A few things that need to be corrected here:

1 - A Ph.D. does not teach someone "how to think"... if you do not already know "how to think" prior to applying for a Ph.D. program you are unlikely to have gotten that far

2 - The vast majority of folks who enter Ph.D. programs in the sciences have no desire to enter academia

3 - Most of modern science is interdisciplinary by necessity... as a result most Ph.D. programs in the sciences are not narrowly focused as you suggest

Now I cannot really speak to Ph.D. programs in history, or philosophy, or subjects outside of the sciences... but none of the broad brush statements you made above are accurate when it comes to things like physics, chemistry, biology, or the various associated engineering disciplines.

You should get as phD if there is something you are really, really passionate about doing research on.

"1 - A Ph.D. does not teach someone "how to think"..."

There's an assumption that people who have them are better and wiser thinkers than those who do not.

Many people in Ph.D. programs are under the impression they will get jobs as researchers.

Most of modern science is anything but interdisciplinary. I see it every day.

Ph.D. programs are indeed narrowly focused. You study happiness and maybe gratitude and humility. You don't also study other areas apart from yours. You can't get ahead that way because you would be published in the "wrong" journals for your field.

You are wrong on all of these points, Artemis, and I speak about social sciences, neuroscience, and medical research. Other fields, I am not informed about.

Truth is, a Phd can be a liability even in STEM fields.

I used to review a lot of CVs for Qualcomm as part of an R&D program in computer vision and sensor fusion techniques. We got a ton of Phd applicants.

What you noticed is that most that were out of school were significantly under employed, even if they were working in their area. A surprising number were in entry level roles like customer engineering, QA or some IT job.

The program director acknowledged the same - he asked that I only forward those who are still doing relevant work.

The other issue is, fairly or not, Phd's don't have a very good reputation as engineers. It's a combination of being unfamiliar w/ professional standards and coming from the much slower / easier pace of academia.

"3 - Most of modern science is interdisciplinary by necessity... as a result most Ph.D. programs in the sciences are not narrowly focused as you suggest"

Flat wrong. PhDs in STEM fields are very narrowly focused. Often to the level that PhDs can't do more general work. A human mind can only hold so much knowledge.

Can't speak for STEM; but, my own observation is those that have or are working towards a Ph.D. outside of STEM seem to NOT be able to think.

Rather what they are good at is parroting back the "correct" thoughts/answers that their chosen discipline demands.

Those that can think, and do think for themselves are quickly cast aside as not being "in the know."

What you noticed is that most that were out of school were significantly under employed, even if they were working in their area. A surprising number were in entry level roles like customer engineering, QA or some IT job. ~ bluto at July 28, 2018 7:02 AM

One of the issues we encounter with business is people who go almost directly from a Bachelor's degree to an MBA or PhD. They have no significant experience but expect to be regarded as experts in the field.

Most MBA programs now require at least 2 years experience between the BA/BS and the MBA program. Unfortunately, too many of the high-end candidates who know they're going for an MBA spend their 2 years in something academic or in entry-level investment banking or consulting jobs, learning almost nothing about manufacturing, operations, or business in general. They then expect to be hired at a senior level in these companies ahead of the guy who spent years working in it and is part of the institutional memory.

Know-it-all MBAs were becoming a common lament by then and business schools had started taking steps to remedy it. I had a professor in business school who warned us about thinking we knew everything and against ignoring the advice of long-time employees.

Before becoming a professor, he had worked for a mid-range retailer. Early in the year, the new CEO (a McKinsey alum) gutted the senior management team, most of whom did not have degrees at all, replacing it with Ivy League MBAs who'd never worked retail. The new management "smoothed" the inventory stream to cut "waste," ignoring the advice of long-time employees. That "waste" was excess inventory and incurred carrying costs. However, eliminating it left the company short on inventory at Christmas and with no way to get more. Up to 60% of non-grocery retail business is done between Thanksgiving and Christmas and Christmas inventory go-to-market process starts as early as July. Somebody's carrying excess inventory from that point forward and most retailers don't have the market size to dictate that the manufacturer carry it.

The other issue is, fairly or not, Phd's don't have a very good reputation as engineers. It's a combination of being unfamiliar w/ professional standards and coming from the much slower / easier pace of academia. ~ bluto at July 28, 2018 7:02 AM

I have two engineers in my family and according to them, most engineers don't even go for a Master's. When they do, it's usually because they work for a consulting company and need the paper credential for clients.

