[WS:] This is my impression too. Some of it may be due to inflated egos (quite common in the academic world) - but I also think that a big part of it is due to the way research is funded: through competitive grants. PIs often feel that they have a greater chance of winning a grant if they go solo than as a team, and once they win one - they do not want to share it with others. There are several reasons for that. First is the size - the larger the team the bigger the budget and the more funders are needed to fund it.
But even more importantly, winning grants is almost like dating - you have to woo a potential funder, develop a personal relation with him/her, tell them what he/she wants to hear etc. If more people are involved in this process, the greater the chance of spoiling it. Or at least that is how
PIs successful at fundraising feel - they see themselves as "star performers" - a perception validated in their minds by their previous successes in obtaining grants - and view others as potential spoilers. So they prefer to go solo.
Of course, this is a self fulfilling prophecy. PIs who have won grants in the past are seen as "more successful" in the field by prospective funders who tend to award new grants to them rather than to somebody who has no established grant winning records. This, again, gives these "star performers" another incentive to go solo - why should they share their resources with someone else when they can have all of it for themselves.
This is, of course, a part of a larger phenomenon of the detrimental effect of the market on creativity and innovation. Markets tend to reinforce the conventional, the trite, the mundane and punish the unusual and the innovative - a point made by various thinkers from deTocqueville to John Kenneth Galbraith to Waldfogel. The production of intellectual commodity in the academe is no different. If this process continues unchecked, the academe will look like tee-vee in not so distant future- thousands of channels showing pretty much same trite shit. Needless to add that restoration of meaningful public funding of research is a necessary condition to keep research as production of knowledge rather than intellectual commodity produced to satisfy consumer preferences of those in the position to pay for it.
As to your point that my used salesman analogy is an exaggeration - of course, every metaphor is. But its usefulness lies in highlighting the fact that in the new brave grant-funded academic world, people with mediocre research skills can rise to much greater prominence than people with great research skills thanks to their "entrepreneurship" i.e. ability to woo those who decide the research agenda through the power of their purse. I am not saying that this is anything new - mediocrity elevated to a pedestal by the acclamation of public opinion makers has always been an integral part of the academe. But it seems that in the new brave neo-liberal world, this acclaimed mediocrity seem to be getting the upper hand. Like in the rest of the corporate Amerika.
Wojtek
On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 2:56 PM, Jordan Hayes <jmhayes at j-o-r-d-a-n.com>wrote:
> Wojtek writes:
>
> So the skills that they should emphasize in graduate schools
>> are those of a used car salesman not that of a researcher.
>>
>
> I think this is extreme: used car salesmen can't design cars or even build
> them. It certainly is the case that knowing how to "sell" your reseach is
> important, but you also have to be able to do it. My grandmother used to
> say that if you can't explain something, you don't understand it. The
> difference between the two levels in academia you present (demi-gods and the
> rest) is not typically "only" salesmanship.
>
> And frankly, I don't think any of this is opaque to graduate students: they
> see this issue 24x7. So if they don't pick up on it before they get their
> degree, they aren't paying attention. I doubt seriously that you somehow
> were taught the wrong skills ... even the process of picking an advisor and
> working to "sell" your thesis to your committee should give you a solid
> sense of the structure of academic research. And then, of course, you have
> to do the research and write the paper.
>
>
> I believe this is true of most workplaces in the US - producing
>> things will not get you very far, selling them will.
>>
>
> The biggest problem I have seen in academia (I've worked closely over the
> last 25 years with research groups from Columbia, Stanford, UC Berkeley and
> CMU; less closely with a few others -- so this is likely the "best case
> scenario" ... I can only imagine it's much worse in other places) is that
> while both of these skills are important, very few researchers feel it's
> useful to collaborate to any great extent. Even the best that I've worked
> with (who are, by extension, some of the best in their fields) are loathe to
> work together with others who have complimentary skills and experience.
> They feel as though they have to go it alone.
>
> Which I think explains why so many of them are lousy at it.
>
> /jordan
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>