Hi Chapos,
We need to talk about science: how it’s made, who it’s made by, who it’s made for, and why capitalism sucks for science. Mods, please pin.
I’d like to start a semi-regular discussion thread about what science is, the institutions in which it takes place, the role of regulatory forces (and lack thereof), and in general the problems capitalism has created for science. I’m doing this to follow up on a few discussion threads from the early days of chapo, which I think are worth continuing, specifically this, this and this recent thread from yesterday.
First some definitions of terms:
Researchers, please note, that for the purposes of communication and to help folks from outside the lab and ivory tower join the conversation, when I say “science”, I mean all forms of professional-level, formal, systematically organized research, meaning I’m including non-scientific research here as well. I’m not making a distinction here, because in my experience, it doesn’t matter what field your is or how “scientific” your research methods may or may not be compared to other fields. There are problems in research which affect us all, it’s often just a matter of degree within field, lab, and our own individual abilities to cope with/avoid certain issues.
Science is an ideal, which we strive for in practice; it shapes our methods, logic, and conclusions. Academia is the deeply corrupt, capitalist institution in which much of science takes place; it shapes our labor and the science we produce. This means, it doesn’t matter what field you’re in - most of these issues are likely apparent in your field, to some degree. That said, some issues will certainly be more apparent than others in different fields in different labs and in different countries.
For those outside research reading along, please note that this means the word “science” is not synonymous with “technology”. For example in this thread the top comment is a debate about nuclear technology. There is a lot more going on in science than nuclear and climate change (and I’m saying that as a scientist who studies the psychology of the energy transition! I know better than most about subjective perceptions of nuclear energy and I'm sorry to say it’s not something you can easily change with posting). If you want to struggle-sesh about a specific technology or solution to a specific problem like climate change, please start a new post and keep your debate contained there.
My goal is to post these semi-regularly in hopes of starting a conversation which often takes place within science on a platform outside our offices and classrooms. Here are some of the topics I thought of, and this list is by no means in complete, so please offer suggestions for more:
- The publication process, peer review, and authorship
- The tenure pipeline: exploitation of grad students, postdocs, and adjunct professors
- How publish or perish hinders scientific progress (e.g., by promoting fragmentation and unreliable findings)
- The reproducibility crisis (started in my own field but now is seen as a problem for all of science)
- Science communication/”public outreach”/”valorization”
- The PhD mental health crisis, low graduation (high drop-out) rates, and burn-out more generally
- Transdisciplinary research (aka research that goes beyond formal disciplines to include practitioners and the public) & citizen science
- Open science: what is it, what’s it trying to do, and how it’s received
- Why some prominent “senior” scientists see Open Science as a conspiracy
- Sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, etc in science
I'd also be happy to discuss things like university tuition rates, exploitation of student athletes, but for now, these things seem more to me like symptoms of the larger cause I'd like to discuss.
So chapos, what do you think? Any interest in on-going BTS science conversations? What do you want to talk about in these threads? What do you think you'd get out of them personally? Which topic would you like to talk about first?
The dirty little secret of academia, especially in STEM fields is that society and industry in general is preying on the "failures." If you're doing the fundamental sciences like physics, math, chemistry or biology, the pipeline for tenure is so narrow and competitive. Tenured professors by themselves actually don't contribute much to society. A lot of research, with regards to black holes, theoretical quantum physics, biodiversity and the well being of exotic species like polar bears don't contribute that much. Look deep inside, even as biggest science fans you know it is true. At least they clearly don't contribute as much as the research grant warrants. 1 million USD of taxpayer money to fly bunch of grad students to Patagonia and dig up Pleistocene mammal bones, really?
Every now and then we hear something about Einstein relativity being applied to practical stuff like GPS, or some quantum stuff being implemented in semiconductor technologies, but those are exceptions that prove the rule, not the other way around. Most STEM professors' main contribution to society is teaching calculus 101, 102, chemistry 101, 102, physics 101 and so on for >95% of college students who are gonna get thrown into meat grinder to be the educated workforce in capitalism and will not reach the ivory tower of academia. That is the main purpose of STEM education. To produce competent and educated workforce for tech industries, and not for the sake of advancement of knowledge (most of which are esoteric in nature).
