Mary E. Brunkow, one of this year's Nobel Prize winners in Medicine, has only 34 published papers and an H-index of 21.
from fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz on 10 Oct 10:09
https://mander.xyz/post/39650544

#science_memes

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lowleveldata@programming.dev on 10 Oct 10:24 next collapse

filthy casual

ook@discuss.tchncs.de on 10 Oct 10:24 next collapse

Sure, not a bad view and I don’t know much about Brunkow and how she works, to be clear… but: you do need all these things in order to get academic funding so you can work on your ideas. Which I am not saying is a great system, it isn’t, but I don’t think it is easy to say these days to academic reseachers, especially early career ones, to not care too much about publications.

Edit: it is also the fallacy of saying, look she made it like that, so you can too! While she is likely a massive exception to the rule.

turdcollector69@lemmy.world on 10 Oct 18:57 collapse

I find that people high up in academics tend to lose touch with reality.

I remember in college one professor ranting and raving about how students worry about grades too much and that we should all focus on actually retaining the material.

It’s like yeah that’s a pretty thought but 70% of the class was there on scholarship so if we don’t make the grade we don’t finish and have a mountain of debt.

On a separate occasion the dean of engineering wasted 2 full lectures of ethics class ranting about how we should give to the alumni association and how “it’s a privilege to be here so we need to pay it back.”

There were over 100 people in that room who were in at least $60k of debt to the school and we still had another semester left before graduation.

These people have brains the size of planets but couldn’t comprehend in the slightest how reality gets in the way of their pretty little egalitarian ideals.

Tollana1234567@lemmy.today on 11 Oct 06:06 collapse

and also probably not aware of the JOB market for the students, they are out of touch because they got thiers 20-30+years ago with no competition, or dont have to deal with things like INDEED or screening software. they often give bad advice as advisors(which is forced by college to become advisors), which seems to be common in most universities, just to get you out of the room quicker, so they have to deal with you anymore. also they become super weird if you try to press them on wet-lab work experience or internships.

turdcollector69@lemmy.world on 11 Oct 16:53 collapse

Most people who stay in academia do so because they couldn’t hack it in the real world.

That’s why they get so squirrelly when you ask about work experience, they either don’t have any or they blew it super hard and had to return to the academia bubble.

guy@piefed.social on 10 Oct 10:42 next collapse

There’s rankings for scientists?

cows_are_underrated@feddit.org on 10 Oct 11:04 next collapse

There absolutely is. Academia is completely fucked.

asbestos@lemmy.world on 10 Oct 11:09 next collapse

They should just join the unranked servers

cows_are_underrated@feddit.org on 10 Oct 12:05 next collapse

Can’t argue with that

RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz on 10 Oct 12:09 collapse

Like in shit restaurants?

ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de on 10 Oct 14:52 next collapse

Shut up, #16,793.

SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca on 10 Oct 15:49 collapse

yeah, not like Wall Street, government or industry.

balsoft@lemmy.ml on 10 Oct 11:17 next collapse

Yes, and if you fall down far enough you won’t get any grants to do any research, and “forced” to go back to teaching/mentoring. Both of those things tell a lot about the state of high-level education and academia in the west.

pdxfed@lemmy.world on 10 Oct 13:07 next collapse

The analytics are overblown, and coaches need to get back to the big picture. Stanford traded Hollins at the deadline for Wu, but picked up the player option on Candell for the 4th year. The performance bonus if they make the all-star team should provide enough motivation to ensure they don’t get saddled with a mid-career ball hog. Team chemistry will be key, hopefully during the preseason they can get it together and not have any niggling injuries interrupt. There is concern about the defensive strategy on set plays, their specialist Franco just had their contract waived and stretched under the current contract, so the team may look to the transfer market mid season when it opens, or potentially to move up in the spring draft to fill needs. Still can’t believe they traded Simpson and pay 2.7 per year for Johnson.


Universities run by MBAs and academics operating like sports franchises.Meanwhile, they’re arresting students in campus for protesting genocide and fascism.

