What Is the Biggest Problem of Academia?

Yesterday, we had a discussion panel at the institute. During this discussion panel, teams of researchers debated topics related to brain research and to academia in general. One of the topics was: ‘what is the biggest problem of academia?’

One of the debating teams raised the issue of reproducibility crisis and publication pressure. A large-scale replication study by the Open Science Collaboration (2015), published in Science, replicated 100 psychology findings.

According to the study, only around a third held up as strongly as the originals. This shows how real the reproducibility crisis is. Moreover, according to Fanelli (2012), negative results have been steadily disappearing from the published literature.

Such a popular answer to the question, isn’t it? I started wondering: well, is this really The Problem?

In fact, science is just as competitive and hierarchical as any other environment. The difference is that people in academia often struggle to accept this reality, more so than people in some other fields.

Why Does Competition Feel Different in Academia?

In sports, industry, or politics, competition is so natural that people take it for granted. No one takes it too personally.

Scientists, however, seem overall surprised by this competition. Given that only a limited number of seats exist at each step of the ladder, tension between people is inevitable.

Larson, Ghaffarzadegan and Xue (2014) ran a systems-modeling study in Systems Research and Behavioral Science. According to the study, only around 13% of PhD graduates in fields like engineering can ever attain an academic position. This holds true in a steady state, since each professor trains far more PhDs than there are professorships to fill.

In the Olympic games, participants accept that there can only be a small number of medalists. To some extent, it also depends on luck.

Where Does the Real Problem Really Lie?

So, coming back to the biggest problem of academia: the true issue is that people often don’t play fair. For instance, professors sometimes reject papers out of personal aversion rather than merit.

Indeed, according to Lee et al. (2013), peer review is vulnerable to several well-documented forms of bias.

Researchers also cluster together in friend groups to write grants. They often enroll friends on the payroll rather than the most qualified candidates.

Academia is based on a human factor, but sometimes that shows its bad side. It becomes full of cliques, personal grudges, and mutual resentment hatched for decades. If only people were a little bit nicer to each other…

My point is that every environment carries some collateral stress and pressure. This holds true whether it is science, industry, the army, the church, or any other pyramidal structure. There are people who can make it either heaven or hell, just by the way they treat each other.