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From Science Alert:
On the eve of receiving his 2013 Nobel Prize, famed physicist Peter Higgs told The Guardian that he wouldn't be productive enough to get a job in today's academic system, where researchers are expected to constantly pump out research.
Higgs, 87, said he has never sent an email or made a mobile phone call, and published less than 10 papers after his groundbreaking 1964 prediction of the Higgs boson, which outlined how the Universe got its mass.
"It's difficult to imagine how I would ever have enough peace and quiet in the present sort of climate to do what I did in 1964," Higgs told Decca Aitkenhead.
Now a new survey of young researchers by Nature suggests that things have only gotten worse since Higgs' comments, with researchers today under even more pressure with less resources, and less job stability.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by aristarchus on Saturday October 29 2016, @08:19AM
Self-promoters tend to succeed in Academia, as they do in business and all other areas. But they usually are not the ones who should have been successful. The technique in academia has always been to promote these hot-shot types into administration, where they could feel very important and have no actual impact on the real advancement of knowledge. But due to external pressures, this has changed, and they now are giving actual ability to affect scholarship to these same brain-damaged administrators. The result are going to be disastrous. The Brits have been doing this for a while, under the influence of the Dead Witch, Margret Thatcher. First they had to prove effectiveness in education, as if there was some simple way to measure that. Rate My Professor does not count. Then they have to prove "impact", which I guess is something like how many Facebook "likes" you get. The British Government even tried to compile a list of academic journals and rank them according to their "influence". Elsevier, you suck donkey balls.
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So Higgs is right. All science, the temple of reason, the Holy sanctuary of Philosophy, and fifth grade science teachers, weep at what we have become.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @05:37PM
What!? She actually held people on government pay to some objective measure of responsibility? SHOCKING! I can see why all you genius types hated her so much.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Saturday October 29 2016, @10:46PM
What!? She actually held people on government pay to some subjective measure of responsibility? SHOCKING! I can see why all you genius types hated her so much.
FTFY.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.