Azhir Mahmood  🚀 🤖 🧬 🧠 🪐

Don't confuse inaction on this with an unwillingness to help improve science. I spent my free time on NMC and NMA this year, which is a different way of improving the community.

my bad, I didn't mean it personally to you Brad at all (i generally never make personal comments as a matter of policy, except in egregious situations). I do hear this refrains so routinely in the reform debates it frustrates me.

I totally get that, and I agree that we need energy from all corners to push reforms on all fronts (although we also have to be strategic given our limited free time).

I believe the system we have is actually pretty good. Not locally. But long term. I'll eventually write a simulation paper to convince @GunnarBlohm

I’m not sure about the current system. As increasingly we’re seeing a privatisation of research. On top of that many are leaving academia for big tech due to a perception that their rapid advancements are being made elswhere. Due to burdensome levels of red tape in academia.

It’s actually a good thing people are leaving the academy — we need to stop the overproduction of PhDs and postdocs, to give every graduate a fighting chance for a faculty position after their PhD without being in the rich club or doing many postdocs

That may be true, though their reasons for leaving academia isn’t great. There has to be a better balance. Couldn’t increasing collaboration with the private sector and funnelling VC money into labs also create more faculty jobs? (This is becoming more common in the U.K.).

Not an expert on this topic but I haven’t seen industry helping create faculty jobs — they mostly throw money and resources at those who are already “superstars” and promise them real profit for their business.. so I wouldn’t want industry to be the steward of science