Difference between revisions of "Links on problems in academia"

Revision as of 18:55, 5 January 2012

This is just a backup of a bookmark folder, will structure it later.

Academic career

Generic

• Academia: Not for everyone many people who agreed that motivation, perseverance, and tenacity are key to success in science.
• How today's scientific culture affects young scientists Can you also live happily as a scientist simply by doing your job well? It seems not. [...] nowadays the successful scientist has all the attributes of a modern rock star. Without regularly producing number one hits you will quite likely not make it.
• Farewell early 20s, farewell academia? all my discomfort and melancholic temperament could possibly be a result of forcing myself down a path that was not right for me. I then began to wonder, is there not another way to live? A life more full of hap, and less full of drudge?
• Falling Off the Ladder: How Not to Succeed in Academia My loss of belief in my own potential was the first step toward where I am today.
• Don't become a scientist! pursue another career. This will spare you the misery of disappointed expectations.
• Why science is a lousy career choice plenty of people do study these things. They just don’t work in those fields.
• Women in Science Even a public schoolteacher actually does better than a scientist.
• Escape the Tower Resources, links, and musings about the many problems with the academic system, and how to escape it.

Ph.D.

• Fix the Ph.D. Widening concerns about dismal job prospects are dissuading the brightest candidates from the PhD route.
• Education: The PhD factory in much of the world, science PhD graduates may never get a chance to take full advantage of their qualifications.
• http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/2011/110728/full/nj7357-533a.html
• The Disposable Academic Why doing a Ph.D. is a waste of time
• Faulty Towers: The Crisis in Higher Education Going to grad school’s a suicide mission.
• No, you can't be a professor
• Why graduate students ignore warnings about the job market

Postdocs

• Sandal leaves academia (Austrian article)
• Lessons from a recovering postdoc And it’s never an easy decision for those who do. It’s one that is filled with doubt and questions: Is it just because this experiment isn’t working? Am I a bad scientist? Was my PI simply having a bad day? Am I just not committed enough? Am I cut out for this? What will my family think? What about my grad school mentors? Will this kill my career?
• In which I question my own sell-by date Age discrimination became illegal in the EU in October 2006, but science cleverly gets around this problem by putting restrictions into their fellowship eligibility criteria.
• Imperial measures – but measuring for what? “The answer may well be that Imperial is a very good place to be a high-flying academic, but not a very good one to be an average academic.
• And Another One Throws The Towel And Leaves Science This is all straight hustle, straight business, straight ripping each other off, being mean, supporting ‘friends’ even if they are wrong, pretending to be something better, elitism, exploitation, …
• Give postdocs a career, not empty promises Fresh blood in a lab is useful, but so too are experienced people who can train others more efficiently, who are in touch with the latest techniques and who have first-hand knowledge of the lab's carefully amassed treasure-trove of materials.
• Recovering From Postdoc Mistakes a large lab run by a famous scientist doesn't guarantee direct value for the postdoc, as she found out the hard way
• Sayonara academia, I get a life I don't see meaning in my research anymore.
• Honest Postdoc Ad

Coming back

• Reentering Academia - A Success Story I knew that I could be a reasonable scientist given the chance. I eventually managed to convince people here in Oxford that I could be taken back on as a postdoc.

Finding a job after academia

• How to Get A Job After You’ve Left Grad School But there are of jobs out there that are just as intellectually stimulating as teaching at the college level.
• Soliciting Advice: Non-Academic Careers for Ph.D.’s I’m hereby soliciting good, specific career advice and/or resources for students who are on the track to get a Ph.D. (or already have one) and are interested in pursuing non-academic jobs.
• Unsolicited Advice: Non-Academic Careers I’m just going to link to some of the most promising-looking resources that were mentioned.
• departure into industry and return for a PhD shows too much of an interest in personal life or money instead of knowledge or research.
• In Silico many of the dysfunctional relationships I had in the academic world were not actually due to my personality flaws, but were largely due to the peculiar culture that tolerates (and in some cases rewards) dysfunctional interpersonal relationships in academia.
• Mea culpa: About studying science to get a job

Academia as a workplace

• Bullying of Academics in Higher Education
• Which Grad Students Are the Most Miserable? most of the skills you learn in biology, especially biomedical sciences are only useful in the biomedical sciences
• Research integrity: Sabotage! Postdoc Vipul Bhrigu destroyed the experiments of a colleague in order to get ahead.
• Man Who Set Stage for a Nobel Now Lives a Life Outside Science After a year of unemployment, he started driving the van for Bill Penney Toyota, his job for the last year and a half.
• Work ethic: The 24/7 lab In a lab where the boss calls you at 6 a.m., schedules Friday evening lab meetings that can stretch past 10 p.m., and routinely expects you to work over Christmas, sticking it out until midnight on a holiday weekend is nothing unusual.

Fraud and retraction

• Retraction Watch blog
• Scientific fraud like Ponzi finance
• The trouble with retractions
• Scientific journals retract more articles, expose fraud and incompetence
• The reasons for retraction
• Doctored photos retracted article
• Research Misconduct, Retraction, and Cleansing the Medical Literature: Lessons from the Poehlman Case
• 10 retractions and counting

Plagiarism

• Plagiarism
• Repeat of plagiarism
• Fighting plagiarism
• Scientific plagiarism in India (en.wp) and a thread on Nature Network on the WP article.
• Responses to plagiarsim (paywall)

Inefficiencies

• http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101013/full/467775a.html?ref=nf

Italy

• Netturbini con laurea
• Dottorandi e dottorati (??)

Open science

• http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/may/22/open-science-shared-research-internet