I have a Ph.D. but am unable to constrain my interests to a narrow topic so I publish on all sorts of science (not social science) topics. This has made me unemployable as a professor, where they want narrow specialists (1 bird person, 1 reptile person, 1 physiologist etc in the dept). I've been employed elsewhere for many years and doing fine.

I have noticed that many people with MBAs and many people with advanced degrees in Computer Science seem more interested in applying some model that they learned in the classroom than in observing what's needed and thinking about how to best approach it.

I have noticed that many people with MBAs and many people with advanced degrees in Computer Science seem more interested in applying some model that they learned in the classroom than in observing what's needed and thinking about how to best approach it.

I have noticed that many people with MBAs and many people with advanced degrees in Computer Science seem more interested in applying some model that they learned in the classroom than in observing what's needed and thinking about how to best approach it.

David Foster at July 28, 2018 11:08 AM

When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail,

When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, ~ Isab at July 28, 2018 11:45 AM

Isab beat me to it. Ties back to my "no experience" comment. All they know is what they learned in school.

Kinda like that "democratic socialist" running in New York who can't stop tying herself in knots during interviews.

She knows the rote talking points but can't explain her way out of a paper bag.

Amy says:

"There's an assumption that people who have them are better and wiser thinkers than those who do not."

Who exactly holds this assumption?

When one holds a Ph.D. it simply implies an established and recognized expertise within a specific field.

That doesn't imply guru like wisdom.

If you would like to ask a question about how nuclear power plants work for example, a good place to start would be to ask someone with a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering.

Just wandering up and asking some random person on the street is not likely to yield useful results.

The same way it is not wise to get some random person to perform open heart surgery on you... you should start with a heart surgeon.

It has nothing to do with being "better or wiser".

A Ph.D. is not a degree in general wisdom and greatness. It establishes recognized expertise in a specific field.

"Most of modern science is anything but interdisciplinary. I see it every day."

That is anecdotal.

Your personal experience has no baring on how modern science works.

Most research institutes and programs are in fact interdisciplinary.

Here is a research publication that is on the topic of the interdisciplinary nature of modern science (and this is from ~20 years ago... things have become even more interwoven since then).

https://academic.oup.com/rev/article-abstract/9/3/183/1594318?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Needless to say your subjective impression is incorrect.

"You study happiness and maybe gratitude and humility. You don't also study other areas apart from yours. You can't get ahead that way because you would be published in the "wrong" journals for your field."

What???

When I earned my Ph.D. I published in areas of nanolithography, photovoltaics, lithium ion batery technology, low dimensionality materials, transistors, etc...

That isn't "narrow" and my Ph.D. wasn't unusual in that regard.

You are making a great many assumptions about something you have never done.

To be frank, your knowledge of how Ph.D. programs work is about as extensive as my knowledge of what is involved in writing an advice column.

You're knowledge here is superficial at best and you are completely and utterly wrong.

Just to be clear... the 2 people who actually have a Ph.D. degree who have commented here did not have a narrow focus in their research interests and chose to work outside of academia.

That is consistent with my original claims and inconsistent with the original post by Amy.

To be honest I think this just all boils down to an insecurity level on the part of those who didn't bother to go for the advanced degree.

I certainly haven't made it a habit to rub my degree in peoples noses around here because I don't treat it as if it is relevant most of the time.

In this discussion however it is relevant because we are talking about degree programs within which most of the commenters have never enrolled.

Gee. Two people who comment here are a representative sample?

I guess we know who doesn't have a degree in statistics...

That said, there are people of all levels of formal education and with all manner of certiicates who do not have the aptitude for the subject they are supposedly expert, because they played an academic game.

Ever notice Artemis' penultimate argument is always 'your personal anecdotes are not germane, but mine are'

https://twitter.com/realpeerreview

Well geez, Amy... Do you want people to get doctorates so they can have rewarding careers, or you do want them to get doctorates so that they can sharpen their minds against known talents?

People who are serious about science get degrees. I doubt any of us could name an exception in our lifetimes... Someone who made a meaningful contribution without a degree or the support of Academe.

Well geez, Amy... Do you want people to get doctorates so they can have rewarding careers, or you do want them to get doctorates so that they can sharpen their minds against known talents?