Some of us who happen to actually love the subject put blood and tears into it. We see wage thefts by the system, that we are putting way more time, and making less than mandated minimum wage compared to the amount of labor we put in. The wage thievery goes on even as you reach tenure, as we'll never see it paid back to us even if we do everything right and retire as the legend of our particular niche field. We'll never see those extra hours in the lab, writing papers, writing proposals or whatever paid back later or ever. Comparative to our skillset and capability to produce labor, students, postdocs, adjucts are well underpaid.
Furthermore, we see that our smarter, more hardworking colleagues and peers landed a position in academia, either getting into a masters program, phd program, a postdoc or two or three (which is in itself kinda fucked up) until they got into a tenure track position and eventually tenure. The "failures", people who are not as productive, smart, hardworking, good at writing or networking, got burnt out, quit the mental marathon and get thrown into meatgrinder to join the underpaid workforce. However, if you look at it objectively, these people are not "failures", in fact producing overqualified burnouts of really smart people are the main product of the STEM academic system. Without the STEM career marathon burnouts joining the workforce, working in tech companies, for-profit rnd research, for-profit pharmaceutical companies, wall street trading algorithm, and such those capitalistic enterprises would crumble.
I'm not sure how to fix the system. I'm just a humble cog of a postdoc in an international machinery that spits out thousands of overqualified, underpaid workforce with significant mental trauma to be feed into for-profit capitalistic system just because they happen to like science or math, smart enough to get good grades, and believed in the system as a kid. Back in school, we were promised the Playstation if we got an A in physics, but there is no Playstation at the end of the line in the academic pipeline.
These are really important points and I definitely have plans to talk about the impossibly small bottle-neck in academia, burnout, and the intense emotional toll the system takes on people who end up being one of the "failures". In the social sciences, it's a similar story: a lot of our "failures" end up in UX, marketing and data analytics, making less money than they would have if they'd left after a bachelors or masters degree. Because there's growing interest in the social sciences and we need teachers, there's also a sizeable chunk who get funneled into adjunct and low-level teaching positions, which means they're stuck unable to move up, no permanent contract (no job security), usually minimal or no benefits, and very low pay.
The lack of contributions in STEM by professors is also interesting and I wasn't aware of it. We have the opposite problem: the social sciences are having its moment, so we have a boom in celebrity scientists and influence on policy making.
Can I reach out to you in the future for help on a post on this topic?
Tenured professors by themselves actually don’t contribute much to society. A lot of research, with regards to black holes, theoretical quantum physics, biodiversity and the well being of exotic species like polar bears don’t contribute that much. Look deep inside, even as biggest science fans you know it is true. At least they clearly don’t contribute as much as the research grant warrants. 1 million USD of taxpayer money to fly bunch of grad students to Patagonia and dig up Pleistocene mammal bones, really?
I'm not sure I agree. The neoliberal era has seen the focus of research shift towards entrepreneurial ends and away from fundamental research. One indication of this trend is the massive increase in technology transfers from university to industry in the form of intellectual property. For example, this report by the National Academy of Engineering states:
Many top universities, such as Stanford, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Southern California, have had technology transfer offices since the 1970s. These offices rose in stature when the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 gave universities the rights to technologies developed with federal funds, creating new incentives for institutions and faculty alike to commercialize their work. ... The Bayh-Dole Act enabled the development of new university spinoffs (i.e., companies formed to license a technology).
Interest in university technology grew dramatically in the 1990s after a group from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) developed the Mosaic web browser (NCSA 2016) commercialized by the newly-formed Netscape Communications, whose initial public offering in 1995 effectively launched the first so-called “dot-com boom.” Although Netscape did not license the technology from UIUC, the tremendous success of the company highlighted the potential value of technologies and technical talent harbored inside universities.
The report goes on to claim that 30% of the value of the NASDAQ originates from IP that was created by federally funded basic research at universities that was transferred to industry in the wake of Bayh-Dole. So at least from the point of view of capital, tenured professors' research in STEM is an important source of new IP, which in turn is the basis of the tech industry's monopoly profits, which in turn is a major source of American imperial influence.