Seems legit.

Tollana1234567@lemmy.today on 11 Oct 06:07 collapse

yea, if you see how hard is it to get a faculty position you will see. while i was in college, i was in a TALK where the presentor said the phd that was coming to present his research was writing DOZENS of papers just to get noticed by a university for hiring. and people have been complaining how some of these papers are often low quality. its quantity of quality.

NuraShiny@hexbear.net on 10 Oct 10:47 next collapse

Okay. Take your own advice and stop posting. Focus on what’s important and shut the fuck up.

Directed at the lib who in the picture of course. No one on this site should ever stop posting.

Lussy@hexbear.net on 10 Oct 11:55 next collapse

Directed at the lib who in the picture of course. No one on this site should ever stop posting.

<img alt="sweat" src="https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/a800a1e3-243e-4bfa-82f5-5c4f13f51dd6.png">

[deleted] on 10 Oct 11:55 next collapse

.

ThermonuclearEgg@hexbear.net on 10 Oct 12:02 collapse

No one on this site should ever stop posting.

The reason for this is that posting on Hexbear is the second most important thing in all of existence

Stalins_Spoon@lemmygrad.ml on 10 Oct 11:02 next collapse

AI slop

SleeplessCityLights@programming.dev on 10 Oct 12:08 collapse

This is definitely written by an ai, and it’s pure laziness when people don’t fix the styling, which makes it so obvious.

tetris11@lemmy.ml on 10 Oct 11:23 next collapse

I have a high school friend who owns a paper mill. He was a rich kid who never did the work, and always took credit for others work.

He has an h-index of 90 and 200,000 citations. He is not a professor.

wewbull@feddit.uk on 10 Oct 12:39 next collapse

A paper mill will produce a lot of papers.

errer@lemmy.world on 10 Oct 13:05 collapse

I am not following…how does he have so many papers with a high number of citations if he is not a professor? Just an extremely prolific postdoc/person on soft money?

rf_@lemmy.world on 10 Oct 15:02 collapse

He owns a paper mill, he games the system

mariusafa@lemmy.sdf.org on 10 Oct 11:38 next collapse

Science ranking is one more bullshit to deal nowadays. Like if the discovery of something new in a fiels ia going to care about how many medals you have hanging from your suit.

This is literally the bullshit that science magazines and publication entities love the most.

I had colleagues going to someones courses or presentation just because that persom had high publications score, no care about if it’s even interesting what that person did.

Are we trying to choke science with publications? Any dumbass can publish tons of stuff like a news reporter, does it matter? Apparently yes. Should it matter? No.

Natanox@discuss.tchncs.de on 10 Oct 11:45 collapse

Don’t worry, that system is currently being completely fucked by AI as well.

whyrat@lemmy.world on 10 Oct 13:22 collapse

If quantity is the measure instead of quality: AI wins!

Repurposed joke: It’s able to make more mistakes faster than any other invention… with the possible exception of tequila and handguns.

carrylex@lemmy.world on 10 Oct 12:15 next collapse

Not all heros wear capes (in fact most of them don’t)

stelelor@lemmy.ca on 10 Oct 15:13 collapse

Some wear lab coats and blue nitrile gloves!

LordOfLocksley@lemmy.world on 10 Oct 12:40 next collapse

What’s an H-index

fossilesque@mander.xyz on 10 Oct 12:49 next collapse

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index

SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca on 10 Oct 15:49 collapse

It basically measures how old a scientist is.

TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works on 10 Oct 13:05 collapse

…did you remove the default upvote from your own question? Before I upvoted it, it had 0 upvotes and 0 downvotes.

Gloomy@mander.xyz on 10 Oct 15:07 collapse

A rare true neutral one out in the wild.

hakase@lemmy.zip on 10 Oct 13:13 next collapse

I mean sure, as long as I don’t care about getting tenure or finding a permanent position…

Jhex@lemmy.world on 10 Oct 13:35 collapse

The idea is that if you focus on the work, all of that would/should follow…

I have read a few anecdotes from scholars basically confirming this: they were doing “everything right” and getting nowhere but the moment they decided to just do the work that makes them happy, all the titles and positions followed.

