's like we learned about Goodhart's Law and decided it was a feature not a bug.
(I know this is not always the case and there are many amazing advisors, but I'd be impressed if someone didn't know this is happening at least somewhere within their department.)
[0] If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a department to mint a PhD. These types of things should come from committees, not just advisors. Our annual meetings and review shouldn't just be going through the motions.