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The dying soul

It startles me to see an article that draws an analogy between the cobra effect and academia - Interesting parallels. The emphasis on - how metrics like impact factor, h-index, grants, and tenure tracks have overshadowed the purpose of doing science is the central point of discussion. Towards the end, the article leaves you with a question of where collectively restructuring is required to enable real progress. But, how to do that? In other words, how to resurrect the dying "soul" of academia and get over "pretentious" science?


Here are my thoughts: I think the answer lies in where it all started. Ask oneself the following question- What enabled the concept of doing a Ph.D.? Back in the day, the excitement to understand takes the front seat, which has been instrumental in the pursuit to discover things, and the by-product of this process is a Ph.D. What's happening now? Vice versa? Relatively speaking, we have reached a stage where every lab is equipped with enough resources for a potential Nobel. Somewhere, the pressure to be creative is blurring the vision and derailing the entire process where it has to happen organically. Understanding the purpose opens up a bird's eye, and that makes the real difference.


FYI: For the non-academics, the metrics could be thought of as the academic equivalent of retweets/shares, likes, sponsorship, etc from social media (From the article). 






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