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Comment by lectrick | Hacker News Reader

(disclaimer: I am a programmer who works for startups, but I've always admired scientists and researchers and have often contemplated a career switch to biotech.)

How can an entire discipline that is supposedly based on rational evidence-finding be such a cliquey clusterfuck? You're basically saying that if you don't follow the community rules, which more or less boil down to "hazing," you'll be excommunicated. Sounds like a cult, to me... as is any culture where "fear" is the primary motivator not to try something different.

Don't the laws of nature exist everywhere? Why can't anyone "do science," then?

I am glad I work in a meritocracy-based industry where anyone with any background can "ship" and succeed, and that has a low tolerance for bullshit.

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Publications and grants are the currency of academia: if one doesn't have a recent publication record, a hiring committee doesn't have a way to gauge one's performance and capabilities as an academic; if one doesn't have a history of getting grants, a hiring committee will be (rightfully) skeptical of one's ability to bring in money. Excepting teaching schools, one is hired for one's abilities as an academic researcher to bring prestige (through publications and PR) and secure grants (along with that sweet, sweet F&A money). To get grants, one needs publications and preliminary data. One also needs grantsmanship skills, and one only gets those from direct experience.

A YCR "fellow" (or whatever it'd be called) would probably not be a competitive candidate for an academic position. It's not because they weren't in academia, it's because they will likely not have the work product used to measure performance in a academic setting. A hiring committee is not going to risk department funds on someone with a non-existent track record when there's a line out the door of other candidates.

I think OP is correct in perceiving that selecting YCR would probably close the door to a future in academia. I will also predict that YCR will have difficulty hiring top academic talent.

What does "publication" mean in an Internet Age when anyone can publish anything?

If you mean "vetted by a tiny handful of fallibly-human organizations such as Nature and Cell who may or may not decide to accept your paper regardless of its actual merit and based mostly on how 'hip' the research is," well then we're back to the hazing/cliquey-clusterfuck thing again.

"Grants" seem equivalent to "angel investments" in the startup world... which seem a lot saner, btw.

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2013/09/10/gre...

Publication means peer-reviewed and scholarly. Yes, a publication in Nature, Cell, Science, NEJM, etc. opens doors, but so do publications in discipline specific journals (like JACS). What matters is that one's papers be read and cited.

The system is far from perfect, but I don't think you'll find anyone in academia saying otherwise. I think of it being like Churchill's quote about democracy being the worst form of government, except for all the others that were tried.

What separates YCR from a thing like Bell Labs?

Bell Labs has produced a lot of great research and many researchers have had fruitful careers there and after.

Why can't YCR be the same?

Well, the fact that Bell Labs is/was an actual real thing, whereas YCR currently consists of good intentions and an amount of money which, while very generous on Sam's part, would fund a Bell Labs size organisation for a couple of days.

Track record of results, corporate memory, facilities, and the collective wisdom and experience of the fellows.

YCR could be the same, one day. Nevertheless, it's a very long and perilous road from YCR the proposal, to Bell Labs 2.0.

Reading between the lines in sama's comment - I think his objective is to replace academia, such that in 20 years, nobody will either attend or work for a university. Except he can't say that, because a.) he'd be laughed off this thread and b.) it's not to YC's advantage to alert competitors that they are, in fact, a threat.

The way it'd work out is the same way YC itself started: attract talented, smart people who have no patience for academia's politics. Let them make their own decisions. Build a brand on the discoveries they make, which attracts more people. Change public opinion about how research should be done. Eventually, the "top academic talent" realizes they've made a horrible mistake, and scrambles to join the new system that's replaced the old.

It is high time for such a change. It seems to me that tech culture is a better fit for scientific research than academia.

Scientific research is by its nature risky and uncertain. The current risk-averse culture of academia with its focus on grant applications, publishing, tenure, and positive results seems to discourage the risk-taking necessary in science.

On the other hand, the culture prevalent in tech accepts and encourages risk-taking, supports fast and easy recovery from failure and generally evaluates people on merit, not success or failure of their most recent project.

The broken aspects of academia are, it seems to me, an unavoidable consequence of needing a scalable system to determine who is doing well and who isn't, so you can give them money. I don't see how to dream up a system that gives you all the good of academia with none of the annoyances.

Think how hard the hiring problem is. How do you hire the best people? How do you assess someone's quality based on a few bits of paper and a short interview. Allocating funding in academia consists of solving problems like that, all the time.

"nobody will either attend or work for a university" -- universities will never disappear, at least not in 20 years because (a) there's too much business, cash flow, physical infrastructure, etc currently and (b) professions such as lawyers, doctors, accountants, etc. will still require formal education whether you call it a "university" or not.

Those are 2 reasons off the top of my head.

> I am glad I work in a meritocracy-based industry where anyone with any background can "ship" and succeed, and that has a low tolerance for bullshit.

Having worked in research academia, as a hospital medical tech, as a technical support bloke, and now several years across several different companies doing devops, I call hogwash. The software/startup world is replete with bullshit, more than anywhere else. Not to mention the huge amounts of time spent "chasing the shiny", where new tools are used because of fashion rather than merit. And network effects are just as strong in the startup world as in academia or medicine.

Occasionally a bedroom-based programmer can strike it lucky, but that's not the bulk of the startup world.

> Don't the laws of nature exist everywhere? Why can't anyone "do science," then?

Everyone can 'do science'. Youtube is filled with people doing science with everyday items. It's just that most human-scale stuff is low-hanging fruit and has now been 'done'. The edges of science where we're progressing with new knowledge need more expensive tools to observe them.

> I am glad I work in a meritocracy-based industry where anyone with any background can "ship" and succeed, and that has a low tolerance for bullshit.

This might be the most delusional thing I've read in this entire thread, and that's saying something. You can't take a look at founders of successful startups and sincerely tell me that anyone with any background can succeed. The whole idea of a startup excludes huge portions of the population (and I'm not talking about technical skills). Low tolerance for bullshit? The startup world is like 90% bullshit.

Your characterization of academia is way too exaggerated. Leaving academia has always been a semi-permanent move. There is no other job quite like academia, so unless you've done something truly amazing with your outside adventures then your resume is going to be inferior to people who have direct experience in the field. It's only logical.

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