I believe Patricia Ryan Madson is one such story although not in a scientific branch. IIRC, she could not get permanent positions in any university even though she had a “perfect resume” but then decided to follow her passion and her career just took off.

I know this is idealistic, but I still wish this were how the world works

JesusChristLover420@lemmy.sdf.org on 10 Oct 14:53 collapse

I sure hope this is how it works, because I haven’t been blessed with the patience to care about any of that. I want to solve mysteries.

Jhex@lemmy.world on 10 Oct 14:59 next collapse

same… I couldn’t care less about titles or office politics… I just want some challenging work to do and a path to work-life balance

Eq0@literature.cafe on 10 Oct 20:51 collapse

Talking from the standpoint of “I recently got a position and won quite some grants considering my age”: you really have to balance the two. Going out and doing the research you want to will make you do good research and make you appealing to fellow researchers, but you also need a bit of a catchy title from time to time and a lot of networking, everywhere, all the time. That often includes planning your own symposium/workshop/whatever. Then getting a small grant always helps, and that is a “skill” on its own: selling your research to people that don’t know anything about it while feeling like you are completely waisting your time.

JesusChristLover420@lemmy.sdf.org on 11 Oct 00:34 collapse

So you’re saying all I have to do in order to be a successful scientist is solve mysteries and talk about science? Easy peasy!

Eq0@literature.cafe on 11 Oct 07:05 collapse

If you want to talk more, feel free to dm me

maudelix@lemmy.world on 10 Oct 13:25 next collapse

I will be forever grateful that my PI for my doctorate focused on technical and scientific hands-on skills rather than sitting at a desk and writing papers. It helped me much more in my current industry, especially in the field of small-scale bioreactor work.

ImgurRefugee114@reddthat.com on 10 Oct 13:29 next collapse

A lot of academia’s problems are just Capitalism’s perversion on display: incentivizing the wrong thing in every case. But it’s also not in such bad shape as the anti-science grifters (e.g. Hossenfelder) like to pretend

Gloomy@mander.xyz on 10 Oct 15:05 collapse

I sometimes see videos of Hossenfelder on my feed and have watched a couple. Would you mind adding some context? What are “anti-science grifters”? Sry if i’m a bit out of the loop here.

sleeperdouge@lemmy.ml on 10 Oct 15:45 next collapse

Angela Collier on YT has some good videos about these. I think those videos talks about conspiracy and science crackpots.

Gloomy@mander.xyz on 10 Oct 16:34 next collapse

Okay, i looked into those and i know the type. If i wanted to name a person that embodies this i’d go to people like Graham Hancock.

How dies it apply to Hossenfelder?

oftheair@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 10 Oct 16:36 next collapse

youtu.be/vaZZiX0veFY

Edit: She’s a right wing grifter who has been out of science for a while and is clearly very annoyed about it, because she came up with bad ideas and doesn’t really know anything about most of the things she talks about.

flora_explora@beehaw.org on 11 Oct 10:16 collapse

Adding to what the others have said: I think Hossenfelder is also an example of chasing YouTube popularity. And apparently many people are really into this anti-science, right-wing stuff. It probably also aligns somehow with her own values, but I’m pretty confident that this is beneficial to her streaming business.

Slimthickens@lemmy.world on 10 Oct 17:21 collapse

Would that I had more than one upvote for Angela Collier. Her last video actually addresses the Sabine Hossenfelder issue directly. youtu.be/miJbW3i9qQc

LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net on 10 Oct 16:19 collapse

There’s probably more to it but at minimum she loves to opine on things she has no expertise on and gets things very wrong as a result. Often things that aren’t even science related.

