As doctoral student, I am pondering this question more and more these days. I hear professors and other students further along than I talking about their research as if it were the most important work being done on planet earth. I’m getting a PhD in business statistics, so I’m in a college of business with professors of marketing, information systems, finance, management, accounting, etc. Most of business research is an extension of the research questions often asked in psychology (what are people’s beliefs, intentions, motivations, and modes of thinking). Yes, I’ll admit some of the research is interesting and potentially useful, but most of what I come across really has nothing hinging on it other than the author’s reputation.
Contrast this with work done in the "hard"sciences–biology, chemistry, engineering even. Research there is often featured in the popular press and has real, lasting impact on people’s lives. That work seems more important to me.
So, for academics and anyone else with a thought, why do academics have this attitude? I know the pat answer will be “well, it’s important to *them,” but it’s got to be something more. I suppose what I’m really asking is, if I’m thinking now that any research I do will probably not change the world, am I in the wrong line of work?
I think the only GQ answers are (a) the pat one you’ve already given and (b) yes if you would like to be in a line of work which you think will probably change the world.
First, I think it would be a mistake to believe that most researchers in the “hard sciences” are doing anything that will have a real impact on peoples lives. Of course some are but most are just shining a bright light on one small corner of the natural world with little chance that it will make any immediate difference to the general population. Take the LHC people at CERN or the Mars Rover team at JPL. Some of the brightest and best doing cutting edge science but neither project will make any difference to the average person. (Just for the record I am strongly in favour of such research with no obvious payback.)
Second, I’m not sure how widespread this is. I know or have known a fair number of researchers in both ats and sciences and I can’t think of many of them that saw **their ** research topic as “the most important thing on the planet”.
I would agree that when you talk to many researchers about their work they will focus entirely on the topic and assume you see it as as important and interesting as they do but get them off the topic and they will normally recognise the wider world! Only a guess but perhaps this focus and belief in your own work is a necessary prerequisite to suceeding as a researcher. Let’s face it, most research - whether in the arts, social sciences, or the physical sciences - is not normally full of wild excitement. It is often a lot of painstaking detailed work and, unless you have a personality that can focus on a single topic and convince yourself that it is significant, you are not likely to stick with it. I suspect it is self selecting. Academics are not generally well paid and bright people without this personality will just move into other fields.
[ul]
[li]If you work on something all the time, you tend to get a skewed idea of its importance, as you cannot see the “bigger picture”.[/li][li]Funding bodies tend to give more money to academics who convince them that their work is of practical importance.[/li][li]From my own work, we’re in competition with an entrenched approach to solving a problem. We need to sell our approach really hard to knock the existing work off top spot, so we make the advantages of our approach seem as if they’re of critical importance.[/li][li]A lot of academics are vain.[/li][/ul]
I work in academia after working in the private sector. I don’t think the percentage of people who take themselves “too seriously” (however you define it) is any different in either group. I knew stockbrokers were were deadly serious about what they were doing and self-important about it, and I know professors who are basically lighthearted (even in the sciences).
As for their research, show me someone who doesn’t take his work seriously and I’ll show you a lousy worker. That true in academia, but it’s also true in accounting, plumbing, and any job or trade you name.
I have to agree with others. My research is, and I can admit this, pretty darn pointless. But when I’m thinking about it 18 hours a day, it takes on a much bigger importance in my mind.
I agree with the above comment that in the corporate world and in theater and in academia (the three worlds I’ve moved in a good bit) you meet the same types as regards serious, ranging on one end of the spectrum from the horse’s ass who mistakes a complete absence of any sense of humor or levity with dedication (and conversely sees humor or levity as unprofessional) to the other extreme of the person who thinks of himself/herself as a devil-may-care que-sera type when what they are is just an irresponsible incompetent slacker. I’ve known stage actors of (at best) moderate talent who treated their role as if the survival of the human race depended on it and professors of the sciences who were wonderfully delightful people but chronically disorganized and (often unintentionally) extremely inconsiderate of others, and I once composed an email rescinding my application from a job while on a break during a job interview for said position because of the (in my opinion) unprofessional total seriousness with which the director seemed to regard her library (woman: we’re not guarding the Beast here), so there are all types in all fields. But the personalities of humans are much like their bodies: a beautiful face can light up a corner but a single asshole can stink up a whole room.
I love the quote by Peter Ustinov, "It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously.” I’ve no problem with people who are very serious about their work so long as they take themselves less seriously and generally accept that ultimately one well aimed asteroid would end us anyway, but let’s make the best of it while we’re here.
There’s a famous quotation: “University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.”
I think that deep down the academics who behave as the OP describes have some knowledge as to how trifling their efforts are regarded compared to many of those outside the ivory tower. And this knowledge burns, o how it burns. So they become petty dictators, exerting absolute control over their tiny empires.
There’s a HUGE difference in my experience between faculty at a teaching university and at a research university. Those at the teaching university (smaller colleges & universities that generally offer few if any Ph.D. programs and aren’t as likely to be home to “big” names) tend to be more relaxed, especially if they have tenure, than those at the big universities where Publish or Perish is king and grants/raises/tenure are all about prestige and citation indexing and the like. I’ve known a couple of brilliant professors (one in math and one in microbiology) who taught at colleges way less prestigious than they could have worked at because they said life was too short to spend 60 hours a week doing research and writing and then having to teach with no time for students and having to continually justify themselves; instead they’d teach, write or co-author an article when they felt they had something to say, and generally have a lot more leisure time and less stress than they’d have had at a Tier 1 research university.
