Research as a Cult

I remember reading a book by Boris Bazhanov, Stalin's long-time secretary, where he explains what lead to his disillusionment with the Bolsheviks and his eventual decision to defect to the West. Bazhanov comes across as a man with limited intellectual horizons yet very strong common sense. He explains that the turning point in his life was his disillusionment with Marxism. He writes that he found much of Marx theories to be erroneous on logical grounds. But the major evidence supporting fallacy of Marxism was found in his empirical observations. He saw that Marxism wasn't practiced by the communists in their daily lives. It wasn't practiced because it didn't have any practical value, according to Bazhanov. All communist leaders preferred to use the old and true approaches of capitalists and dictators to get things done. The only value of Marxism, he concludes, was to serve as some sort of cult used to justify their power and exert power on others. One had to be knowledgeable in Marxism not to become a better leader, but to become a member of the "club". And, of course, communist leaders would twist and contradict Marx's theory if their personal agenda required to do so.

Sometimes I think that the same can be said about the role of research in academia. Oftentimes, it is obvious that even research published in top journals is pretty useless. It doesn't have any practical value. Yet research is something that has to be practiced to be a member of the professorial club.

Research can be used to built a somewhat artificial position of power, just like being knowledgeable in the Bible puts someone in a position of power. But just like a preacher may not necessarily be a better person compared to an average atheist, a professor with a dozen articles of management may not be worth squat as a manager.

Research can also be used to exert power on others. Review process can be twisted to keep someone out of the club and deprive those people of living in academia. Reviewing standards are often inconsistent and ambiguous - they are often a function of the personality, mood, and personal agenda of editors and reviewers.

Research as an Intellectual Exercise

One of the worst mistakes that you can make as a PhD student is seeking pragmatic justification for your research. It is a mistake because usually there's no immediate value behind it. Therefore, seeking pragmatic justification will only lead to dissatisfaction with your work. Instead, you should view your research as an intellectual exercise with no immediate value but with possible valuable side-effects.

For example, think about a sport, such as soccer. Obviously, there's no immediate pragmatic justification for devoting your entire life to perfecting the art of chasing and tossing a ball. In fact, the whole task is somewhat absurd from a pragmatic standpoint. Yet, there's value in soccer. First, it's a physical exercise. A side effect of playing soccer is that you improve your physical condition. Such qualities as stamina, speed, reaction can be useful in your daily life. Second, soccer invokes certain valuable emotional responses from those who consume the art of soccer: joy, frustration, pride, sense of belonging, etc. This is how soccer becomes valuable.

Similarly, you should view research as an intellectual exercise. By conducting research, your are exercising (usually within somewhat artificial environment) in logical thinking, problem-solving, and argumentation. From this perspective, the subject matter of your research does not really matter, just like it doesn't matter whether you play with a soccer ball (as they do it in Europe) or a dead goat's body (as they do it in Afghanistan). When others consume research, they may not learn anything of immediate value. Yet, your research may stimulate thinking, curiosity, etc. in those who consume research. Thus, no matter how absurd your research is, it may produce valuable side-effects for you and those who consume your research.

Why it is hard to stay motivated in a PhD program

Completing a PhD can be one of the most difficult tasks in your life due to the fact in many cases it's simply impossible to keep yourself motivated to do the task. Here's why:

• Research is hard. It is hard to come up with something even marginally novel. It is very hard to adhere to the high standards for theoretical/logical strength of your arguments and empirical rigor of your field work. You have to work very hard, sometimes 7 days a week to adhere to those standards.
• Despite the fact that those standards are high, they are often ambiguous and subjective. It is not uncommon to receive completely orthogonal evaluations of your work. Some people will say that what your wrote doesn't offer any valuable contributions and lacks the rigor. Others will say it is great work and should be published immediately. I once wrote a paper that my adviser thought was worthless - it did not offer anything new. I sent the paper to a well-known journal and the senior editor told me it was very interesting and she will publish it immediately. The bottom line is that no matter what you do, you will be criticized.
  
• Despite the high standards that most researchers try to adhere, deeply inside you understand that most of the research produced in your field is really worthless. Deeply inside you understand that much of research is highly regarded only because it is produced by people who have a lot of power in your field. Nobody really reads those papers outside of your field, so there's no market validation of their value. The only people who read those papers are the ones who have to read and cite those "ingenious" papers if they want to get their own stuff published. So you start to doubt yourself and the field as a whole. If the most respected people in your field produce worthless crap, how can you produce something valuable?
• Despite the fact that you have to work hard and deal with lack of any intrinsic motivation, you have to live with no extrinsic motivation as well. You are paid peanuts for what you do. You are worth as much as a minimum wage laborer. Even if you succeed in completing your PhD degree, you will not be paid millions for your work. Most likely, you will end up with an average paying job, just like millions of other people.
  

In the light of these issues, one cannot help but ask himself or herself: "Why am I doing this?". Sometimes I think that in order to be successful in academia, you have to be somewhat of an arrogant imbecile. A person with deep intellectual and emotional understanding of these factors will never complete his or her PhD. So if you wonder why so many professors are arrogant and self-centric, this can give you a possible explanation. People who are not like that do not survive.