People who are serious about science get degrees. I doubt any of us could name an exception in our lifetimes... Someone who made a meaningful contribution without a degree or the support of academe.

Artemis it sounds like you'd studies solid state physics within either a Physics or EE program. Is that accurate?

What other disciplines did you incorporate?

Better capitalization the second time.

I am nothing if not polite.

Lujlp Says:

"Ever notice Artemis' penultimate argument is always 'your personal anecdotes are not germane, but mine are'"

I seem to recall citing a peer reviewed article on the subject:

https://academic.oup.com/rev/article-abstract/9/3/183/1594318?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Who cares about personal anecdotes... the data clearly supports my position.

Paul,

My work involved collaboration across a variety of disciplines including but not limited to the following:

Materials chemistry
Organic chemistry
Surface science
Molecular Self-Assembly
Electro chemistry
X-Ray Crystallography
Electrical engineering
Low-dimensional physics

The point I am trying to make with how interdisciplinary modern science has become is that most of the interesting problems people are trying to study lie at the intersection of previously disparate fields.

Chemistry is overlapping with biology and physics in ways that blur the lines such that something you might study in a physics program is the same thing you might study in a chemistry program from a different perspective.

In some of my research projects we would work in the following way... theory would predict that a certain molecule would behave in a particular way... we would then involve organic chemists to synthesize the molecule of interest... then we would take those molecules and self assemble them into a 1 or 2 or 3 dimensional crystal... then after those preliminary studies were complete we would characterize the device physics by fabricating transistors, dielectrics, electrochemical cells, etc... out of them... then compare the results against the theoretical predictions.

Science and Ph.D. research isn't this isolated island that it is being made out to be here where you just look at one narrowly focused thing and know nothing outside of that area.

You cannot succeed in modern science that way... not if you want to do anything interesting or valuable.

Crid Says:

"People who are serious about science get degrees. I doubt any of us could name an exception in our lifetimes... Someone who made a meaningful contribution without a degree or the support of academe."

What you have said here is spot on.

While it is theoretically possible to publish high impact research with no academic background whatsoever... in practice this does not really happen.

The reasons for this are multifaceted... but one of the key reasons is lack of resources.

State-of-the-art laboratory equipment is prohibitively expensive.

> My work involved collaboration
> across a variety of disciplines
> including but not limited to
> the following

Ever kiss a girl?



Kidding!!!






But seriously, didja?

Crid,

Is this really the stupidity I am going to get for agreeing with you for once?

Just do yourself a favor and quit while you are ahead.

"Who cares about personal anecdotes... the data clearly supports my position."

Ooh, clearly! Well, then.

Should I pry back a few years into plant history, I can show you where a man with a professional engineer's license and a Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering failed, after five months, to realize that he could not draw 154GPM through a 400-foot pipe that had never drained more than 80GPM of any substance.

So they have five months' worth of data to show us - but it didn't matter, none of it.

He and his assistants had a photo-quality graph of the discharge side of the pump they were operating, but never once considered the suction side.

Twenty minutes after they were shown a sketch of what the suction side was doing - by a non-degreed former nuke sailor - they were done, and the pump has worked fine since.

Degrees work for those who use what they have learned to understand the real world, but not before. You might notice that where and how you GOT your degree matters more than the letters on your diploma.

Degrees today are often used to determine whether a person is literate, not fully capable. Got a PhD? That means you were reluctant to go work.

The "improvement" for the MD degree has been joint MD-PhD programs. Often, a joint MD-MS program made sense, since the MS offered a broad overview of a related field - biostatistics, epidemiology, Public Health, with just an exposure to research methods. The MD-PhD is designed to create researchers, not even (clinical) professors or great clinicians.

At the same time, other medical fields have embraced that credentialism - Pharmacy programs converting to PharmD, Nursing pushing PhD programs including Nursing Education. I suspect there's an arms race of credentials, as barriers to entry and to protect the turf.

> the stupidity I am going to
> get for agreeing with you
> for once?

Your "agreement" is perhaps not the shiny coin of flattery you imagine it to be.

