Publish or perish下教授之殇(转载）# Biology - 生物学
o*u
1 楼
Imperial College London的Stefan Grimm教授逝去了，邮件系统在他逝去之后，按照
他的设定，自动群发了一封题为“How Professors are treated at Imperial College
”的邮件；读完让人唏嘘。为了保持原汁原味，我就直接引用英文。
邮件原文如下：
From: Stefan Grimm /* */>
Date: 21 October 2014 23:41:03 BST
To:
Subject: How Professors are treated at Imperial College
Dear all,
If anyone is interested how Professors are treated at Imperial College: Here
is my story.
On May 30th ’13 my boss, Prof Martin Wilkins, came into my office together
with his PA and ask me what grants I had. After I enumerated them I was told
that this was not enough and that I had to leave the College within one
year – “max” as he said. He made it clear that he was acting on behalf of
Prof Gavin Screaton, the then head of the Department of Medicine, and told
me that I would have a meeting with him soon to be sacked. Without any
further comment he left my office. It was only then that I realized that he
did not even have the courtesy to close the door of my office when he
delivered this message. When I turned around the corner I saw a student who
seems to have overheard the conversation looking at me in utter horror.
Prof Wilkins had nothing better to do than immediately inform my colleagues
in the Section that he had just sacked me.
Why does a Professor have to be treated like that?
All my grant writing stopped afterwards, as I was waiting for the meeting to
get sacked by Prof Screaton. This meeting, however, never took place.
In March ’14 I then received the ultimatum email below. 200,000 pounds
research income every year is required. Very interesting. I was never
informed about this before and cannot remember that this is part of my
contract with the College. Especially interesting is the fact that the
required 200,000.- pounds could potentially also be covered by smaller
grants but in my case a programme grant was expected.
Our 135,000.- pounds from the University of Dammam? Doesn’t count. I have
to say that it was a lovely situation to submit grant applications for your
own survival with such a deadline. We all know what a lottery grant
applications are.
There was talk that the Department had accepted to be in dept for some time
and would compensate this through more teaching. So I thought that I would
survive. But the email below indicates otherwise. I got this after the
student for whom I “have plans” received the official admission to the
College as a PhD student. He waited so long to work in our group and I will
never be able to tell him that this should now not happen. What these guys
don’t know is that they destroy lives. Well, they certainly destroyed mine.
The reality is that these career scientists up in the hierarchy of this
organization only look at figures to judge their colleagues, be it impact
factors or grant income. After all, how can you convince your Department
head that you are working on something exciting if he not even attends the
regular Departmental seminars? The aim is only to keep up the finances of
their Departments for their own career advancement.
These formidable leaders are playing an interesting game: They hire
scientists from other countries to submit the work that they did abroad
under completely different conditions for the Research Assessment that is
supposed to gauge the performance of British universities. Afterwards they
leave them alone to either perform with grants or being kicked out. Even if
your work is submitted to this Research Assessment and brings in money for
the university, you are targeted if your grant income is deemed insufficient
. Those submitted to the research assessment hence support those colleagues
who are unproductive but have grants. Grant income is all that counts here,
not scientific output.
We had four papers with original data this year so far, in Cell Death and
Differentiation, Oncogene, Journal of Cell Science and, as I informed Prof
Wilkins this week, one accepted with the EMBO Journal. I was also the editor
of a book and wrote two reviews. Doesn’t count.
This leads to a interesting spin to the old saying “publish or perish”.
Here it is “publish and perish”.
Did I regret coming to this place? I enormously enjoyed interacting with my
science colleagues here, but like many of them, I fell into the trap of
confusing the reputation of science here with the present reality. This is
not a university anymore but a business with very few up in the hierarchy,
like our formidable duo, profiteering and the rest of us are milked for
money, be it professors for their grant income or students who pay 100.-
pounds just to extend their write-up status.
If anyone believes that I feel what my excellent coworkers and I have
accomplished here over the years is inferior to other work, is wrong. With
our apoptosis genes and the concept of Anticancer Genes we have developed
something that is probably much more exciting than most other projects,
including those that are heavily supported by grants.
Was I perhaps too lazy? My boss smugly told me that I was actually the one
professor on the whole campus who had submitted the highest number of grant
applications. Well, they were probably simply not good enough.
I am by far not the only one who is targeted by those formidable guys. These
colleagues only keep quiet out of shame about their situation. Which is
wrong. As we all know hitting the sweet spot in bioscience is simply a
matter of luck, both for grant applications and publications.
Why does a Professor have to be treated like that?
One of my colleagues here at the College whom I told my story looked at me,
there was a silence, and then said: “Yes, they treat us like sh*t”.
