I tried out for a group after the end of the first year of grad school that worked on the CMS detector at the LHC looking for SUSY signatures. The group was a well established group but felt super toxic: I attended a weekly meeting where the advisor demanded some analysis from a grad student and she literally froze up and started talking faster promising to finish it by the end of the week. As a part of the trying out period, they allowed us to skim one of their technical reports and they had I believe ~10+/-5 potential events matching their search for SUSY particles, this over the petabytes of data for a two or three years of the LHC runs at the time. At the time I really liked particle physics but I also liked essentially coding and thought I'd miss it, so I was conflicted. It didn't help this esteemed professor felt like such an jerk AND their search, despite all the sophistication of their search and the related physics chops, basically had a large "no" for an answer. I ended up chosing a smaller group doing computational laser-plasma physics. The CMS professor at the time retorted something along the lines of "someone shouldn't want to do particle physics and then do plasma physics, it's evidence that person isn't serious."
Fast forward 10 years or so and I haven't regretted that decision. Not only is my pay much better doing this sort of thing but I really did nope out at the right time. I mean, I felt so smug about the noble prize being won by the attosecond researchers, one of whom had an office down the hall from our group. The same grad student who decided to bear the brunt of the CMS prof at the time justified the dearth of working in the group (although perhaps not the abuse, I don't know) as it would be potential "noble prize winning research." I feel I made the right bet at the time and don't regret it.
> someone shouldn't want to do particle physics and then do plasma physics, it's evidence that person isn't serious
That’s such a stupid and harmful thing to say. People change and it takes some maturity to realise that what we wanted to do might not actually be a good idea. It’s completely unrealistic to expect even undergrads to actually know how research is done in a specific field, so how could they be sure that they’d like it?
One of the best PhD student I have seen in materials chemistry came from biochemistry. It’s much better to go and see somewhere else than persevere and go in an unsatisfying field anyway. That’s the best way of becoming an angry, bitter and resentful little professor. Now that I think of it, it might explain some of my lecturers…
I had a similar sort of thing. There I was, plowing away in physics, doing pretty well. I was enjoying myself. They let me, an undergrad, take some grad level courses because I was doing good work. But then I took a long, very hard look at the people who were teaching me and their lifestyles. Their cars that were always breaking down, their second jobs, how much their wives worked, their clothes, and so on. Brilliant people working for a pittance.
Some of them, once you got a drink or two in them, would tell you about the indignity of academia: teaching 101 classes to kids who would rather not be there, scrabbling for grant money, the bitter jockeying for resources. Sure, you get your true-blue types, but they were largely outnumbered by people haunted by the sunk cost fallacy. And it's not really about nice cars, it's about "being able to arrive at the class you are teaching on time because your car doesn't break down every five minutes."
Science is a lot like a cult, not in that it has dogma, but that the dream of doing something that's good attracts people to abusive relationships with leaders that do not come close to compensating them for the true value of their long and unresting labors. On top of it the positions where you work the hardest for the least are the most difficult to obtain - which makes people value them more! Its just like Sea Org in Scientology...
At least the stuff they do is actually good and not, you know, evil.
It boggles my mind that the top comments on HN are now mostly just someone shouting into the void about self-absorbed topics that are (at best) loosely correlated to the article. This one is a shining example.
My experience on HN for the last 15 years is that the tangential, loosely correlated, comments tend to not only be the most interesting but lead to the most interesting threads.
I would agree -- but this is not one of them. This is someone gratuitously patting themselves on the back at every turn. It feels like the kind of NPC dialogue you might find in an RPG
> It boggles my mind that the top comments on HN are now mostly just someone shouting into the void about self-absorbed topics that are (at best) loosely correlated to the article. This one is a shining example.
It's an inside view of something I'm curious about. It may be unrepresentative, but I'll take it over the repetitive high-level stuff you see all the time.
That reading doesn't make much sense though, because it was toxicity in a group working in a very different context: hep-th and hep-ex are such different fields by now they had to formally create positions for people bridging the two subjects.
He could just as well used the story about the PhD student in computer science studying in Florida that committed suicide because their supervisor was trying to force them to publish incorrect results. (And then added how smug they felt about that group not getting awards).
I don't understand your points. Obviously the person was stating their anecdotal experience and how it made them feel. We engage in similar reasoning. We make decisions and draw conclusions based on our experience. It's a not a mathematical proof where the person is proving that the entire field is toxic. They are glad they got out of there.
Maybe I missed something but I don’t see where they claim to offer anything, so I don’t see why they should try adhering to this (completely unreasonable) standard.
Besides, the anecdote actually offers something: a perspective from someone who escaped the grinder just in time. I don’t have a cohort study at hand, but I know both first- and second-hand that the situation described is not the norm, but all too common. In such cases, the correct response is what was described: jump ship whilst you can. You don’t need a double blind study to demonstrate this when simple logic is enough.
If I am a not responsible for other people’s life choices it is OK to revel in their misfortune. No one is responsible for other people’s actions. Therefore it is always OK to revel in other people’s misfortune?
Can't someone feel good that they dodged a bullet that another person was not willing to dodge?