'My life has involved collaboration across a variety of personalities & disciplines, including but not limited to the following:

• Stubby-fingered refiners of Aleutian psilocybin spores toiling in frigid offshore sailboats, reeking of vinegar and dreaming of a better life in a Volgograd dacha with even a single electric socket


• Mumbling, geriatric war veterans, deaf from the mortars but still oddly desperate to share their stories of burning each other's farts with a Zippo in the barracks during Basic


• One-eyed, tone-deaf rockstar wannabees playing "Just the Way You Are" over and over again at a tawdry bar in Panama City


• Opium-deluded Atlanta financiers, fistfighting at dusk in their Buckhead highrise boardrooms before stumbling home to inexplicably memorize the LIBOR rate for every business day of 1957


• Illiterate, lecherous teachers of Community College in Creosote, Texas, desperately in love with high-school dropouts one-fifth their age and crestfallen to learn than Willie Nelson's "Phases and Stages" (1974) is no longer available on 8-track


• Sex-spazzed gluten-free confectioners in eastern Belgium....

C'mon... Don't kid a kidder.

(I stole some of that from here. I think it was in Utne.)

Turns out the LIBOR wasn't established until 1984.

I am sooooooo embarrassed!

BLUSH!

But hey, those fuckers are clocked on opium! What did you expect?

Radwaste,

I am not exactly certain what your anecdote is trying to prove here.

No one in their right mind would declare that a list of educational certifications and credentials makes one infallible.

In fact that is precisely what I have been arguing.

The road to scientific enlightenment is often fraught with failures and mistakes.

Neither the light bulb nor the transistor were successfully designed and implemented on the first attempt. More was learned in the failures leading up to the success than the success itself.

That you can cite one potentially poorly qualified person with a masters degree in mechanical engineering doesn't say much.

I would take you more seriously here if for your next scheduled colonoscopy you contacted your local plumber for an exam over a board certified medical professional... I mean, that person who went to medical school was just reluctant to work, amiright?

Crid Says:

"Your "agreement" is perhaps not the shiny coin of flattery you imagine it to be."

All this discussion has proven is that between the two of us, I am primarily interested in the facts related to an argument and you are primarily interested in tossing feces.

No one was flattering you Crid... but you seem to be unable to focus on the topic of conversation.

We can talk about whatever we want. Amy's blog has always been like that. Having dealt with the topic at hand, I done did some writing about the weirdness of your "collaboration" passage. Do you have a degree, or a diploma of any kind? Have you ever cashed a paycheck? Is there any reason you wouldn't want us to know?

"The other issue is, fairly or not, Phd's don't have a very good reputation as engineers. It's a combination of being unfamiliar w/ professional standards and coming from the much slower / easier pace of academia."

In engineering, I think what happens is that if you spend too much time in school, you fall behind what is happening in the field. It's a paradox in engineering that even as academia drives the field, it also falls behind the field. People are always finding ways to use what they learned in school in ways that their professors didn't think of.

A lot of the areas I have worked in are specialized enough that there aren't many schools that have classes on them, much less offer advanced degrees. About 18 years ago, I took a class called "Introduction to Missile Defense" taught by an Auburn University extension. (You had to have a clearance to be admitted to the class.) The instructor noted that at that time, he only knew of three other schools in the U.S. that had any classes on that subject.

The problem with your paper Artemis is interdisciplinary doesn't contradict narrow. A master at think film carbon deposition has knowledge from a wide variety of disciplines. But at the same time they are completely useless at thin film ceramic structures. They are highly interdisciplinary and narrow at the same time.

Second issue, you are clearly speaking from an academic stand point. But the majority of PhDs don't work in academia. You talk about publishing 'high impact research', but for the vast majority this isn't an issue. In business you only publish when there is no economic value. There is no good reason to tell your competitors your secrets. Academia may have a publish or perish attitude but in business it is publish and perish. Patents are valuable but papers are a sign your work is worthless.

At graduation 53% of STEM PhDs immediately leave for business. Only 47% stay in a university setting. Within a decade that drops to 30%. And then to 3.5%. In the end only 0.45% of STEM PhDs stay in academia all their career. ~70% end up in business and ~20% end up in government. Artemis, your goals and cultural outlook only apply to less than 10% of PhDs. You are in a very atypical situation.

"To be honest I think this just all boils down to an insecurity level on the part of those who didn't bother to go for the advanced degree."

No. That is just your snobbery and ignorance.

