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.
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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?
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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:
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.