Gloomy@mander.xyz on 10 Oct 16:37 collapse

Ah, that makes sense to me. Would you mind giving an example? As i have no expertise at all in the things she is talking about it is a bit difficult to judge the content through this lens.

quantumcrop@lemmy.today on 10 Oct 17:44 next collapse

Professor Dave has a lot of examples he’s pulled from her videos as well as counter arguments.

Gloomy@mander.xyz on 10 Oct 17:48 collapse

Awesome, thank you.

Dojan@pawb.social on 10 Oct 19:59 collapse

One I recall that rubbed me the wrong way was one of her videos on “is being trans a social fad?”

One the one side you have people claiming that it’s a socially contagious fad among the brainwashed woke who want to mutilate your innocent children. On the other side there are those saying that it’s saving the lives of minorities who’ve been forced to stay in the closet for too long. And then there are normal people, like you and I, who think both sides are crazy and could someone please summarise the facts in simple words, which is what I’m here for.

Not super fond of the “both sides are crazy” idea when one side is arguing “people should have equal access to medical care and be left to live in peace” and the other is trying to legislate the former people out of existence.

She further goes on to platform ideas like “rapid onset gender dysphoria” which is based on spurious data gathered on a “parents of trans children” forum. None of the actual studies on the subject have supported the idea at all. The science is against it, yet she’s presenting it like it’s some “other side of the coin” nuanced take, and not just utter nonsense. It’s a bit like lending credence to the idea that the Earth is flat because there’s a whole group of flat-earthers out there who believe it is.

Ultimately though, I think my main reason for avoiding her is that she just doesn’t post sources. They’re all hidden on her Patreon, and I just don’t think that’s how it should work. I know educational videos aren’t exactly scientific papers, but hiding your sources just strikes me as bad manners. If the goal is to educate and nurture an interest in a subject, why obscure the path you took to get it? It just doesn’t make sense to me, and most other channels like hers do publish their sources.

SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world on 10 Oct 15:32 next collapse

*But also do it in your free time after your real job and do it for free

It really is amazing any non-corporate research ever gets this far.

[deleted] on 10 Oct 16:14 next collapse

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CptOblivius@lemmy.world on 10 Oct 17:39 next collapse

Quality over quantity.

ayyy@sh.itjust.works on 10 Oct 18:19 next collapse

And, before the prize fame, was she able to afford a comfortable home and a family without clout chasing?

Griffus@lemmy.zip on 10 Oct 18:51 next collapse

USians would never understand this mindset.

crmsnbleyd@sopuli.xyz on 10 Oct 19:00 next collapse

As someone outside of academia, seeing the phrase only 34 papers feels like being shot in the face

Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca on 10 Oct 19:22 collapse

Honestly if I see someone who publishes like 200+ papers I would just be wondering… What the hell did they contribute? They’re churning shit out the door so either they weren’t involved much and did the bare minimum to put their name on the paper or it was mostly inconsequential and non-impressive shit that you could churn out in a few weeks.

Danitos@reddthat.com on 10 Oct 20:44 next collapse

They could also be directing thesis. They’ll appear in their students papers on the topic. My professor was incresibly useful in mine, and I know he does this a lot.

Eq0@literature.cafe on 10 Oct 20:54 next collapse

It really depends on the field. I will talk about fields I know: fundamental math - one paper every 2-3 years is a good pace, every paper 50-100 pages. AI - a paper a month is the usual, with a hard cap at 10 pages, often less.

skisnow@lemmy.ca on 11 Oct 03:22 collapse

There’s a guy at IBM who has thousands of patents with his name on.

He works in the department that helps people write patent applications.

GrammarPolice@lemmy.world on 10 Oct 21:10 next collapse

I can win a Nobel prize too is what i gain from this?

Chakravanti@monero.town on 10 Oct 21:20 collapse

Not with no I caps.

dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de on 10 Oct 22:09 collapse

Would the Nobel prize committee be as petty as you?

Like seriously, you solve a global illness and because you don’t capitalise your i’s then they’ll be like nah fam.

