Comment by n2d4
4 days ago
Yea, and it was a great read too. I wish more researchers would publish blog posts alongside their technical whitepapers, although I acknowledge that not everyone involved in science has or wishes to acquire the skills needed to write blog-form content.
(I'd also be worried about a world where researchers are evaluated based on the virality of their blog posts, vs. how impactful their work was.)
Communication skills are often missing in engineering too, but I think I'd argue they should be required - all work is fundamentally collaborative.
Being able to effectively communicate to different people on your team, outside your team, managers, business people, etc is not optional and more than once I've seen things get stalled or turn into a mess because communication didn't happen.
STEM is often a haven for neurodivergence but I think communication skills are something that is largely learned and not something that comes naturally for everyone. People who are good at communicating spend a fair amount of effort rewriting, trying different wordings, different introductions, getting feedback from people, etc.
FWIW I see things like being able to sell a proposal, managing expenses, planning, etc as optional - these are good to have, but someone else can do them if you can communicate well, but in the end the only person who can communicate what you're thinking is you.
"Required" is a bit of a gatekeeper, while I agree good communication skills are valuable.
Blog form content in particular, _requires_ proofing, re-editing, and so on and there's a whole skill set which contributes to makes such content sticky and engaging.
You also seem to be confounding your own point. Indeed all work is collaborative, someone who lacks communication skills, will generally team up with other collaborators who can bring those skills to bear.
I think the benefits greatly outweigh any dangers. I far prefer to read something like this than something written up by a journalist.
> I acknowledge that not everyone involved in science has or wishes to acquire the skills needed to write blog-form content.
They should. If your research is publicly funded you should make it as available to be public as possible. Academics should be able to communicate, and I very much doubt they are unable to acquire the skills
> I'd also be worried about a world where researchers are evaluated based on the virality of their blog posts, vs. how impactful their work was
Given how bad the measures of impact and the distorted incentives this produces I am not even sure this would even be a bad thing.
If nothing else it improves transparency about what they are doing, again with public money.
>They should. If your research is publicly funded you should make it as available to be public as possible. Academics should be able to communicate, and I very much doubt they are unable to acquire the skills
So in addition to being:
-professional researchers
-professional teachers
-professional project managers
-professional budget specialists
-professional scientific writers
-a failed idea away from losing it all
They should also become:
-professional PR managers
-professional popular writers
While still being paid (poorly) for a single job of all of these.
We have similar demands for folks in other professions. I know software engineers who are still coding day to day who also have to manage team budgets and track hours/projects, write patents, write blog posts to make the company look good, mentor juniors, sometimes teach internally or even to external audiences, present at conferences, etc.
They should not being doing a lot your first list, and should have specialist help available for some of the rest.
I am not suggesting they become PR managers, and the writing skills I am suggesting they acquire is simply that required to do things like blogging. I am not suggesting they achieve the standards a professional writer would have, just the ability to write clearly and make the effort to do so.
Academics should be highly skilled people.
In fact a lot of the problem is not they cannot do it, but of distribution. A lot of universities to have academic blogs and subsites about departments and individuals research. Its not anything like as visible as the journalists write ups about it
Yes, in a perfect world there would be professionals doing this instead of putting it all on the academic.
However, we live in an imperfect world. When people say "should" in these contexts, they're not describing some ideal way the world works. They're prescribing actions that are realistic based on the current system we live in.
The world sucks. It's more useful to work with the small amount of control one has, than to do nothing because the action doesn't solve a wider systemic problem.
yes
> They should. If your research is publicly funded you should make it as available to be public as possible.
The public can access it by becoming subject matter experts. If the government or the public to which it is responsible requires a popsci treatment they can pay other people with this skill set.
I don't doubt having this skill set is useful I merely disclaim any sort of obligation on the part of the scientific staff to possess or exercise such a skill.
A few years ago, at least in my field, there was definitely a trend of people at least doing twitter threads explaining the key findings of their papers. It's obviously less in-depth than a blog post would be, but it was still usually a far more accessible version of the key ideas. Unfortunately, this community has basically dissolved in the last few years due to the changes in twitter and to my knowledge hasn't really converged on a new home.
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It's a controversial observation, but it is very true. I work with AI models and have to read recently published research to work with the latest developments in the field.
Do a quick keyword search on papers related to the subject. So much of it is completely useless. It is clearly written to keep people busy, earn credentials, boost credibility. Papers on the most superfluous and tangential subjects just to have a paper to publish.
Very little of it is actually working with the meat of the matter: The core logic and mathematics. It is trend following and busywork. Your sentiment is controversial because people are religiously loyal to the intellectual authorities of these credentialed systems, but a lot of published research does not push any boundaries or discover anything new. This paper seems to be an exception.
I would argue that a lot of the research published in the social sciences also falls under this category. It is there so that someone has a job. I'm not discrediting social sciences in general, am just pointing out that there is a lot of ways to creatively take advantage of academia to secure a paycheck and this is certainly exploited. The kneejerk reaction to reasonable criticism just proves this point even further.
This is a good thing. This is where the economy surplus went. Not to 5 days of leisure for everyone. But to jobs that keep us occupied, engaged, and motivated but aren't strictly required. The alternative is just either starving everyone to death, except for a few elite and their slaves, or everyone being bored out of their minds and wondering what the point of life is.
If the solution is ever more manuscripts that solve no interesting problems and that nobody will ever read, let's find another solution.
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Is this a joke or so wildly out of touch? Both of your alternatives sounds very much like the world today, but we’re all still working anyways
Can you cite your sources please?
Sabine Hossenfelder has a few comments on this topic in her YT channel.
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There have been countless academics who have discussed this topic, occasionally not behind closed doors. Regardless, it’s certainly my observation as well.
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Most jobs are really not important either, they just keep people busy. Do you need sources for this claim, too?
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