Björn Brembs

Until the late 1980s or early 1990s, academic institutions such as
universities and research institutes were at the forefront of developing
and implementing digital technology. After email they developed Gopher,
TCP/IP, http, the NCSA Mosaic browser and experimented with
[Mbone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbone).

Since then, at most academic institutions, infrastructure has moved past
the support of email and browsers only at a glacial pace. Compared to
the years and decades before the early 1990s, the last 30 years appear
to be frozen in time, with virtually no modernization of our
infrastructure beyond bandwidth.

Functionalities we take for granted outside of academia, such as
automated data sharing, collaborative code development and authoring,
social media, etc. -- virtually none of it is supported by academic
institutions on an analogous, broad international scale such as email or
browsing.

As the technology is commercially available and more than enough money
is still flowing into [obsolete
infrastructure](https://bjoern.brembs.net/2016/12/so-your-institute-went-cold-turkey-on-publisher-x-what-now/)
such as journal subscriptions, the conclusion that it must be a social
obstacle that prevents infrastructure modernization becomes inescapable.

I was asked on Twitter today, what this social obstacle might be and how
it could be overcome:

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large">
<img
src="https://bjoern.brembs.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/image.png"
class="wp-image-2130" data-fetchpriority="high" decoding="async"
srcset="https://bjoern.brembs.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/image.png 763w, https://bjoern.brembs.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/image-300x190.png 300w, https://bjoern.brembs.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/image-50x32.png 50w"
sizes="(max-width: 763px) 100vw, 763px" width="763" height="482" />
</figure>

Here is a short summary of my answers to these two questions:

The first is a difficult question and I only can offer hypotheses. A
recent comment by [Antonio
Loprieno](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Loprieno) when we were
on a panel of the German
[Wissenschaftsrat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Council_of_Science_and_Humanities),
seemed to confirm part of one hypothesis: he said, citing a recent
example from a university in Germany, that today institutions seem to be
more willing to invest in looking like they are performing better,
rather than to actually perform better -- show over substance. His
example was that of a university hiring two FTEs to massage the data
sent to ranking organizations, rather than to change the way the
university is operating.

From this perspective, until the early 1990s, around which time
universities were told to compete, universities cooperated and had the
interest of their faculty and students in mind. This entailed that if
there was a technology that would stand to improve how the university
could fulfill its mission and money was available to implement it, it
would be implemented. The internet was such a technology and according
to a book entitled "[How not to network a
nation](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/how-not-network-nation)",
institutions had to cooperate to make this technology a reality.
Apparently, academic institutions saw the potential, found the money and
cooperated, or the efforts would have failed just as those in the Soviet
Union at the time failed.

<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized">
<img
src="https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/styles/large_book_cover/http/mitp-content-server.mit.edu%3A18180/books/covers/cover/%3Fcollid%3Dbooks_covers_0%26isbn%3D9780262034180%26type%3D.jpg?itok=VxeTgicM"
decoding="async" width="275" height="407"
alt="https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/styles/large_book_cover/http/mitp-content-server.mit.edu%3A18180/books/covers/cover/%3Fcollid%3Dbooks_covers_0%26isbn%3D9780262034180%26type%3D.jpg?itok=VxeTgicM" />
<figcaption>https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/how-not-network-nation</figcaption>
</figure>

Analogous to the failure of Soviet Russia to use competition between
institutions to develop their own network, roughly since the fall of the
iron curtain (ironically enough) we have been mimicking the failed
Soviet approach with competing institutions focusing more on rankings
rather than actually improving the way they pursue their mission.

As for the second question, of how to overcome this social obstacle,
this is easier to answer and there are a number of options to choose
from.

