> there are ways to do research nowadays that don't require the effective vows of poverty and servitude associated with graduate school.
What would be some of these ways in your opinion?
What would be some of these ways in your opinion?
On this last point, I should mention that my dissertation research involved the creation of a collaborative Web application for people developing agent-based models. The IRB (ethics board) insisted that anyone who would want to use my Web site would need to fax a permission form to the university office. You can imagine how this would have killed any use of my site, and thus of my dissertation work. It took several months of pleading with them to get them agree that usage of the site wouldn't require a faxed form. Doing that same sort of work at Facebook et. al. would have been a non-issue.
And yes, there are ethical and privacy issues associated with Facebook, Google, etc. I'm not ignoring them, merely pointing to the abundance of data and opportunities they have at their disposal.
There are still advantages to a university laboratory, including the cushion that you have from real-world profitability. There's something nice about being able to spend months or years looking at a problem, without having shareholders looking over your shoulder. But universities have their own politics and problems, and they're far from the pristine labs we'd like to imagine.
There are several companies (and not just universities) in the top 20. Microsoft leading.
Microsoft Research has a lot of amazing people working there, doing very impressive stuff.
[0]: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/jobs/fulltime/default.as...
And having a PhD and a body of work does help a lot in the interview cycles.
Thanks,
It's far from perfect, and I really need to do some maintenance on it one of these days. But as things stand, I have the largest public collection of agent-based models. One of my committee members told me that another research group had done something similar, but with a multi-million dollar NSF grant. That certainly made my day!
Let me know if you have issues/bugs/whatever!
Absolutely true, but is it possible to work in those places without a PhD?
One path I can imagine would be to devote 2-3 years to independent study, attend appropriate conferences and get to know the researchers on a professional and personal level. Build some respect on your own dime before trying to move to professional work.
No idea if that would work, though - whether there are avenues for an amateur-but-devoted scientist to contribute to research, or whether that research would break down any barriers.
You can certainly do good independent work, and write and publish papers if you want. If you can prove your conpetence, why shouldn't you be hired? At least, not every employer is going to have a major bias against those without PhDs.