On research

Academic research is hard, boring, and useless.

It's not about discoveries, it's all about publishing!

Some people want to pursue a research career because they hope to make exciting and valuable discoveries. Unfortunately, being a professor is is not about making discoveries. Academia is all about publishing!

So what's the difference between research many aspiring PhD students hope for and publishing? I think the reality is that a scholar may only have 1-2 useful ideas/discoveries in his or her life time. In fact, many people are not that lucky.

Despite the fact that most researchers do not really have anything new to offer, they have to publish regularly. Because of that, they often publish things that are not even worth reading. I'd say that in many fields about 95% of top publications are not even worth reading, since they don't offer much beyond common sense or what has been said in the past.

Getting Help With Statistics

Many social sciences are dominated by quantitative researchers. Because of that, many doctoral students are pushed to do quantitative research for their dissertation. Unfortunately, doing statistical analysis is very hard for many students who go into social sciences. Moreover, your adviser may not be able to help you with stats. He may be too busy or may not have knowledge in the specific techniques that you end up using for your dissertation.

So if you are left alone with your statistical problems, you have several options:

1. Trying figure everything out on your own. The disadvantage of this approach is that you are likely to waste a lot of time and make a lot of mistakes. But the advantage is that you may end up being an expert yourself. It may be beneficial for your career in the long run.
   
2. There are a bunch of online forums where people talk about their statistics problems. Usually, those forums are also visited by people who have advanced degrees in statistics. These people may know more about stats than any of your advisers. But the disadvantage of this option is that there's no guarantee that someone will actually help you. It's all volunteer-based. And, of course, you can never be sure in the quality of the advice that you are getting. Me personally, I was able to figure out quite a few things by talking to people on one of those statistical forums.
   
3. Your school may have a special unit providing consulting services in statistics. I don't know whether those services are free or not.
   
4. I saw many web sites advertising consulting services in statistics. I've never tried those. I suspect that at least some of those companies are probably based somewhere in India. May be worth trying...
   

Using GoogleBooks to Access and Search Free Books

Let's face it - going to the library sucks. First, you have to PHYSICALLY go there. May not be a good idea if it's snowing outside or you just don't feel like going anywhere on that particular day. Second, you have to carry you laptop and a bunch of other crap to the library if you are to work there productively. And if your leave your work place to take a piss or have a smoke, someone might just steal your stuff. Third, undergraduates often hangout in libraries, creating so much noise you cannot concentrate on anything. But the most important reason against going to the library is that you will have to sit around the library types. Usually, a few hours in this environment is enough to put into the state of depression even the most cheerful and optimistic person.

So if you don't like going to the library, you can use GoogleBooks to search and access a bunch of books online. Of course, it may not have all the latest stuff, but who needs new stuff for the dissertation? You probably need old and boring books for that. For example, I found a lot of good statistics books in full text. Many books are not available in full, but usually all you need is to read a few pages from a book. The most important feature of this service is that you can search book text, so it will save you a lot of time. GoogleBooks is an excellent tool to pimp up your dissertation with book citations.

EndNote Software

I wish someone gave me this tip during my first year in the PhD program. As soon as you get into a PhD program, make sure you get yourself a copy of EndNote.

The software has a bunch of functions that you probably will never need. But one of its useful features will save you days of work: automatic in-text referencing and automatic generation of bibliographies.

Start using it as soon as you get your first reading assignment. Enter information about every paper that you read into Endnote. It may require some time to learn the software and get into the habit of entering everything you read into EndNote database. Most of the online research databases have a feature that allows you to add EndNote entries into your database automatically, so that you don't have to do this manually.

Trust me - you will never regret investing this time into the software. I remember sometimes it would take me the whole day to make sure all the references in a paper are correct.

I think the software is sold for like $100 if you try to buy it on your own. But most likely your school will have a site license which will allow you to get the software for much less than that. I think I bought it for like $10. One of the best investments you will ever make - that's for sure.

Novel research

I think that many bright, ambitious PhD students have a misconception that any kind of research has to offer new ideas. This kind of PhD students usually do not graduate.

Look guys, it's extremely hard to come up with something new, especially in social sciences. The only scholars who had the luxury to create new ideas were the likes of Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates. Research is not about creating break-through ideas. It's about reshuffling and repackaging what has been done in the past and then persuading others that your stuff is new. A good case in point is Clayton Christensen's theory of innovation. His theory seems to be a blunt application of the punctuated equilibrium theory from biology to the context of innovation. There's nothing new about his theory, yet he has received a lot of credit for it. Many of Michael Porter's ideas seem to be a blunt repackaging of ideas from "industrial organizations" area of economics. This seems to be true for hard sciences too. I once attended a presentation by a Computer Science professor. In his presentation he made a very strong case that there was nothing new about things like World Wide Web or relational databases. All those break-through ideas were based on decade-old ideas from the past.

If you try to create something new, you will drive yourself into a mental hospital. At first, you will you will be struggling with the fact that no matter what you come up with - you will find it in other people's work. Even if you succeed in creating something new, you will be terrorized by skeptics with questions like "what is your theory?", "how did you come up with this?".

So don't even bother. Your goal is to graduate, and not to change the world.