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OnAcademia.htm
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OnAcademia.htm
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<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<!-- saved from url=(0043)http://www.people.hbs.edu/sdas/academia.htm -->
<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Web Selected Cartoons and Creative Writing by Sanjiv Ranjan Das</TITLE>
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<BODY>
<P><FONT color=#000000>"On Academics - A worm's eye view!" </FONT>
<P><FONT color=#000000>- S R Das<BR></FONT>
<P><FONT color=#000000>Every now and then I undertake the sobering exercise of
examining the academic profession. Why this usually seems to follow a period of
great unproductivity has eluded me so far, but no doubt there must be some
correlation and sooner or later I will write a profound paper on this, suitably
titled - "The interaction of failure and thought - a time series perspective"
which will no doubt revolutionize the econometric literature in this area. Come
to think of it, its pretty obvious, one cannot both think and work at the same
time. If it were possible, academics would not then be able to look upon the
'working classes' with the disdain we currently do. Those who can, do, and we
pity them for it. Those of us who cant, teach, I am afraid. <BR></FONT>
<P><FONT color=#000000>Nothing I ever said was important till I became an
academic. Now everything I say is the MOST important, by definition. My deeper
understanding of issues has shown me that people make incorrect statements all
the time, especially other academics. I fail to understand this. I also find
that for some reason the ones making the most meaningless assertions appear to
be working in my specific sub field. I am in the process of remedying this, and
will soon edit my own journal to ensure that the rot does not spread. I will
charge very heavy submission fees so as to deter deviant thinkers and to access
the best referees that money can buy. <BR></FONT>
<P><FONT color=#000000>Last week I was pondering the role of academic journals,
and it amazed me how similar the process was to that of wine making. I was
browsing my latest issue of "The Retrospective of Financial Analysis" and
reading the abstract of a paper titled "Omega is Dead: Why Size Dominates Higher
Order Moments, A Multicentury Analysis" I was struck by the fact that this paper
had been revised only sixteen times. Surely the editor knew the authors well.
Standards were slipping. I remember a time when papers were never submitted and
published in the same decade. Yes, its so much like the making of good wine -
take your time and let the referee jump on the paper. I recall with fondness the
manuscript submission instructions - "…if papers are not vague enough to be
revised several times, we consider them unpublishable..". Acknowledgments are
truly a fine art, and authors will readily complement at least fifty people (in
descending order of seniority) on their assistance in eliminating all the
terribly useless original ideas from the paper, leaving thereby only the
mistakes, which of course are completely their responsibility. <BR></FONT>
<P><FONT color=#000000>There are two kinds of academics: theoretical ones and
empirical ones. The theoretical academic will make up a hypothetical situation
(just for fun) and then develop all the machinery to prove that such a purported
situation must be false. The more famous of such results are called
'impossibility' or 'irrelevance' theorems. This is definitely getting somewhere,
because by circumscribing falsehood, we must be nearer the truth (in a relative
sense, a la Einstein). Theorists are in a perpetual search for the truth. Having
found it, they will then explain it to us ordinary folk in a mystical and
mysterious way, in special journals in which data is forbidden. <BR></FONT>
<P><FONT color=#000000>The empirical academic is more down-to-earth. In fact he
is so down to earth that he is perpetually with his nose to the ground sniffing
for data points. Once he has collected enough data, he will take gobs of it and
throw it into neatly ordered tables with an even number of rows. He will call
the odd numbered rows 'parameters' and the even numbered rows 't-stats'. The
most popular game these academics play is called "Magic Number 2". They will
keep throwing numbers at tables until almost all even numbered rows have numbers
greater than 2. Then they will write a paper describing how many hours it took
to collect the data points and how at the first throw, the table came out just
great. This practice is called econometrics. Sometimes, not having control over
the data, the academic realizes that he just cant win the game of MN2. He then
decides to become a theorist. But the more resourceful ones decide to go the
"non-parametric route" which is just another word for just making up the data.
This takes great skill. <BR></FONT>
<P><FONT color=#000000>New empirical techniques are being discovered every day,
and data which refused to confess in the past is now lining up neatly in the
even numbered rows. Without exception, a new technique is usually broader in
scope and the profession instantly applies it to all the data sets that exist.
This has been known to speed up the journal process substantially, but is often
looked down upon as 'new wine in an old bottle'. However, there is almost
universal agreement that this is more efficient than gathering new data,
especially since it is well known that the answers remain the same anyway.
<BR></FONT>
<P><FONT color=#000000>Every now and then, despite ones best efforts to keep the
writing vague, one makes the mistake of submitting a paper to a journal which is
clearly too focused to be published. Like just yesterday I received this
rejection letter…<BR></FONT>
<P><FONT color=#000000>" Dear Sir,</FONT>
<P><FONT color=#000000>I enclose the referee report on your paper. The referee
finds that the paper is clearly not involved enough to be published at a journal
of repute such as ours. You will notice that the report is incomplete which is a
clear indication of the fact that the referee did not think it worthwhile going
on. In verbal communication, he indicated to me that your paper would be better
suited to a practitioner journal where your audience would be substantially
larger, and would probably have the time to read your work. We wish you success
in your endeavors and encourage you to submit your more confusing work to
us…"<BR></FONT>
<P><FONT color=#000000>Sometimes I will get lucky and receive what is known as a
"revise and resubmit" (R&R, but not in the usual sense). This is a positive
signal requiring you to redo your work by throwing numbers at tables using
several suggested techniques. The range and sophistication of the suggestions is
truly mind boggling. Take the ordinary over-educated, easy-going person and make
him referee a journal paper - it will convert him into the most imaginative
human being of all time. Here is the solution to the declining school system:
make referee duty compulsory. <BR></FONT>
<P><FONT color=#000000>Despite the great things about academics, there is a dark
side to it as well. The ugliest are turf battles. Every once in a while someone
will found an area so confusing that only he can understand it. People will
speak of him in great awe, and yet there will appear renegades who will try and
make sense of the paradigm, which would totally destroy its value. Or even
worse, someone may try to develop a competing, even more confusing paradigm.
These turf battles are major events in the life of an academic, demanding such
strenuous effort that it takes a severe toll on the person, necessitating long
periods of rest. Fortunately, we have a system addresses this problem - its
called 'tenure'. It is the system's way of saying - "enough!". <BR></FONT>
<P><FONT color=#000000>I truly love academia, don't
you?<BR><BR></FONT></P></BODY></HTML>