<story><title>Negative incentives in academic research</title><url>https://lemire.me/blog/2022/07/21/negative-incentives-in-academic-research/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>quantum_mcts</author><text>I generally disagree with the premise that scientists are becoming less productive. (To me, the complaints that there are no more grand fundamental discoveries is alike to complaining that we are not discovering any new continents on Earth...)&lt;p&gt;On the subject of incentives in academia - reflecting on my academia run, I&amp;#x27;ve noticed that I was the most creatively productive when I had a longer planning horizon in front of me. It was either at the beginning of a several-years position. Or at the very end when I knew that I&amp;#x27;m leaving and didn&amp;#x27;t care anymore. The least productive was the sequence of one-year postdocs - when I was constantly worrying about the next one.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>elashri</author><text>My supervisor told me recently that it is very risky to focus on breakthrough topics except when you are doing PhD or if your are tenured. probably less true for PhD if you don&amp;#x27;t have ambitious PI. The demand for publications and results that is mainly the way to evaluate you starting from postdoc until tenure promotion is very tense. People usually try to do many things and stretch themselves. sometimes this even lead to burnout and many people leave academia for that adding to the very competitive and low gain opportunities available in most academic field.&lt;p&gt;To be honest, I really think that we have wrong metric. Most importantly, if you try to ignore them even if you get some local support within your group. Good luck getting any fund because funding agencies evaluation have the same problems.</text></comment>
<story><title>Negative incentives in academic research</title><url>https://lemire.me/blog/2022/07/21/negative-incentives-in-academic-research/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>quantum_mcts</author><text>I generally disagree with the premise that scientists are becoming less productive. (To me, the complaints that there are no more grand fundamental discoveries is alike to complaining that we are not discovering any new continents on Earth...)&lt;p&gt;On the subject of incentives in academia - reflecting on my academia run, I&amp;#x27;ve noticed that I was the most creatively productive when I had a longer planning horizon in front of me. It was either at the beginning of a several-years position. Or at the very end when I knew that I&amp;#x27;m leaving and didn&amp;#x27;t care anymore. The least productive was the sequence of one-year postdocs - when I was constantly worrying about the next one.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>commandlinefan</author><text>&amp;gt; the most creatively productive when I had a longer planning horizon&lt;p&gt;I feel the same way.  I&amp;#x27;ve never been in academia, but everything he said matches the negative incentive structures I&amp;#x27;ve always seen in the corporate world.  For the most part, the incentive structures are designed to catch cheaters (or &amp;quot;slackers&amp;quot;), but since actually discovering and creating something is virtually indistinguishable from &amp;quot;slacking&amp;quot;, it just doesn&amp;#x27;t get done.</text></comment>