In academia, it’s almost impossible to say “no” to a senior faculty. I’ve had situations where a coauthor requested something that was just infeasible, but pushing back against that made them not trust me with future projects because they thought I was justifying my incompetence, whereas they were the ones who wouldn’t even listen to my detailed reasoning.
This environment forces you to just give them the results that they like to see, even if the results are not scientifically accurate. It’s as if the goal is not to do science, but to publish and tell an interesting story in your papers.
You might say: “well, just ignore them and do your own thing”, but unfortunately in academia so much depends on how people like you. Without good recommendation letters, citations, and networking, you can’t really go far in your academic career. I’ve seen people who couldn’t get their tenure after several years because of this.
It makes me sad but unfortunately this is the truth I discovered only recently. Had I had known about it, I’d stick to industry jobs.
I can remind myself that almost no one will ever read academic papers in my field, but at the end of the day, I’m still struggling with this dilemma: do the right and scientific thing and ruin my future in academia, or do what my peers are doing and make senior faculty like me.
This environment forces you to just give them the results that they like to see, even if the results are not scientifically accurate. It’s as if the goal is not to do science, but to publish and tell an interesting story in your papers.
You might say: “well, just ignore them and do your own thing”, but unfortunately in academia so much depends on how people like you. Without good recommendation letters, citations, and networking, you can’t really go far in your academic career. I’ve seen people who couldn’t get their tenure after several years because of this.
It makes me sad but unfortunately this is the truth I discovered only recently. Had I had known about it, I’d stick to industry jobs.
I can remind myself that almost no one will ever read academic papers in my field, but at the end of the day, I’m still struggling with this dilemma: do the right and scientific thing and ruin my future in academia, or do what my peers are doing and make senior faculty like me.