> You're judging by reputation rather than substance.
Is there an alternative, though? When hiring someone we use their degrees, experience and credentials, all of which are indirect ways of estimating competence. We cannot realistically expect people to know all about someone’s career when interviewing them, it’s not realistic.
It’s the same thing for careers evolution. HR people don’t have time or skills to know about the science, and good scientists already spend way too much time reviewing articles or grant proposals, and sitting in various boards and panels. There is no need for more administrative work.
I don’t think the current systems are ideal, but I think improving it would by fixing incentives would be more efficient (and that’s not only for scientists, it’s the same for any major organisation or company).
@kergonath and @jitsiren in the sibling comment. You're both describing the outcome of a system of vastly disproportionate numbers of applicants and opportunities. I believe we should continue churning out intellectuals who are passionate about the sciences, but we need to provide them with enough opportunities, so there isn't the pressure for it to be gamed (because there is only opportunity for a few). Ultimately, if we don't do anything about it, it makes this problem just seem like the neglected by-product of thinly veiled money-laundering from the government to financial institutions (via university administrators and student loans).
I said "read the god damn papers" but this is a condensed version of saying be more nuanced and familiar with the person's work. Metrics are signals, not answers. They are always fuzzy and we need to recognize that and bring this into the core of how we evaluate. You'll never be perfect and while we know to not let perfection stand in the way of good enough neither should you let lack of global optima stand in the way of progress. There's always room to improve.
At the heart of academia we push human knowledge forward, even if just by little nudges at a time. But this means the environment changes as we succeed. What worked in the past may not work moving forward. And as we all should be intimately familiar with, given enough time Goodhart's Law always wins.
But there's so many problems with becoming over reliant upon metrics. It's not a static measurement, it is a degrading one. This is because we get lost seeking success for ourselves because doing so makes it easier to do the work we want to (and ideally more impact on humanity). Because of this the best way to advance your career is not to continue researching but to grow the size of your lab and get grad students and post docs to research. You need to become a PI, who's job is political and about funding. This person does need a strong PhD background but it's also silly that it's extremely hard to find a path where your primary job after getting a PhD is... Research...
But pushing the edge of what we know is fucking hard. It should be no surprise that it is hard to evaluate the performance of people trying to do this. So forgive me if I think in addition to using metrics like citations, venue pubs, h-indexes, you can take the time to read you colleagues papers. I'm really not asking for much here.
One of the things I also find rotten in academia is this isolation. It's weird that we don't know, intimately, the work of those in our department. We should be reading their papers in the first place! I'm glad academia encouraged collaboration with groups outside your institution, but it shouldn't come at the cost of collaboration in house. Both are valuable.
There's just so much more and I think it's why many are willing to tear down the system and start over. I'd rather not, but things are too broken for patchwork. We don't need to tear it down, but we do need to do some serious renovation.
I encourage everyone to think deeply about the problem, even if you don't think there is one (especially if you don't!). Address the underlying assumptions that no one says. Consider when they hold and when they don't. Then ask if this works. If you believe so, great! I'd love to hear that opinion. But I find it absurd we can't spend a little time questioning the vehicle we are all riding in. It should be questioned frequently and regularly. Because maintenance is far easier than fixing something when it's broken.
Is there an alternative, though? When hiring someone we use their degrees, experience and credentials, all of which are indirect ways of estimating competence. We cannot realistically expect people to know all about someone’s career when interviewing them, it’s not realistic.
It’s the same thing for careers evolution. HR people don’t have time or skills to know about the science, and good scientists already spend way too much time reviewing articles or grant proposals, and sitting in various boards and panels. There is no need for more administrative work.
I don’t think the current systems are ideal, but I think improving it would by fixing incentives would be more efficient (and that’s not only for scientists, it’s the same for any major organisation or company).