from Hacker News

Something Deeply Wrong with Chemistry (2010)

by andrewdon on 10/1/16, 9:53 PM with 89 comments

• by pjlegato on 10/2/16, 12:49 AM

  The root problem is shown in this graph[1]. Simply put, since the 1960s, expanded funding for higher education in the US has vastly increased the supply of PhDs, while the number of job positions open for professors has not significantly increased.

  "PhDs issued" grows exponentially (since each professor can issue PhDs to multiple students), but "job offers" grows only linearly.

  This supply and demand imbalance tilts the power balance almost 100% in favor of the professor in any interaction with grad students. Professors have acquired essentially unlimited and arbitrary power to dictate conditions, and grad students have no choice but to comply or leave academia -- throwing away a lifetime of work and preparation.

  More at http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v31/n10/full/nbt.2706.html

  [1] http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v31/n10/images/nbt.2706-F1...

• by yomly on 10/1/16, 11:49 PM

  The problem with academic science is threefold:

  1: you are expected to feel privileged for doing something you vaguely enjoy. (how many people actually enjoy running columns and NMRs at 12am?)

  2: you are expected to be altruistic in your ambitions. Curse those vaguely better paid lizard people who are working in industry to forward some profiteering enterprise rather than "science"

  3: there are huge barriers to entry (tech excluded) so you will not do something entrepreneurial and make a name for yourself without the university. To make sure of this, we will name claim on anything you do for the next 10+ years anyway.

  It's no wonder to me that many of the talented people. Leave to go do banking or consulting - they work less for more!!

• by guelo on 10/1/16, 11:36 PM

  It's a violation of labor laws. Universities argue that they can bypass labor laws by calling it education but there have been some recent rulings against that argument in postdoc unionization cases.

• by akiselev on 10/1/16, 11:29 PM

  I'm not surprised in the slightest. Caltech has a reputation as one of the best research universities in the world and getting a degree or doing research there requires a lot of work because it's so competitive. I've spent many nights as a kid running around Caltech in the dark while my mother worked on her experiments till midnight or later (all of the turtles come out at night!). Publish or perish goes tenfold for the elite schools which have a never ending supply of talented postdocs.

  Though I'm not surprised that this letter came from someone in the chemistry department. ChemE especially has a reputation within Caltech as one of the most difficult paths for both undergraduate and graduate work. The ChemE specific classes usually require a much bigger time commitment and the tests are notoriously difficult.

• by jostmey on 10/1/16, 11:03 PM

  Hacker news has seen a lot of posts on this subject. The usual advice is to work in industry, where people are apparently treated like human beings. I am sure this is true, but the advice isn't helpful to me.

  Society benefits from scientific research. Dismiss its wage problems at your own peril. Sadly, a lot of research is outsourced to universities because labor is cheap. Why pay someone loads of money when you can contract with a university lab? It might be good in the short term, but the talent is leaving research in search of greener pastures.

• by throw_away_777 on 10/2/16, 2:28 AM

  This problem is very much prevalent in physics too. The mentioned article https://psmag.com/the-real-science-gap-f00edae57ba1#.tlnbcqb... is well worth reading.

  I am currently transitioning from academia to industry, having just recently finished a PhD in high energy physics (looking for a job in data science). When I mention the lack of a job market in academia as a reason I am transitioning, people don't understand and look at me funny. If anyone is young and thinking of going into high energy physics, do yourself a favor and just don't. The glut of postdocs needed by the LHC, combined with the terrible failure of the SSC, has created a particularly terrible job market for high energy physicists in the US.

• by rdtsc on 10/2/16, 12:55 AM

  My friend quit his postdoc in biochemistry over this shit. The head of the lab was abusive toward him, but mostly toward international students. Was treating them terribly, similar expectations regarding work "ethics", combined with threats regarding deportation and so on.

• by x1798DE on 10/1/16, 11:30 PM

  From what I can tell, this is much more common in synthetic labs than physical or analytical labs. I think most of the physical chemists I knew in two different universities worked fairly normal hours, the labs were mostly empty on nights and weekends.

• by jknoepfler on 10/2/16, 12:25 AM

  This reads like someone complaining about the time requirements to be a member of a top athletic club or top kitchen or top theatre or any other highly demanding discipline.

  The only way this behaviour would be "wrong" is if candidates were mislead when they entered about what would be expected of them.

  If you aren't willing to sacrifice, then don't. You can make a rational choice and walk away with your pride and future intact. But don't pretend someone was wronging you by asking you to sacrifice.

• by WhoBeI on 10/2/16, 2:03 AM

  Isn't this involuntary servitude? That's how I see it anyways. Whenever you are expected, and in this case required, to work against your will and for, I'm assuming, no pay under the threat of losing your livelihood it's involuntary servitude.

  Maybe I'm wrong about the "no pay" but even then I would still consider it involuntary.

• by x1798DE on 10/1/16, 11:26 PM

  Headline should say [2010], though the thing the post is about is from 1996.