My background is in physics, and it was easy to see how the neoliberalization of university research played out. Nowadays, the esoteric fields like black hole physics and fundamental quantum research are very small communities relative to the physics community as a whole. Since the 70s physics funding has shifted to fields like condensed matter, and more recently to interdisciplinary fields (esp biophysics) where there is much greater potential for research to produce new markets and new IP for capital to exploit.
TL:DR Overall I agree with the main point of your comment--that industry exploits the burnouts from academia, and that educating the next generation of high-tech wage workers is a major function of academic science. However, I don't think academic STEM research itself should be dismissed as socially useless. Under neoliberalism, academic research itself has been increasingly oriented towards serving monopoly capital.
Hi, i just lurk here but this is something i was wondering about, so thought i'd chime in :) I live in denmark but am moving to arizona for two years to do a postdoc in astronomy (waiting on the visa now, not sure if it will go through). While i am really looking forward to the hot weather and the science, moving to the US from a much less hellish country right now is obviously kind of a dumb move, and I fully expect the universe to punish me in some way...
I guess for me, the worst thing about science is the careerist, 'be the best' bullshit, which I think ties in to a lot of the issues you mention. Even in socdem Denmark we are kind of encouraged to do our jobs and nothing else, although to be fair there is increasing support from senior staff these days if you say you just want to work 37 hours a week (the Danish full-time) and lead an ordinary life with kids and/or hobbies on the side. for myself, working more than that (apart from in short bursts up to deadlines) just makes me sad and irritable, so it's a no-go. In general, i'm skeptical that working more than full-time results in better science.
At least in astronomy, research is increasingly collaborative, working in large international teams. people skills and a realistic attitude towards workloads and schedules are probably more important than trying (and almost certainly failing) to live up to the 'lone genius' fantasy. I think this also ties in to a larger cultural/political debate about the way people lionize elon musk / atlas shrugged types. It would be really valuable to communicate how science actually tends to move forward, i.e. as a collaborative process where human interactions are really important for the quality and reliability of the results.
The hyper-competitive vibes that still exist in academia - being protective of your own ideas and jealous of others' - seem antithetical to the aim of doing good science. I feel there's a real tension between the structure of academia and the collaborative nature of research right now. I'm increasingly attracted to open science including open code, so that people don't waste time repeating my coding work when they want to either reproduce or further develop my methods. While you do get a little push-back on this from some senior people, at least in astronomy it looks like this is becoming the norm among younger researchers, which is really nice.
Also super interested in how to get PhD students to see themselves as a valuable workforce and do collective bargaining. There was basically none of that during my phd :(
Excellent ideas. The "lone genius" model of science is called the "albert einstein fallacy" in psychology - I'll see if i can dig up some easy to read sources on that one for a future post. I think a lot of what you're talking about is linked to it in a way. It's a very romantic idea people have of science as a core defining principle of an isolated individual's life, and I agree - not only does it make science that is less useful/fragmented, it also makes a sometimes cutthroat, hyper-competitive work culture and a self-fulfilling prophecy for how scientists themselves think they're supposed to fit into the larger picture. In addition to elon, also feeds the problem of scientist celebrities who make lots of money off selling (sometimes later debunked) research to industry.
Also adding to my notes to definitely do a post for solutions centered around organizing and collective bargaining.
Congrats on your postdoc! I wish you luck... I took the opposite direction: dropped out of a prestigious phd program in the US bc of the absolutely unbearable working conditions and jumped to a program in the EU, where I work many fewer hours. there is no question the quality of my work has gone up (even if overall I publish fewer papers I otherwise would have if I'd stayed in the US).
thanks! I expect moving to the US will help mold my politics and values, if nothing else. Life under capitalism in Denmark is 'ok-ish' if you ignore 1) the othering of immigrants and 2) the exploitation outside our borders. in Arizona i hope my lazy ass will be more motivated to get involved in grassroots stuff.
from what I've heard of phd life in the US, moving to the EU sounds like the correct move, heard so many stories about 'I work 80 hour weeks' macho posturing. No idea whether that is also expected for a postdoc, but in that case they can always just fire me again haha. Even pretending to work those kinds of hours seems really bad for everyone's mental health.
Also, I fucking love criticism / dunks of scientist celebrities, would read those with glee :) There are some very funny Trashfuture podcast episodes along those lines.
Haha at least at the postdoc level there are a lot fewer of you, so it's easier to lie low and come and go as you please. If you don't like it, you can always just quit like I did!