"The other issue is, fairly or not, Phd's don't have a very good reputation as engineers. It's a combination of being unfamiliar w/ professional standards and coming from the much slower / easier pace of academia."

and

"In engineering, I think what happens is that if you spend too much time in school, you fall behind what is happening in the field. It's a paradox in engineering that even as academia drives the field, it also falls behind the field."

I disagree with both of you here. In my experience it is completely due to the narrow nature of PhD degree holders. I've seen the exact same thing Bluto noted. If your specialty is of economic interest you make a lot of money and are in incredible demand. But once it isn't of direct economic interest there is zero interest in you and you end up working for a supermarket instead. It becomes a very all or nothing type game. One fellow I knew made over $500/hr contracting in his specialty. But when no one needed him he worked as a clerk in a book store. Eventually he stopped putting his PhD on his resume and found stable work. Flipping between $500/hr and $5/hr was incredibly frustrating. But as long as that degree was on his CV no business would hire him outside of his specialty.

As since I chided Artemis on his lack of depth I will admit my own. I am only talking about electrical engineering and computer science. I can't comment on degrees with no real economic impact like literature or education. They have a completely different game as well.

Crid Says:

"Do you have a degree, or a diploma of any kind? Have you ever cashed a paycheck? Is there any reason you wouldn't want us to know?"

Are you senile or just illiterate?

In this very thread I already explained that I have a Ph.D.

I said it here:

"When I earned my Ph.D. I published in areas of nanolithography, photovoltaics, lithium ion batery technology, low dimensionality materials, transistors, etc..."

However you never seem to able to pay attention.

Instead you keep insisting over and over and over than I never offer such information even when it is right under your nose.

This is why discussions with you are futile... you do not seem to be capable of reading or retaining information.

Ben Says:

"A master at think film carbon deposition has knowledge from a wide variety of disciplines. But at the same time they are completely useless at thin film ceramic structures. They are highly interdisciplinary and narrow at the same time."

I don't know how to put this delicately but none of what you are saying is even remotely accurate.

Let's say for example that someone did the majority of their thesis work on carbon thin films (which is in and of itself a varied field... we could for example be talking about epitaxial films on single crystal substrates; sublimed organic molecular thing films; solution deposited thin films of molecules, nanotubes, buckyballs, etc...; CVD or ALD films within furnaces of various geometries; etc...).

Such a person wouldn't suddenly be "completely useless" as you put it if you were to suddenly ask them questions about ceramic thin films... or if they were to decide to explore ceramic thin films in their next project during graduate school, or during a post doc, or within industry.

They would already understand how grain growth works, they would already understand the concepts of stoichiometry and atomic doping, they would already understand stress, strain, and other materials properties.

They would fundamentally know how to grow and characterize thin film materials... they would be familiar with things like x-ray crystallography, raman spectroscopy, dI/dV measurements if they had any device background, etc...

This is why after earning a Ph.D. people interested in going into academia generally apply for and start a post-doc in a related but not overlapping field of study. They are already qualified to publish in that area even if they haven't done so already.

Amy's argument that somehow she is a generalist and all of those Ph.D. folks are myopically focused on one narrowly focused area with almost know knowledge or understanding outside of that area is to put if frankly stupid.

It would be like saying that a cardiothoracic surgeon knows everything there is to know about the heart... but is "completely useless" at diagnosing and treating a broken foot because the foot is outside of the chest cavity.

If someone were to say such a thing they would be rightfully laughed out of the room. The same applies here.

Furthermore, it would be even more laughable if the person making such a claim also indicated that they were too smart to go to medical school and knew more about general medicine than those silly specialists with the medical degrees.

Ben Says:

"Second issue, you are clearly speaking from an academic stand point. But the majority of PhDs don't work in academia."

I already said this in my original post:

"2 - The vast majority of folks who enter Ph.D. programs in the sciences have no desire to enter academia"

I know all of this already. Most PhDs in the sciences are hired by industry. Amy was the one claiming that PhD students were all clamoring for academic positions that did not exist.

Ben Says:

"As since I chided Artemis on his lack of depth I will admit my own."

Don't get too high upon that horse there Ben.

You literally "chided" me over something I stated in my very first post.

The problem was never my lack of understanding... it was your lack of reading comprehension.

I certainly hope that you feel good about yourself for "correcting" me about where PhDs usually end up days after I had already said it.

"Stubby-fingered refiners of Aleutian psilocybin spores "

God bless 'em and their dwarfy digits.

