Analogue between academic science and web startups:
'A tournament market "offers participants the chance of winning a big prize--an independent research career, tenure, a named chair, scientific renown, awards--through competition," writes Richard Freeman and co-authors. Tournament markets amplify "small differences in productivity into large differences in recognition and reward" ... In the real world, casting off large numbers of extremely capable people is no anomaly but simply how a tournament market works.'
The thing is, most people entering academic science don't know this -- whereas startup types seem almost to relish it.
The difference is that a failed startup isn't seen as something bad. It can even look good on a resume. Whereas a failed career in science becomes an albatross around your neck making it very difficult to reenter the scientific career path.
Most young scientists I know don't have much of a career plan. They get a research grant to continue to do something that interest them after the PhD, apply for another grant after that, and continues until either they fail to get a new grant, they get tenure, or they get to tired of the process and go for a non-research position. Maybe they get kids and feel the need for a more stable source of income.
I'm just saying that it is not the hope of a big reward that keep them going, but a genuine interest in their current work. So knowing about the tournament market doesn't make much of a difference.
I'm just saying that it is not the hope of a big reward that keep them going, but a genuine interest in their current work. So knowing about the tournament market doesn't make much of a difference.
There's an intermediate state between flaming out, and winning the Nobel prize, that most people in the biosciences believe is accessible to them.
They think that if they follow the 'rules', which most of them have followed, to good effect, for their whole lives (good grades, good work, etc.), they will with high reliability be able, over the course of their careers, to keep getting funded for doing interesting work, and that they will be able to have at least lower middle class lifestyles while doing so.
It's not clear to me that this is the case. It can work out this way, but not necessarily very reliably.
And I think a good number of people entering grad school would make different choices if they knew this; and the ones who were passionate enough, and tolerant enough of risk to enter science anyway, would probably end up doing some pretty amazing stuff.
Which they likely will end up doing anyway, so it's not that the system is broken. It just ends up attracting a pretty large group of people who aren't necessarily cut out for it.
Here's a possible explanation for why academic science is a tournament market. To have an effective scientific community you need to have people build on the work of other scientists. But if there are too many other scientists, all of which have equally obscure work, this becomes difficult. So scientists are all trying to push their own work to make sure it gets the attention it deserves. The ones who are successful become heroes; the ones who aren't are discarded.
'A tournament market "offers participants the chance of winning a big prize--an independent research career, tenure, a named chair, scientific renown, awards--through competition," writes Richard Freeman and co-authors. Tournament markets amplify "small differences in productivity into large differences in recognition and reward" ... In the real world, casting off large numbers of extremely capable people is no anomaly but simply how a tournament market works.'
The thing is, most people entering academic science don't know this -- whereas startup types seem almost to relish it.