This is so well written, so thoughtful and so well structured.
BE VERY CAREFUL NOT TO GET SUCKED INTO HORRIBLE PUBLISHING INCENTIVES.
This theme or motif has come up a few times. It seems important but maybe this particular point is not 100% clear to the new PhD audience you are aiming for.
For clarity, do you mean:
On an operational or “gears-level”, avoid activity due to (maybe distorted) publication incentives? E.g. do not pursue trends, fads or undue authority, or perform busy work that produces publications. Maybe because these produce bad habits, infantilization, distractions.
or
Do not pursue publications because this tends to put you down a R1 research track in some undue way, perhaps because it’s following the path of least resistance.
Also, note that “publications” can be so different between disciplines.
A top publication in economics during a PhD is rare, but would basically be worth $1M in net present value over their career. It’s probably totally optimal to tag such a publication, even in business, because of the signaling value.
Note that my academic school is way below you in academic prestige/rank/productivity. It would be interesting to know more about your experiences at MIT and what it offers.
Thanks Charles! I think of your two options I most closely mean (1). For evidence I don’t mean 2:
“Optimize almost exclusively for compelling publications; for some specific goals these will need to be high-impact publications.”
My attempt to restate my position would be something like: “Academic incentives are very strong and its not obvious from the inside when they are influencing your actions. If you’re not careful, they will make you do dumb things. To combat this, you should be very deliberate and proactive in defining what you want and how you want it. In some cases this might involve pushing against pub incentives, in other cases it might involve optimizing for following them really really hard. What you want to avoid is telling yourself the reason for doing something is A, while the real reason is B, where B is usually something related to academic incentives. Publishing good papers is not the problem, deluding yourself is.”
Publishing good papers is not the problem, deluding yourself is.
Big +1 to this. Doing things you don’t see as a priority but which other people are excited about is fine. You can view it as kind of a trade: you work on something the research community cares about, and the research community is more likely to listen on (and work on) things you care about in the future.
But to make a difference you do eventually need to work on things that you find impactful, so you don’t want to pollute your own research taste by implicitly absorbing incentives or others opinions unquestioningly.
This is so well written, so thoughtful and so well structured.
This theme or motif has come up a few times. It seems important but maybe this particular point is not 100% clear to the new PhD audience you are aiming for.
For clarity, do you mean:
On an operational or “gears-level”, avoid activity due to (maybe distorted) publication incentives? E.g. do not pursue trends, fads or undue authority, or perform busy work that produces publications. Maybe because these produce bad habits, infantilization, distractions.
or
Do not pursue publications because this tends to put you down a R1 research track in some undue way, perhaps because it’s following the path of least resistance.
Also, note that “publications” can be so different between disciplines.
A top publication in economics during a PhD is rare, but would basically be worth $1M in net present value over their career. It’s probably totally optimal to tag such a publication, even in business, because of the signaling value.
Note that my academic school is way below you in academic prestige/rank/productivity. It would be interesting to know more about your experiences at MIT and what it offers.
Thanks Charles! I think of your two options I most closely mean (1). For evidence I don’t mean 2: “Optimize almost exclusively for compelling publications; for some specific goals these will need to be high-impact publications.”
My attempt to restate my position would be something like: “Academic incentives are very strong and its not obvious from the inside when they are influencing your actions. If you’re not careful, they will make you do dumb things. To combat this, you should be very deliberate and proactive in defining what you want and how you want it. In some cases this might involve pushing against pub incentives, in other cases it might involve optimizing for following them really really hard. What you want to avoid is telling yourself the reason for doing something is A, while the real reason is B, where B is usually something related to academic incentives. Publishing good papers is not the problem, deluding yourself is.”
Big +1 to this. Doing things you don’t see as a priority but which other people are excited about is fine. You can view it as kind of a trade: you work on something the research community cares about, and the research community is more likely to listen on (and work on) things you care about in the future.
But to make a difference you do eventually need to work on things that you find impactful, so you don’t want to pollute your own research taste by implicitly absorbing incentives or others opinions unquestioningly.