Best regards,
Stefan Grimm
他的设定，自动群发了一封题为“How Professors are treated at Imperial College
”的邮件；读完让人唏嘘。为了保持原汁原味，我就直接引用英文。
邮件原文如下：
From: Stefan Grimm /* */>
Date: 21 October 2014 23:41:03 BST
To:
Subject: How Professors are treated at Imperial College
Dear all,
If anyone is interested how Professors are treated at Imperial College: Here
is my story.
On May 30th ’13 my boss, Prof Martin Wilkins, came into my office together
with his PA and ask me what grants I had. After I enumerated them I was told
that this was not enough and that I had to leave the College within one
year – “max” as he said. He made it clear that he was acting on behalf of
Prof Gavin Screaton, the then head of the Department of Medicine, and told
me that I would have a meeting with him soon to be sacked. Without any
further comment he left my office. It was only then that I realized that he
did not even have the courtesy to close the door of my office when he
delivered this message. When I turned around the corner I saw a student who
seems to have overheard the conversation looking at me in utter horror.
Prof Wilkins had nothing better to do than immediately inform my colleagues
in the Section that he had just sacked me.
Why does a Professor have to be treated like that?
All my grant writing stopped afterwards, as I was waiting for the meeting to
get sacked by Prof Screaton. This meeting, however, never took place.
In March ’14 I then received the ultimatum email below. 200,000 pounds
research income every year is required. Very interesting. I was never
informed about this before and cannot remember that this is part of my
contract with the College. Especially interesting is the fact that the
required 200,000.- pounds could potentially also be covered by smaller
grants but in my case a programme grant was expected.
Our 135,000.- pounds from the University of Dammam? Doesn’t count. I have
to say that it was a lovely situation to submit grant applications for your
own survival with such a deadline. We all know what a lottery grant
applications are.
There was talk that the Department had accepted to be in dept for some time
and would compensate this through more teaching. So I thought that I would
survive. But the email below indicates otherwise. I got this after the
student for whom I “have plans” received the official admission to the
College as a PhD student. He waited so long to work in our group and I will
never be able to tell him that this should now not happen. What these guys
don’t know is that they destroy lives. Well, they certainly destroyed mine.
The reality is that these career scientists up in the hierarchy of this
organization only look at figures to judge their colleagues, be it impact
factors or grant income. After all, how can you convince your Department
head that you are working on something exciting if he not even attends the
regular Departmental seminars? The aim is only to keep up the finances of
their Departments for their own career advancement.
These formidable leaders are playing an interesting game: They hire
scientists from other countries to submit the work that they did abroad
under completely different conditions for the Research Assessment that is
supposed to gauge the performance of British universities. Afterwards they
leave them alone to either perform with grants or being kicked out. Even if
your work is submitted to this Research Assessment and brings in money for
the university, you are targeted if your grant income is deemed insufficient
. Those submitted to the research assessment hence support those colleagues
who are unproductive but have grants. Grant income is all that counts here,
not scientific output.
We had four papers with original data this year so far, in Cell Death and
Differentiation, Oncogene, Journal of Cell Science and, as I informed Prof
Wilkins this week, one accepted with the EMBO Journal. I was also the editor
of a book and wrote two reviews. Doesn’t count.
This leads to a interesting spin to the old saying “publish or perish”.
Here it is “publish and perish”.
Did I regret coming to this place? I enormously enjoyed interacting with my
science colleagues here, but like many of them, I fell into the trap of
confusing the reputation of science here with the present reality. This is
not a university anymore but a business with very few up in the hierarchy,
like our formidable duo, profiteering and the rest of us are milked for
money, be it professors for their grant income or students who pay 100.-
pounds just to extend their write-up status.
If anyone believes that I feel what my excellent coworkers and I have
accomplished here over the years is inferior to other work, is wrong. With
our apoptosis genes and the concept of Anticancer Genes we have developed
something that is probably much more exciting than most other projects,
including those that are heavily supported by grants.
Was I perhaps too lazy? My boss smugly told me that I was actually the one
professor on the whole campus who had submitted the highest number of grant
applications. Well, they were probably simply not good enough.
I am by far not the only one who is targeted by those formidable guys. These
colleagues only keep quiet out of shame about their situation. Which is
wrong. As we all know hitting the sweet spot in bioscience is simply a
matter of luck, both for grant applications and publications.
Why does a Professor have to be treated like that?
One of my colleagues here at the College whom I told my story looked at me,
there was a silence, and then said: “Yes, they treat us like sh*t”.
Best regards,
Stefan Grimm