CXORA@aussie.zone on 10 Oct 22:21 collapse

I expect someone calling themselves “GrammarPolice” to capitalise I’s. Yes.

Chakravanti@monero.town on 11 Oct 05:41 collapse

Thank you. Don’t call yourself a cop just cuz you stole his hat and used it to try grabbing the gold he was supposed to guard.

NovaSel@lemmy.world on 10 Oct 21:18 next collapse

I think I heard about this. Good for her! What’d she get a prize for?

Vex_Detrause@lemmy.ca on 11 Oct 03:16 next collapse

No one was mentioning what Mary Elizabeth Brunkow did. Mary Elizabeth Brunkow (born 1961) is an American molecular biologist and immunologist. She is known for co-identifying the gene later named FOXP3 as the cause of the scurfy mouse phenotype, a finding that became foundational for modern regulatory T cell biology.

olafurp@lemmy.world on 11 Oct 08:27 collapse

Thanks for posting the comment I was looking for

Tollana1234567@lemmy.today on 11 Oct 06:04 next collapse

alot of phds are just making paper after paper which could be considered low quality, just to have thier CV presentable. if you paper has nothing valuable or its an exact clone of another paper, its not really innovative, ive read some papers are just to similar to another, or its just speculation type of study/research.

chiliedogg@lemmy.world on 11 Oct 07:16 next collapse

I think we also need to be careful about what we consider low-quality clones of other work.

Reproduction of research is extremely important. It isn’t glamorous, but it’s how we verify shit.

jve@lemmy.world on 11 Oct 07:50 collapse

Yes—academic publishing has become a quantity engine—endlessly churning out papers that echo one another—more about survival than discovery. Many PhDs write for the CV, not the cosmos—speculating, recycling, or rephrasing ideas to stay afloat in the “publish or perish” tide—where innovation drowns quietly beneath the noise. /gpt

Imagine how much worse it’s going to get as more and more is ai slop like the above.

zlatiah@lemmy.world on 11 Oct 07:02 next collapse

Important additional context on this… TLDR is that the post is only a “feel-good” post and misrepresented reality; real life is a lot more nuanced and fucked up

Mary E Brunkow solely worked in industry (a.k.a. the scientific slang for working in something like a pharmaceuticals cpmpany) after her PhD, instead of in academia like most Nobel Prize laureates. Industry researchers rarely publish. And 34 published papers may seem low by Nobel standards but is a lot. I don’t think I personally know any industry researchers that are this prolific; some full professors even don’t have this many papers

The bigger takeaway from this story is not “anyone can make it” if they have a good idea… Brunkow was extremely prolific as a researcher. A better takeaway may be instead of focusing on an individual solution, systematically why academia has such an excessive focus on publication metrics; people are trying to move away from it which is good. Another thing: her old company (Celltech) went defunct in 2004 and Brunkow was allegedly laid off (and no one at the time realized the importance of her discovery) which is probably a better take home message

Her Wikipedia page as reference: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_E._Brunkow.

Also some discussion about this on r/labrats if anyone wants to go over to the forbidden site: reddit.com/…/mary_e_brunkow_one_of_this_years_nob…

jve@lemmy.world on 11 Oct 07:45 next collapse

Hah wow. Thanks for putting that into context.

TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world on 11 Oct 07:56 collapse

Also some discussion about this on r/labrats if anyone wants to go over to the forbidden site:

I went. It was a mistake. Most comments were about how this post was written by ChatGPT followby how they’d love to have 34 publications. There were a couple taking about what you wrote, but I think your comment captures the best of it.

HexesofVexes@lemmy.world on 11 Oct 08:07 collapse

The three pathways for most academics

Option 1 - shit out a large pile of bad (either misleading, over-sensationalised, or just clearly partial work) papers, but get funding to do the same for another year.

Option 2 - work hard to create a quality paper, run out of time, no more funding, off you go to industry.

Option 3 - take a teaching intensive role and never have any time for research, oh and also get paid less than in industry.