I have met plenty of PhDs shouldn't have been awarded them. Often because they were good at filling out paperwork and being liked by the right people.
In my field there's such a shortage of talent that people practically fight to convince upcoming PhD grads to continue on as postdocs. The PhDs are already mostly trained, have shown their worth during their PhDs, and already are familiar with the facility.
Plus, so much research these days involves collaboration between institutions that focusing specifically on differing your postdoc and grad as a sign of the "worth" of your degree seems a bit ridiculous. I don't think I've had a single research task that didn't involve working with people from another institution.
The facility I'm at is very interested in bringing me on as a postdoc for a project which would be a much larger version of my thesis work implemented at several large facilities (certain key aspects of which my advisor does not have a background in and is expecting to rely on me for), so it feels a bit weird to find out that it'd be a mark against me despite the obvious value.
I'd expect the bigger mark against me to be skipping out on the next significant step in my specific field of research to start from scratch in something different just for the sake of being different.
I wonder if particle and laser physicists tend to be excepted from this trend, since these depend on specialized equipment.
Would you be working with different faculty, besides your advisor? Would your postdoc research feel like a distinct research project, or would it feel like malingering continuation of PhD research?
I think the preference for moving institutions is to avoid seeming "stuck." Some PhD students malinger on postdoc work at their home institution, making it seem like they don't know how to finish a project or know when it's time to scope/start a new project.
So, it might prove beneficial to ensure your projects do not fit the stuck/malingering narrative.
I think this bias is unfair, because there are plenty of reasons someone might want to stay in one place: house, family, etc. But like any bias, you can meet it head-on by controlling the narrative instead of letting the biased narrative play out.
Regardless of the intent, it's a fairly arbitrary way to weed out candidates without actually evaluating their strength, and the actual outcome is hurting women or people from a lower socioeconomic background. The schools you went to should be a lot less important than your publications.
Can we get a source on this claim?
My dodo brain remembers something like women earn more college degrees than men[0], especially at the postgraduate/terminal level.
Someone using their phd to brag about their superiority is dumb, the best researcher I know only has a masters (I have a phd and I’m not as good as he is). On the other hand, I don’t think their are many PhDs out there that don’t deserve their degree, just that there are misunderstandings about what the degree means.