1.  Obviously, one could revert some of the fatal decisions made in the
    early 1990s (like getting rid of New Public Management and other
    similarly embarrassing inventions).
2.  However, [\#1](https://bjoern.brembs.net/tag/1/){.hashtag .u-tag
    .u-category rel="tag"} seems like the most difficult of options, so
    almost a decade ago now, I thought one only needed to convince
    libraries that they are [ideally
    suited](http://blogarchive.brembs.net/comment-n835.html) to
    [implement the new
    infrastructure](https://bjoern.brembs.net/2017/03/how-to-convince-faculty-to-support-subscription-cancellations/)
    as they have both the expertise and, of course they control the
    money. After nearly a decade of interacting with both skeptical and
    enthusiastic libraries, I can now see why even the enthusiastic ones
    are hesitant: they have [similarly good
    reasons](https://bjoern.brembs.net/2020/09/whos-responsible-for-the-lack-of-action/)
    not to act as my researcher colleagues.
3.  So when I saw how deans of several departments here at my
    institution were scrambling to find positions and money for
    infrastructure requirements of the DFG, I had the idea for [Plan I
    (for
    infrastructure)](https://bjoern.brembs.net/2018/11/maybe-try-another-kind-of-mandate/):
    these infrastructure mandates that are already in place for some
    aspects of funding, need to be expanded for all aspects.
    Institutions dependent on research overhead will do anything to meet
    the demands of the funders, as I could experience first hand. I've
    talked to funders like the DFG, NSF, NIH and ERC (Bourguignon) and
    none of them saw any obstacles, but I have yet to see adoption or
    even widespread discussion.

So given that last experience and those of the last 13 years or so in
which I have been involved in these topics, I expect funders to soon
come up with a similar reason as my researcher colleagues and libraries
as to why they actually do support infrastructure modernization, but,
unfortunately, can't do anything about it other than to keep hammering
down on the least powerful (e.g., with individual mandates) and let the
main obstacles to modernization remain in place.


Until the late 1980s or early 1990s, academic institutions such as universities and research institutes were at the forefront of developing and implementing digital technology. After email they developed Gopher, TCP/IP, http, the NCSA Mosaic browser and experimented with Mbone. Since then, at most academic institutions, infrastructure has moved past the support of email and browsers only at a glacial pace.

Why do academic institutions seem stuck in 1995?

*"an academic career, in which a person is forced to produce scientific
writings in great amounts, creates a danger of intellectual
superficiality"*

Albert Einstein

::: {.cit-metadata}
[[[Isaacson]{.cit-name-surname} [W
]{.cit-name-given-names}]{.cit-auth}([2008]{.cit-pub-date}) [Einstein
(His Life and Universe)]{.cit-source} ([Simon and
Schuster]{.cit-publ-name}, [New York]{.cit-publ-loc}), [1st
Ed]{.cit-edition}, p [79]{.cit-fpage}]{style="font-size: 8pt;"}
:::

 

Ever since Reagan and Thatcher made neoliberal ideas palatable to an
unsuspecting public, concepts such as "[New Public
Management](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_public_management)" or the
more general notion that competition between institutions and
individuals are key to eliminating the (probably nonexistent or at least
negligible) problem of "dead wood", have slowly crept into academia as
well.

The consequences on the institutional level are quite well documented:
The increase of the precariat of (adjunct) faculty without benefits or
tenure, a growing layer of
[administration](https://bjoern.brembs.net/2015/01/booming-university-administrations/)
and
[bureaucracy](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/06/higher-ed-administrators-growth_n_4738584.html),
or the increase in student debt. In part, this well-known corporate
strategy serves to [increase labor
servility](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/03/the-death-of-american-universities/).
The student debt problem is particularly obvious in countries with
tuition fees, especially in the US where [a convincing argument has been
made](https://www.takepart.com/ivorytower) that the tuition system is
nearing its breaking point. The decrease in tenured positions is also
quite well documented (see e.g., an [old
post](http://blogarchive.brembs.net/comment-n683.html)).

On the individual level, tenure, promotion and funding in many places
now depend on the number of publications (in certain journals; i.e.,
"publish or perish") or one's creativity in designing the most expensive
way to do their research (i.e., amount of grant income). While the
incentives to waste tax-funds are rather obvious, it is probably more
difficult to immediately see anything wrong with rewarding productivity.
After all, researchers live off the public teat, shouldn't they provide
something tangible in return?

The issue lies, of course, in how to measure productivity. In many
areas, not only science, Einstein's dictum holds: "not everything that
can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted".
There are at least two main issues with exerting selection pressure on
scientists by using a count of research papers.

