I did a PhD and about a decade in postdoc/early-career researcher posts before moving into tech. That was in Computational Mathematics, it was clear that the most successful people in the field were the ones who had found areas where they could publish "Technique X applied to field Y" type papers, so for each new X they could get 10 publications (by way of 10 different PhD students). These people generally could steer the core funding in the discipline their way.
Everyone else basically had to reformulate their research to pretend it was applicable to the government's funding subject de jure. This led to some quite large stretches in definition to achieve "<Main area of research>, and some applications in <funding stream>". This very much felt like it was sucking up to money.
I got out of the academia in the end because it felt like the more senior I got the more time I spent applying for funding and managing the spending and the less time I spent doing research/development. (Also given I was in a UK public sector institute, the pay was shit due to 40 years of below inflation pay rises crippling the institution).
Yeah that’s the thing. Not only do you have to beg for money but actually you make fake papers to do so. My supervisor taught me this early on, every single tiny discovery or synthesis can be made into a paper even if it really doesn’t warrant it
I left because the only path forward here in Germany is to become a professor, aka a life full of admin and sales
'Immune' might be too strong — we are all humans after all. But it's certainly plausible that the magnitude of the effect varies between disciplines.
As the commenter above observes, physics is (supposed to be) falsifiable, so it should be clear when you have a result and when you don't. In the some of the more 'wooly' disciplines, this is not the case. You can write BS and as long as you're able to argue sufficiently eloquently that your particular strain of BS is valid, you win — in some cases, you needn't even supply data or perform experiments. It is in those fields that I assume the forces of politics/fashion/social pressure are strongest.
I agree about the content of the material. But the process of promoting work, securing funding, and getting positions isn’t different.
There is a technical floor to participate, but to potential funders all the physics project proposals from Physics professors sound equally probable. They are going to choose projects based on internal initiatives (fad), name recognition, track record, etc.
Even if that is true, though, I don’t see how it’s that different to any other human activity. In business you have to persuade investors and customers too. Constantly. More so than in academia.
I feel like people are needlessly bitter about all of this stuff. Life isn’t fair; no one ever said it was. And why does anyone expect that you’d be able to get research funding without having to form relationships and make some effort to sway influential people in your direction? Yes, it’s not ‘pure research’, but it’s still part of life. I don’t see how it could be any other way… unless we get AGI as promised and then we’re free to sit on our backsides all day and become philosophers with infinite funding.
It is a part of all organisations, but usually spread across multiple people.
As I mentioned, my wife is a mechanical engineer. "All" she needs to do is do her work, and her manager will be happy. Going out and selling to customers and convincing them they want your product is not her job.
In academia, you can do the work, you can know it's excellent and groundbreaking, as I did for my own work, but unless you go out and sell it, no one cares. You can't just do science, you also have to do sales.
And, to pre-empt a response, yes, it is true that you still have to "sell" the idea that you've done the work properly to your boss in the industry, but it's totally different to in academia, where you will very often be in the situation where no one even knows that you've done any work at all, let alone is expecting something from you. Academia is just a very different working dynamic. Much more independent, much less collaborative, much more responsibility, much less praise
I’m in complete agreement. Sales and politics are even more an integral part of academia and which science becomes relevant is a direct outcome of those social processes.
Could you be more specific about the pressure you felt to 'suck up' and 'lie'? I read this kind of thing often, but it's usually left quite vague. What exactly are people lying about?
Physics (since it's supposed to be rigorous) seems like a less likely area than some to be driven by politics and trends, but I suppose I can imagine that competing research programmes and ideas benefit from a certain amount of marketing and smooth-talking of people with funding rather than relying purely on empirical evidence for their claims.
Physics absolutely is dominated by politics and trends. I was constantly expected to over exaggerate the impacts of my work and its possible applications, on both science in general and wider technology. For example, we used to always say that it had some impact in quantum computing even if it was a total lie, because that makes it way easier to get funding
Physics may be in some sense more falsifiable, but it is absolutely subject to politics and social norms, both in how it lies about itself for money, and literally in which theories are chosen (since we can rarely empirically distinguish between them)
Right. That's a shame, but it seems like that's just life. The idea that it helps to constantly emphasise (or, as you say, exaggerate) the importance of your work if you want to have a career is certainly not restricted to academia. It seems to apply to most industry engineering jobs too — from what I've heard. I guess in that context funding isn't the issue, but being promoted (and, conversely, not being sacked) certainly is.
It's hard to believe this 'sucking up to those with money' thing applies everywhere, though it's easier to imagine it applies in certain domains.