Academic research isn’t a very well-paid job, considering the many years of education it takes to even get the job. Consider the earning potential of a law or medical degree compared to a purely academic Ph.D.
Research can be a rewarding job, but only if you feel your research is the most important thing in the world, and the opportunity make a difference in the field is its own reward. So that’s the kind of people who slog through Ph.D programs and stay in academia.
There may be some confirmation bias at work here as well. You might meet a dozen academics, but you’ll note the one who supports your hypothesis. Plus, the pompous ass is a hell of a lot more likely to tell you he’s a professor and bore you to tears blathering on about his work. You might not know the others are even in academia.
Which is not to say that that there aren’t a whole lot of academics who do take themselves way too seriously. I think academia does attract many people of that type. And let’s face it–you do have to take yourself and your work seriously if you’re going to devote all that time, energy, and money to writing a dissertation that nobody’s going to read anyway.
But most academics can laugh at themselves and at the fact that they’re devoting their lives to the study of 17th century Belgian poets or something. There are some who can’t, however. And they’re the ones who will trap you in a corner at a party and lecture you for an hour on the diacyclic hexameter of Jan van Doodlebug.
I do find that most, though not all, of the professors I have known match up with what you describe. My explanation is that the academic world is very much cut off from the outside. Professors not only only spend their working days in the office, but for many, academics is their entire life. Their spouse is a professor. Their personal friends are professors. Their social life revolves around their departments. Their sports team is the university sports team. Their leisure reading is academic books. Their culture is the on-campus art scene. Their vacations are to academic conferences. They do little, if anything, no connected to school and academic life.
The result can be an echo chamber effect. When you’re surrounded on all sides by professors (plus the occasional grad student and post doc), you only hear confirmations about how important your field is. If you rarely venture outside the academic world, you don’t encounter groups of people who view your work as trivial. If such a situation lasts for decades, it’s easy to see how a person’s perspective could get highly skewed. I still remember my topology professor explaining that if we proved the boundaries of even Coxeter groups with no virtual factor had connected boundary, it would be the great achievement of his life.
As for whether you should drop out, that’s really a matter of personal preference. There’s no reason why you have to do research that’s widely popular. The question is, would you be content doing research that only reaches a limited audience?
Thanks to everyone who took the time to reply. This is the first question I’ve ever posted here (after lurking for months seeing if Dopers were the right ones to direct this sort of question to). You’ve given me a lot to think about.
By the way, I am thinking about looking at teaching schools, but I see a lot of my colleagues turn up their noses at the thought of going to such an institution. They seem to believe that if you go to a teaching school, you’re not a “real” academic, in the sense that you’ve wasted your and your professors’ time going through the PhD program only to (shudder) teach.
Long time academic here - I think everyone up stream is correct. There are self-important blow hards in every line of work and nice guys. Having said that, there are 3 things going on in academia that make it different and do play into this:
To get a PhD you have to be incredibly focused on just one thing for several years. It weeds out the ADD types and the others who like to have many interests. Thus higher education is filled with people who are have tunnel vision. Those people tend to be self-important bores.
Many academics have a Cassandra complex. They may know tons more than most folks about their own little corner of the world, but usually nobody takes them seriously or cares. We live in a celebrity driven culture right now, and academics are the anti-celebrity. So they may be the world’s expert on some issue, but it doesn’t help them get their message out. The world at large doesn’t care what academics say (in general they are confused by scientists and academics), instead they want to know what some Kennedy thinks about autism, or how Betty White feels about treating animals. That can make someone bitter over time.
Tenured faculty can not be fired short of committing a felony. In addition, in most instances their department head has very little sway over how they behave. So many faculty can do what ever the hell the want a great deal of the time - if one of them has the tendency to be insufferable or have some other negative trait, there’s little in the system that can stop him or her and they tend to get worse over time.
Two examples:
I was told about a dean of students who refused to answer her telephone and would not talk on the phone with anyone. This refusal had a huge negative effect on her performance. Basically there were large portions of her job that she just couldn’t perform. Her boss, the dean, talked to her about it a lot. But, at the end of the day, she didn’t change and he couldn’t make her. Nor could he fire her or remove her from her position.
I was once in a meeting with my department head when we were discusssing the “bad seed” of the department. This was a guy who loudly went against anything the department head did, kept trying to win supporters to his side so that he could stage little coups, didn’t do what he was supposed to, whined and moaned when anyone asked him to do anything…made everyone else’s life a living hell and he was complained about all the time.
The department head said that he’d get “bad seed” to come to heel or else. When I asked what the “or else” was, I was told that he’d have his salary decreased by 1/2%.
That was the bottom line. In my department that year if the head thought you were doing a fantastic job you got a 3% raise, an average job you got a 2.5% raise, and a poor job a 2% raise. That was the only mechanism my boss had available to affect the behavior of the 10 or so folks he supervised. Needless to say, it didn’t affect behavior very much.