That's whats going on here. OP isn't going to a buffet and mocking starving kids - both folks were intelligent people, one of whom is justifying their life trajectory, and the other is taking a different tack.
I bet you'd be able to conjure up instances where you go "whew I'm glad I didn't do what that person did". We all can. That's not reveling in their misfortune, it's learning.
This is quite pedantic at this point - A generous reading of my posts and OPs shouldn't trigger this kind of vitriol. I apologize if my statement came off as dismissive of others' misfortune. I maintain the spirit of my statement: There is nothing malign about being glad at avoiding misfortune that others could also avoid (not random things like shootings - jeez this is nuts to compare "choice of lab" to "random acts of violence").
> A generous reading of my posts and OPs shouldn't trigger this kind of vitriol.
It should not, and you should not have to defend yourself against this kind of behaviour. I would not have phrased it like that, but I agree with your message.
Could you help me understand which posts enjoy generous reading and which are not so lucky please? Can I always assume the generosity to ignore what’s written? There’s a post in this very thread that dismisses the parent comment as stupid of all things. I wasn’t sure how much generosity it warranted. Thanks.
I would argue that the difference in phrasing is what makes OP come across badly. "I'm glad I didn't do what that person did" just evokes satisfaction with your decision, perhaps relief that you made the choice you did. Saying you felt "so smug I didn't do what that person did", definitely comes off worse IMO. Now you are not just happy with your choice, there's this sense of self satisfaction/superiority that's a bit unsavoury.
Probably overdoing it to reply here, but I rewrote the above comment a few times. I felt smug about the nobel prize going to the attosecond guys last year because for after switching fields tenish years ago, my former particle physics co-eds and advisors seemed surprised that I absconded particle physics for such an "applied" field. There was a sort of a pecking order where a lot more of the resources and physics dept brass were from particle and astrophysics whereas our groups were considered the "applied" physicists, where "applied" was used as silent epithet. So the fact an "AMO" group very closely related to us (our group had collaborations and shared grad students with one of the winners) got the nobel and the LHC groups who were back 10 years ago were for sure expected a nobel prize for SUSY discovery by students and admins alike did make me feel smug at the time of the award last year.
I added the bit about the other more senior grad student in later but didn't remove the smugness bit. Of course you'll probably not believe me but of course I do not feel smug they faced abuse and I didn't. I do admit I feel smug about the so-called applied physicists getting the nobel prize first but that feeling is more directed at the senior professors and dept chairs and certainly that LHC professor, and not her the grad student who honestly was very bright and talented but just made a different choice which at the time seemed like a sure bet for doing high impact research.
I say I don't regret the decision, but really if I'm honest these were all justifications at the time. I partially decided to switch because of what I felt were bad results from their search, but it was a bet fundamentally, I didn't have some deep foresight that that other grad student didn't have and I was betting against the commonly held perspectives at the time including that which I held. Ironically, both the professor of the LHC group and the new professor who would become my PhD advisor both had the same first name, so it became the "choice between two Toms*" in my head, and I definitely liked the new Tom over the abrasive Tom, so I felt that deep down I was just following what was better for my heart (the lazy option) over for my career (the "work harder" option). But...I lucked out and it turned out to be better for my career too. There was luck in it too as she being more senior means she had already a incurred a sunk cost whereas I was fresh on my journey and could easy make one last switch before continuing the program.
I say I "feel I made the right bet" but that is only in hindsight. 23 year old me had no idea this would all work out this way.
* First name changed to protect privacy both of me and the related professors.
Thanks for the honest reply, rewriting a lot and missing the tone might come across weird is definitely a plausible explanation. And I really am glad you avoided the bad supervisor: I've chosen thesis advisor based on what seemed the coolest rather than carefully vetting them for capability and it cost me more than a year to recover after the crash and do a completely new thesis. That said I also chose a supervisor based on the "well, they offer" principle and it's worked out ok so far.
I get what you say about particle physicists viewing applied fields as lesser, that's a zoom in on xkcd:435, which especially in a school with emphasis on "fundamental research" will also mirror the allocation of resources.
But globally particle physics isn't the dominant actor budget wise: there was a fight in the US in the late 80's early 90's and they lost, which is why the Superconducting Super Colliders was cancelled. It's just not so obvious because applied fields usually don't need to build as big things as HEP and so don't need to concentrate the entire field in one experiment.
>But globally particle physics isn't the dominant actor budget wise: there was a fight in the US in the late 80's early 90's and they lost, which is why the Superconducting Super Colliders was cancelled. It's just not so obvious because applied fields usually don't need to build as big things as HEP and so don't need to concentrate the entire field in one experiment.
You're totally right about this. Especially at this point, a lot more money globally goes into other fields beyond fundamentals or particle physics, this might have really been localised to my alma mater.
Fast forward 10 years or so and I haven't regretted that decision. Not only is my pay much better doing this sort of thing but I really did nope out at the right time. I mean, I felt so smug about the noble prize being won by the attosecond researchers, one of whom had an office down the hall from our group. The same grad student who decided to bear the brunt of the CMS prof at the time justified the dearth of working in the group (although perhaps not the abuse, I don't know) as it would be potential "noble prize winning research." I feel I made the right bet at the time and don't regret it.