1.  It is likely only of specific value to some positions/institutions
    to hire/promote/fund researchers who excel at milking the most
    publications out of a given research question. In other words, while
    we should not exclude this kind of research, it is probably not to a
    general benefit if we primarily select those scientists who are
    especially gifted for identifying the fields of inquiry where a
    research paper is always just a fortnight away. Applied across the
    board, this strategy leaves the more challenging research questions
    without adequate staffing.
2.  In the experimental sciences, there is a statistical risk that the
    most productive researcher is also the one producing the least
    reliable publications. The point was made in great detail by Daniel
    Lakens in his [paper](https://pps.sagepub.com/content/9/3/278.full)
    "Sailing From the Seas of Chaos Into the Corridor of Stability:
    Practical Recommendations to Increase the Informational Value of
    Studies". In brief, the argument is that a research strategy that
    aims at many low-powered studies (rather than fewer adequately
    powered ones) yields more statistically significant (and hence
    publishable) results. The figure (Fig. 1 in Daniel's paper) below
    exemplifies this very nicely, I think:

::: {#attachment_1298 .wp-caption .aligncenter style="width: 530px"}
[![power](https://bjoern.brembs.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/power-1024x673.png){.wp-image-1298
.size-large loading="lazy" decoding="async"
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1298" width="520" height="342"
srcset="https://bjoern.brembs.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/power-1024x673.png 1024w, https://bjoern.brembs.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/power-300x197.png 300w, https://bjoern.brembs.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/power-768x505.png 768w, https://bjoern.brembs.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/power-50x33.png 50w, https://bjoern.brembs.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/power.png 1810w"
sizes="(max-width: 520px) 100vw, 520px"}](https://bjoern.brembs.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/power.png)

Ratio of false-to-true positives and false-to-true negatives for the two
researchers performing studies at 80% or 35% power. Both Researcher 1
and Researcher 2 conduct 200 experiments in which they examine 100 true
ideas (in white) and 100 false ideas (in gray). Squares represent
significant results, and circles represent nonsignificant results
:::

In the above example, if one were to assume that researcher B would be
able to do, say, 100 studies, researcher A would be able to accomplish
44 studies in the same time, all else being equal. In this hypothetical
scenario, Researcher B would end up with 21 significant results, while
Researcher A would only obtain 19.

We obviously don't really know many of the parameters required to
accurately estimate how successful any such strategies would be in our
current research settings. *\[**UPDATE**: A modeling study (adequately
titled "[the natural selection of bad
science](https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.09511)") recently confirmed that the
above scenario is indeed quite realistic.\]* However, the fact that one
can conceive of plausible situations where productivity is an indicator
of sloppiness ought to ring alarm bells, especially in times when the
reliability of science is becoming a major concern.

Hence, for these two reasons alone, be wary of the competence of anyone
who uses 'productivity' as a criterion to evaluate researchers.

Together with the fact that we also reward scientists who publish in
journals with a [track
record](https://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00291/full)
of
[unreliability](https://bjoern.brembs.net/2016/01/even-without-retractions-top-journals-publish-the-least-reliable-science/),
we should not discard concerns off-hand that we ourselves have
contributed to the current situation by falling prey to the neoliberal
idea that measurable performance is the prime criterion by which we can
justify our selection of faculty. If the available data are correct
indicating that we may have been selecting those researchers who publish
the least reliable science for several decades now, we ought not to be
surprised if we find that the reliability of science has been slipping.

P.S.: A similar argument has been made today in an
[editorial](https://www.nature.com/news/the-pressure-to-publish-pushes-down-quality-1.19887)
(easier to read with less data and statistics). See also [this relevant
post](https://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2013/03/28/whats-wrong-with-publish-or-perish)
from 2013.

P.P.S.: On Facebook, Aaron Blaisdell from UCLA commented that counting
papers is "[[a great way to measure whether a scientist puts ambition
ahead of curiosity, scientific rigor and the quest for knowledge and
understanding.]{.UFICommentBody}]{ft="{" tn\":\"k\"}\"=""}" In this
discussion, Bill Hooker was quick to point out that it may also measure
how caught up in the system early career researchers have become.

