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Comment by mikorym | Hacker News Reader

I started to work instead of doing a PhD and I think it was a good decision. The sad part is having less time and progressing more slowly with research (outside of one's job, whatever it may be) but maybe it's better than not having a job and also progressing slowly doing a PhD full time.

As an aside, if you have a clear research interest already (which many PhD naturally take a long time to find) then I don't think it matters that much anymore whether you have the actual qualification. In Mathematics it could be easier to go the direct path to research than in Biology, though. Two papers can these days even be converted to a PhD with minimal additional work.

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I'm glad you called out biology as a counterexample. In my grad school/postdoc experience, publishing a meaningful paper in the wet lab biosciences often requires tens of thousands of dollars in consumable materials, as well as $100k+ of lab hardware. Casual garage researchers have very little opportunity to contribute to the field in meaningful ways.

I would say math is the exception, rather than biology. In most fields - even ones that don't require physical experiments - research is aided quite a bit by infrastructure, interaction, and environment.

The most important ingredient in research is time. Don't count out garage research.

There is no substitute for professionalism in research, no matter the venue. Hard work, best practices, collaboration, and expertise are all essential.

I am presently in a time of change in my own research career, and a garage laboratory underwritten by an industrial job is beginning to look quite tempting. There are a lot of advantages, but the onus is heavily on the researcher to choose research directions that are compatible with that environment.

Barbara McClintock did her most-famous work in a shed with a small adjoining cornfield. I'm happy to wager that there are major discoveries left in biology to be made with similar equipment. The key is being able to eat, sleep, support loved ones, be healthy, and be able to get some research done.

I would love to learn more about how you go about running your own lab! How can I follow?

At the moment, I work at the University of Washington's CENPA but my departure from academia is likely. Whether I leave academia or not, the best way to follow my scientific work is through my publications:

https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=vi-A5dkAAAAJ...

Thanks — btw I’m interested in the garage laboratory you mentioned. The process of how you go about setting up and running an independent lab, etc. If you end up doing that, I’d like to follow that. Would that be on Google Scholar?

I 100% echo this. My biggest gripe about my biology degree was that there wasn’t much research I could do without either access to a lab or being Bruce Wayne. The single best thing that can happen to biology research would be to figure out a way to reduce these barriers tremendously, either via more access or by more affordable technology. So I’m excited about recent developments in synthetic biology.

Casual researchers have a huge opportunity right now to contribute in hugely beneficial ways. There are terabytes of public data out there to be analyzed and not enough people with the dry skills to comb through it. Computational biology needs manpower. Github makes it trivial for anyone to share their projects with the world.

Mathematicians and computer scientists have it easy in some sense. You can always argue that math is more difficult and hence your reward is this freedom from expensive lab work, but I think that argument is disingenuous when you look at the human (and humanitarian) component. (And biology is not simple in anyway.)

As much as I like Hardy's statements about pure math, without applied math and biology we are just "clever" statues exhibiting technique and skill, but not directly helping to better the human conditions for living.

Really true. We need more examples of people completing PhDs in 1-2 years because they've already done the research and written most of the thesis. It's totally possible.

That misses the learning process in a PhD program. A PhD is not just the thesis work, it is also the education and mentorship that is generally necessary to become an expert in both a broad field and a specialty.

Why shouldn't it be easy(ier) to get the PhD when you've already worked and published for 10 years in the field?

That seems like a completely different question.

Suppose somebody does a brilliant Master's thesis and afterwards quickly writes two more good papers. He/She could get a PhD immediately at that point as far as research is concerned, but would benefit from waiting a bit longer and also getting mentorship etc. .

A person who worked and published for 10 years for all purposes already was doing PhD work for 10 years and thus can more or less staple some works together to get PhD whenever they want to.

People can go their whole lifetime without making novel contributions to a field. If an arbitrary time limit is required to have a PhD, I feel like it probably discounts the implications of what kind of individual one needs to be to make novel contributions at a young age in less time.

Part of the reason it typically takes 5-6 years to complete a PhD (in computer science at least) is because it takes a long time to learn the methods, the skills, and the large body of past work, as well as just becoming a member of the research community (via attending workshops and conferences, publishing paper, and reviewing).

It's possible to complete a PhD in 2-3 years, but this also typically leaves no room for exploration or any kinds of errors. At CMU, the only examples I know of were people who were on leave from the military and had a hard stop after 3 years to return.

Also CMU alum. Why anyone would WANT to rush a PhD, I don't know. I had to finish faster than my peers because I started a business half way through -- and I was either going to complete in 6 months or never. So I finished up in a hurry. I am a tenure track professor & CEO -- which works so long as you don't care about anything at all. But that's separate.

My point is, and I'm four beers in, is that my head of data science is so good, he has been mentored by me for years (fwiw), and he has published a lot -- I feel he is the perfect candidate for completing a PhD asap. I think he needs two years for acculturation.

In that paradigm, smart folk in industry could publish papers and then take 2 years to get a doctorate --- and I think the world would be better for it.

But where will labs find cheap labor?

I study on my own and present it on my website, no paywall or subscription. I do what I want, rather than what a professor tells me.

I've been featured on some top websites.

My point is, you don't need academia necessarily. And after meeting PhD grads, I'm not sure I believe in the positive association with intelligence and accomplishments.

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