Tuesday, June 15, 2021
Sharp thought about tenure
Gary Smith at MindMatters:
An air conditioner has a thermostat that turns the compressor on and off in an attempt to maintain 70. When the outside temp is beyond the compensating ability of the compressor, inside temp rises above 70.
The living equivalent is fever. The body's evaporator tries to maintain 98.6. When outside temp, or inner inflammation, goes beyond the strength of the evaporative feedback, the measured temp rises.
In the tenure situation, the number of pubs is rising fast now. This tells us that the feedback mechanism has failed. Pubs are no longer serving as a selector for quality scholarship.
Unfortunately, the publish-or-perish culture has encouraged researchers to game the system, which undermines the usefulness of publication and citation counts. This is an example of Goodhart’s law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” In the context of publish-or-perish, the widespread adoption of publication counts and citation indexes to gauge visibility and influence has caused publication counts and citation indexes to cease to be a good measure of visibility and influence. The first sign of this breakdown was an explosive growth in the number of journals in response to researchers’ insatiable demand for publication numbers.I hadn't heard of Goodhart, but this is a basic fact in electronics and mechanics and life. When a circuit or an animal has negative feedback, it will always try to hold the target measure steady. So the measure is no longer an indicator of the 'natural' tendency of the system. But: the target can tell you when the conditions have gone BEYOND the strength of the feedback side. Take temperature as a simple example.
An air conditioner has a thermostat that turns the compressor on and off in an attempt to maintain 70. When the outside temp is beyond the compensating ability of the compressor, inside temp rises above 70.
The living equivalent is fever. The body's evaporator tries to maintain 98.6. When outside temp, or inner inflammation, goes beyond the strength of the evaporative feedback, the measured temp rises.
In the tenure situation, the number of pubs is rising fast now. This tells us that the feedback mechanism has failed. Pubs are no longer serving as a selector for quality scholarship.
Labels: Equipoise
¶ 11:08 PM