Of course, the basic idea behind this argument isn't all that new:

[![measure
performance](https://bjoern.brembs.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ClEGfsMWIAEYwMK1.jpg){.aligncenter
.wp-image-1326 .size-full loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="359"
height="395"
srcset="https://bjoern.brembs.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ClEGfsMWIAEYwMK1.jpg 359w, https://bjoern.brembs.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ClEGfsMWIAEYwMK1-273x300.jpg 273w, https://bjoern.brembs.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ClEGfsMWIAEYwMK1-45x50.jpg 45w"
sizes="(max-width: 359px) 100vw, 359px"}](https://bjoern.brembs.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ClEGfsMWIAEYwMK1.jpg)


<em>
 “an academic career, in which a person is forced to produce scientific writings in great amounts, creates a danger of intellectual superficiality”
</em>
Albert Einstein  Isaacson W (2008) Einstein (His Life and Universe) (Simon and Schuster, New York), 1st Ed, p 79

On the productivity of scientists

Around 2005, German politicians decided on a plan to circumvent a newly
created amendment to the German constitution that prevents federal funds
from supporting state-owned institutions such as universities. Given the
unanimous support of R&D among federal parties and the booming economy,
federal politicians only needed some way to frame the plan that would
not immediately call state politicians to action and challenge the law
in a constitutional court\*.

The result of these deliberations was a PR stunt they dubbed the
"excellence initiative", a neoliberal scheme purporting to bring
much-needed competition to a way too egalitarian (and vastly
underfunded) university landscape. Not [unlike in other
areas](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot)
where neoliberalism rules with the accompanying wishful thinking that
competition will magically make everything a better place, the German
university system today knows only one class of winners in a sea of
losers: administrations.

[Employment
statistics](https://bjoern.brembs.net/2015/01/booming-university-administrations/)
show that administrative staff increased by 17% from 2005 to 2012, while
permanent scientist positions increased only by 0.04%. Total teaching
staff did not match the increase in students of 25% and the precariously
employed scientists increased by a whopping 50%: for every permanent
scientific position, 10 fixed term positions were created, increasing
the already unhealthy competition among the academic precariat to insane
levels.

Even when trying to evaluate the scientific effects of the initiative,
the data come up short. A recent [independent
analysis](https://www.nature.com/news/germany-claims-success-for-elite-universities-drive-1.18312)
by Nature Publishing Group revealed that the increased scientific
performance of the "excellent" universities was matched by a
corresponding increase in the "non-excellent" universities which did not
receive these funds.

In summary, the available data indicate that the "Excellence Initiative"
was without any tangible effect scientifically, worsened job prospects
to an extent that now only the intellectually challenged would pursue a
career in academia, exacerbated the [socioeconomic
drivers](https://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00291/full)
behind the replication crisis and bloated administrations.

This year, it was decided to extend this catastrophe for German
universities.

Slowly, resistance is forming. There now is a
[petition](https://www.openpetition.de/petition/online/fuer-gute-forschung-und-lehre-argumente-gegen-die-exzellenzinitiative)
that everyone should sign who wants to stop neoliberal ideologies from
continuing to poison academia, no matter in what country. If we can stop
this madness in Germany, there is hope it can be stopped in other
countries as well.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

\* This is my recollection of the public account of the circumstances
leading up to the Excellence Initiative as it was concordantly presented
by the following state and federal politicians, speaking at the GAIN
Meeting in Boston in
[2010](https://gain-network.org/file_depot/0-10000000/10000-20000/16468/folder/97126/GAIN-Tagung+Programm+31.+August.pdf):

- Parlamentarischer Staatssekretär **Thomas Rachel**, MdB,
  Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung,
  [CDU]{style="text-decoration: underline;"}
- Staatsminister Dr. **Wolfgang Heubisch**, Bayerisches
  Staatsministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung u. Kunst,
  [FDP]{style="text-decoration: underline;"}
- **Krista Sager**, MdB,
  [B90/Grüne]{style="text-decoration: underline;"}


Around 2005, German politicians decided on a plan to circumvent a newly created amendment to the German constitution that prevents federal funds from supporting state-owned institutions such as universities.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

Why do academic institutions seem stuck in 1995?

On the productivity of scientists

Data show “excellence initiative” was a massive failure – help stop it