Manifesto for Half-Arsed Academic Research

  • Research results are more important than the number of publications or citations.
    This is fine. Yet, we don’t have time to read your papers. So, just keep publishing a lot of papers each year. And get your influential friends to cite you. That’s how we’ll know whether you are good.
  • Science and truth are more important than spin and marketing.
    Yes, but keep pretending you will solve world hunger. And align your research results with the current fashionable trends.
  • You cannot tell where the next science breakthrough is going to come from.
    Maybe. Still, we want a plan of your research activities for the next five years.

Further reading: The hard truth about research grants and The secret behind radical innovation.

Source : Manifesto for Half-Arsed Agile Software Development via John D. Cook.

Published by

Daniel Lemire

A computer science professor at the University of Quebec (TELUQ).

One thought on “Manifesto for Half-Arsed Academic Research”

  1. Daniel,
    A couple more posts like this and you are ready to start a comics :-))) We already have one by a disgruntled ex-graduate student!

    Reply

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