Comment by jimbokun
2 days ago
> Most researchers are to some extent “career researchers”, motivated by the power and prestige that rewards those who excel in the academic system, rather than idealistic pursuit of scientific truth.
This is the funny part. There is little to no power and prestige to be had in the academic system. To a first approximation no one outside academia cares.
I was just working as a staff programmer and taking grad courses with my tuition benefit, and found myself getting caught up in the mentality of needing a PhD to really be successful and valuable. Then got a job in industry making far more money and realized how academia is a small self contained world with status hierarchies irrelevant outside that small world.
In the social sciences, there is a lot of prestige to be had. Do some ground breaking work, engage with the public via bestselling books, and then get invited by the president to work on policy.
Even if they don't work for the administration, there are plenty of other bodies that will value them and pay large sums of money (or let them have large influence).
Very common amongst economists, and more and more common amongst disciplines like psychology.
Even in technical fields, if you can manage to become a big name, you can do consulting work and get paid quite well.
> Then got a job in industry making far more money
This is not a healthy way to look at it.
The average mechanical engineer isn't making tons of money in industry. A ME professor at a top university likely makes more. A biology major with just a BS degree will make less than the average biology associate professor.
But more importantly, there's a simpler reason why money is a poor metric to measure: You can always get more money in finance or medicine than as a mechanical engineer. Does it make sense to denigrate a whole profession just because one can make more money elsewhere?
>This is the funny part. There is little to no power and prestige to be had in the academic system. To a first approximation no one outside academia cares.
They have power over their students and relative power over other Professors. That's plenty enough incentive for most. There can also be fame and fortune for the most famous among them. See Francesa Gino, Dan Ariely, etc.