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Where are all the scientists?
After some experiences doing research during a bachelors and masters degree, I had had enough of an experience with academia writ large and academic research in particular to know that while I enjoyed some aspects of it, it wasn't for me. Getting a PhD is a grueling experience that I don't have the work ethic, and, in the field I was most interested in, possibly the intelligence to make it through. Since I've never spent any time as a practicing scientist, I've long felt like it wasn't my place to criticize the institution of science or scientists. Now, a few years later, I've gotten more experience with academic research second hand through a close relationship with a graduate student who is experiencing all of the trials and tribulations that I bailed on in favor of a cushy job at one of our economies massive digital rentiers.
Writing my master's thesis was the closest I got to actual academic research, and the experience left me decidedly soured on the whole endeavor. I did all of the work. My adviser knew little about the subfield I was focused on, and barely had the time to read enough papers to keep up with her own subfield much less learn one that a student who would only be there for a year was interested in. I didn't really expect anything different given the nature of her incentives and my prior experiences. I was however a bit surprised when I mentioned off-hand that I was doing all the work and she took exception, pointing out that she gave advice and suggestions during out weekly meetings. These meetings consisted of me explaining what I had done and her giving mostly terrible and out of touch advice that would have crippled my project had I heeded it. I believe she made one genuinely helpful contribution to the research over the course of the year. Again, this is all perfectly reasonable and I hold no resentment about it, but I did find it bizarre that she didn't realize just how little she had contributed to the actual work. This was not a relationship between two researchers working on a problem together, it was a relationship between one (somewhat bumbling and lazy) researcher and a mildly interested administrator whose job was mostly to make sure I had done sufficient work to graduate.
Since that experience, I've gotten to witness that dynamic second hand through my graduate student friend and her extended network of graduate student friends. Her advisor is much more hands on than mine was, but we know PhD students with advisors just as out of touch with their work as mine was with my thesis work. Even my friend's blessedly engaged advisor never does any actual research. He has not touched any of the lab equipment in anger in years (exceptions are of course made for photo ops). He does not write any of the scripts to analyze the data his students collect. The one area where he is intimately involved is in the production of the true output product of academic research: technical writing about the research. Specifically, he edits the technical writing of his students furiously. His other main contribution towards research is securing and retaining funding, a task which is done by the production of yet more technical writing.
Though our society calls my friend's advisor a scientist, he isn't one. Calling him a science manager would be more accurate, but I think that that too is not quite right. I'm a programmer by trade, and another analogy that springs to mind is the technical team leads who get to the point where they stop writing code and are wholly occupied by ancillary activates such as writing design documents, coordinating with other teams, and reviewing the code of more junior programmers. If this goes on long enough, these people's skills can dull. I'm reminded of the time that I interviewed a fellow who had previously spent a 10 year stint at Netflix and, if his resume was the be believed, lead some fairly impressive projects. I expected him to breeze through the interview, but he couldn't code his way out of a paper bag. I think professors engaged in research are generally some combination of a science manager and one of these not-so-technical team leads.
By the time anyone gets tenure, they have been forced by the inexorable Moloch to have spent the last several years acting as one of these science coordinators. If they try to do any research themselves they will get out-published by someone willing to hire 15 grad students and keep 6-10 balls in the air at once. At this point they will have spent around 5 years being an actual if initially poorly trained and little supported scientist (a grad student), then probably a few more years on top of that (as a postdoc on multiple postings). On top of that, they must be unusually intelligent and driven to have gotten so far. This means that they still likely have their edge when they get tenure. At this point, they even have the option of of becoming a real scientist again. They could stop hiring grad students to cut their lab down to a reasonable size and actually start spending time in the lab themselves. Few choose this option when it means giving up on becoming at the "top of their field" and when their compensation is tied to the amount of grant money they can bring in.
Upon achieving tenure by being an effective science coordinator, the ambitious academic continues in much the same pattern that got them to where they are. They may retain their edge, after all these are our best and brightest, but I suspect that many of them on some level go the same way as the poor fellow from Netflix. I imagine most don't fall quite so far as he evidently had, but as time goes on, the skills that they learned as graduate students and postdocs will dull and fade. They are required to teach classes, so their theoretical fundamentals remain very strong, but their ability as actual practitioners falls off. That friend of mine frequently complains that the senior "researchers" she works with ask her to do things that are just clearly not going to work from the perspective of someone who is in the trenches day in and day out.
My manager is a very good programmer, but he does not view himself as a programmer, he views himself as a manager. As such, he does not make an effort to tell me how to do my job, though he surely has opinions on it. He understands that because he not working on the code as part of his day to day work, he doesn't have the right context to make technical decisions, and I do.
Science coordinators do not possess the graciousness of my manager. Since they view themselves as researches rather than coordinators of researchers, they are quite willing to hold forth on the right way to do things. For this reason, bad decisions are made in the pursuit of research when science coordinators tell senior grad students how to do their job. A complicating factor here is the fact that junior grad students do need to be told what to do, as our system does almost nothing to train them to be scientists before they are expected to be generating data in the lab (they are pretty smart though, so in time they will learn through osmosis from the senior grad students).
Another problem with the fact that science coordinators do not view themselves as managers is the fact that they tend to make no effort to actually learn or apply the art of management. When one of my older relatives made the transition from being an individual contributing engineer to an engineering manager, he spent about a year poking through management books. I'm generally pretty skeptical of the MBAification of things, but the field is not entirely without merit and I do think managers should at least take the time to think deeply about what it means to lead people and to hold power over them. At the very least, they should recognize that they are managers and they have some new, uniquely people focused responsibilities.
Micromanagement and mismanagement in general makes the lives of grad students hell, and maybe even leave some productivity on the table (though given the brutal competition of academia I tend to think that the professors that make it are the ones who have figured out how to wring every last drop from their grad students). Beyond that though, there are societal impacts. Whenever a "scientist" wades into the public discourse, they are inevitably a science coordinator rather than a practicing scientist. They are likely well suited to that role since the one remaining technical activity they engage in is technical communication, but the public is still deceived by this inaccurate title.
I think the larger harm done by this system is the utter waste of human capital. As I've mentioned a few times so far, grad students come in as untrained neophytes, so don't become productive for a year or two. Even once these young researchers become competent and effective practitioners, they are still inexperienced. They reach their most experienced period as scientists when they are postdocs, but postdoc postings are not long enough to delve deeply into a field. Then, at the height of their powers, they become mere coordinators. There are no graybeard scientists. This, more than anything seems like a tragedy. Brilliant professors should be doing science, not writing grant proposal after grant proposal and copy-editing their students work.
Much ink has been spilled about the fact that technological progress is getting slower and slower per researcher hour as we push the technological frontier further and further out. Scott shows some good data that illustrate this point in Is Science Slowing Down. Like Scott, I tend to think that the low hanging fruit theory explains what is going on here, but I wonder if missing scientists might be another factor.
In Slovenia, they have university labs full of only researchers who will do experiments for private companies, for a fee. They will invest in newer equipment to do more interesting experiments etc. They do nothing but research. On their off time (not researching on contract), they pursue their own topics with the equipment.
In Germany, there are many research labs, both state and non-governmental like the Plank society (though funded by the state!)
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