[Todos] Informe sobre la corrupcion en Exactas - Parte 37

[fabio vicentini]

Buenos Aires, December 8, 2013

Dear Colleagues:
Subject: *On the Origin of Academic Bullshitting*

 The real world is not a nice place lo live in, and I face it by writing
satyrical pieces. However I will let aside the humour genre, and try to
describe the problem as seriously and briefly as I can.

My metier during 30 years was that of an operarional researcher at
industrial firms. I was not an academic but a practitioner. In the nineties
Argentine economy was hit by ‘neoliberalism’. I lost my job, which forced
me to reenter my alma mater as an assistant professor.


In the math dept they want me to write papers, the publish-or-perish policy
being in force. In fact it serves the purpose to drain off the congestion
of people in the school of sciences. There is no place for a scientist
outside the academy. Hence students, after getting the diploma, try to stay
on at the academy to follow an academic career.

The procedure is as follows. Once every seven years Dr X has to face a
contest they call "concurso". What it means is that the school posts in the
daily press a call for anyone who feels he is better than X in his field.
Let me call the candidates A and B. Then they proceed to count their
papers, mind you, the number not the content. If X’s number is greater than
the maximum of A and B then he can stay on the following seven years at his
job. Otherwise he is given the sack. There is no such a thing as tenure.
The ordeal recurs until X is either terminated, or retired at 65 or die of
a heart attack.

Under these circumstances it is clear that making up papers is the foremost
objective of the professor, therefore his strategy is to maximize the
number of published articles in peer-reviewed journals. It follows that his
output would be mainly sophisticated bullshit.

Something really went wrong in the academy after I got my diploma in 1963,
I don’t recall such a beastly academic policy when I was a student. What
was its cause? When did it happen? Does this academic phenomenon sound
familiar to you?



In 2005 I was lecturing Combinatorial Optimization in the math dept under a
contract having an almost zero stipend. I did it for the fun of it, I
enjoyed teaching. The Computer Science chairman contrived a way to abort my
contract. Why, for goodness’ sake? He was displeased because I did
consulting jobs for industrial firms while he had in his dept half a dozen
full-time professors commited to OR paper-making. This academic specimen
happened to be an IFORS vice-president.



I am under the impression that numerous scholars are engaged in
paper-writing, the theory of which will never be used to solve a real world
problem that benefits society



Sincerely,

Fabio Vicentini
Operational Research Consultant


PS. Report sent to 128 colleagues around the world
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