I'm so behind on Trashfuture, but my SO listens regularly so I'll have to ask for the right eps.
There are two critiques that come to mind really quickly, but the celebrities are in psychology so not sure if that holds your interest: Citations Needed did a great take-down of one of the biggest names in positive psychology (happiness and wellness research) recently. It was a looooong time coming. Nature had a pretty decent critique of celebrity psychologists not declaring what they get paid to give talks in industry (because lol we don't do that) and how their research has serious conflicts of interest as a result (and shockingly, often doesn't replicate).
I'll start.
Personally, I'm hoping these threads would accomplish three things. First, offer a place where lefty scientists can commiserate problems and (hopefully) share solutions that worked for them in the past. Second, provide a place where non-scientists leftists can join that conversation and learn what we do and what it means when someone says they're a scientist. Last, personally, I'd like to work through these ideas from a more revolutionary and leftist analysis than I'm usually able to discuss these things at work. These are issues I've been thinking about for years, but most of discussion is largely lib-centric bullshit about individuals' "hard work" and "honesty" and of course reform over real material change.
my top concern is twofold: firstly, how does science sausage grill? is hickory advisable etc? and secondly, is the science sausage available in vegan options?
My top concern is: in a post-capitalist society will the scientific endeavor make it possible to become my fursona? I'll take my answer off the air.
In the post-capitalist society, the scientific endeavor will be led by people living freely as their actualized fursonas.
I like the sound of this, I’m a PhD student in the uk. Perhaps talking about how the cynical competition and paper churning hinders proper research and advancement in understanding, supposedly the reason everyone is there in the first place. I’d also like to learn more about and talk about open science, it’s not something I hear many people talk about.
The PhD burnout thing could be good as well, some survival tips from people who’ve been there would be greatly appreciated, I’m stressed lol.
+1 for an interested fly on the wall. Just finished my undergrad and have been considering a PhD or Law school. It'd be great to hear from people more versed in Academia what kind of bull shit I'm about to wade through.
Glad to hear it. I hope these posts become a resource for interested folks in the future, but we'll see how it ends up.
I’m very interested in this, at least reading. I’m not sure I have much to contribute (as someone who waffled about trying for a PhD after getting a masters in math, got stuck in a shit-paying visiting lecturer position and was involuntarily ejected from the cycle, and now just does shit menial labor).
I’ve thought much more about my relationship with education than with science, but it’s still a topic that’s quite dear to me.
Would def be interested to hear your thoughts about education in a future post - especially since most universities devalue teaching compared to research. I think this will come up a lot.
I’m unaware of the Chaos, Solitons, and Fractals debacle, but interested because my work was one degree separate from some Solitons people (I don’t know anything about it though).
Do you have any links or a way I could get some context for the debacle?
Agreed. My goal is that we try to create a resource that let's people know what "science" actually means and why criticizing science is not the same as denying or ignoring it. I there are definitely good efforts and changes going on within academic and science at the moment which are worth fighting for. though personally I would like to get less reform and more revolutionary takes if possible, but we'll see where it goes. There are probably plenty of other people who could lead the discussion better than I could too.
Excellent suggestion re scihub and literacy. Might move that to the front of the line. I may also reach out to a few folks to help explain how to read articles from different fields. If you have any resources, feel free to share them and I'll integrate what I can into the next post!
I think they're talking about how many people, including leftists, don't understand the philosophy and methodology of science. Science is how we know things, but if we don't know how we know things then we can't know things, we can only dogmatically repeat what others have said or wildly speculate.
Marx and Engels used the term "scientific socialism" to distinguish themselves from those who did not study the actual processes of social change such as the Owenites, the Georgeists, and the religious socialists. Because they did not study the processes they wildly flailed about in the same way that we might discuss medieval physicians practicing based on the 4 humors and miasma.
The New Left really threw scientific socialism under the bus, but there has been a consistent decline in understanding what science actually is and this leads to scientific illiteracy and conspiracy that is unhelpful at best. We need a rigorous scientific understanding of the world to lead change.
"starting a conversation" in the politician/media personality's language is meaningless
"starting a conversation" with a discussion post on a messaging/discussion website means what it sounds like, you dingus