No Artimis I was able to read just fine. I chided you on your complete lack of knowledge about business. Something you continued to demonstrate. In triplicate even.

Ben,

What on earth are you talking about?

This is literally what you said:

"Second issue, you are clearly speaking from an academic stand point. But the majority of PhDs don't work in academia."

How on earth can I be talking about something from an "academic stand point"... when I already stated as one of the main pillars of my position that the vast majority of people with PhDs have no aspirations to be in academia.

Now just to set the record straight about something else you said that was wrong:

"In business you only publish when there is no economic value. There is no good reason to tell your competitors your secrets."

That isn't how it works in business.

In business there is a decision to be made on whether to keep something trade secret... to patent without publication... or to patent with publication.

That decision is made based primarily upon how easy it would be for someone else to reverse engineer.

If something is easy to reverse engineer then you patent and publish in order to protect your intellectual property.

If something cannot be reverse engineered easily then you will generally opt to keep it a trade secret then then obfuscate through layers of coded language.

Not only do I have many peer reviewed publications I am also an inventor on patents you muppet.

> In this very thread I already explained
> that I have a Ph.D.

I'm totally busted. After tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of your words, I no longer care enough to read all of them. And even now, after you've been stalling for FIVE YEARS, I strongly doubt you're telling the truth.

And Sweet Baby Jesus, if it is true, could there be any finer explication of Amy's thesis?... That doctorates are awarded at the cost of street smarts, practical skills with people, and other essential blessings?

I think you're just Gregg, writing something amusing for his girlfriend.

Has you ever met someone who achieved a (even) a PH. D. but was reticent to talk about it for five years?

Has you ever met someone who achieved a (even) a PH. D. but was reticent to talk about it for five years?

Crid at July 30, 2018 7:39 PM

No, I havent, and if true, was probably recently awarded which explains the institutionalized vibe we have been getting.

Apparently, he now thinks he is a patent attorney as well. A patent attorney who doesn't understand that when someone makes a reference to something as “academic”. In a discussion on this board, they arent refering to working in academia, but the clueless ivory towel intellectual view of a problem common in textbooks, and among college professors, rather than the real world boots on the ground business of solving it.

Remember the Engineering professor who thought that the solution to tornado damage was to build all buildings so they were tornado proof?
Yea, that one.....

Just a hint on the patent claims. The Chinese don't recognize them, and will rob you blind.

I’m sure I’m feeding the troll here, but every once in a while, the bullshit gets so deep, I just cant help myself.

Crid Says:

"I no longer care enough to read all of them. And even now, after you've been stalling for FIVE YEARS, I strongly doubt you're telling the truth."

This is more or less exactly what you said last time I explained to you that I hold an advanced degree.

This is why talking to you is essentially pointless.

You do not read what I write... you accuse me of saying things I did not say... you accuse me of not saying things I have said on multiple occasions... and then to top it off after you have been proven to be incorrect you accuse me of being a liar.

That is the behavior of an insane person Crid.

There have been no less than 4 times that I have explained my background... you just like the talking point that I never say anything about myself.

That it isn't actually true seems to be immaterial.

Isab,

I do not claim to be a patent attorney... but I can reference several that say exactly what I have said.

This is common knowledge.

You do realize that patent attorneys typically have to interface directly with the principle scientists on an invention claim, right?

I do not need to be a patent attorney to know that the way IP works in the business world is to carefully manage the portfolio that remains trade secret versus being patented.

I have received specific training in this area as a matter of policy because ultimately it is up to the scientists to decide which new discoveries need to be flagged to the legal department for evaluation.

The lawyers don't sit there monitoring the experiments to know when something new and interesting develops... that isn't how it works.

"Just a hint on the patent claims. The Chinese don't recognize them, and will rob you blind."

Failure to patent will not help you here if it is feasible to reverse engineer the invention Isab.

Clearly patent law isn't your area of expertise if that is how you think it all works.

Just because a foreign nation fails to respect international patents doesn't imply that a patent is still the best way to protect IP.

Quite frankly if patents were worthless then there isn't a great reason for patent lawyers to exist at all.

Look, I have grown tired "debating" with a group of arrogant morons. You don't have to take my word for it, just look at this Harvard Business Review article that says precisely what I have already communicated:

https://hbr.org/2013/11/filing-for-a-patent-versus-keeping-your-invention-a-trade-secret

"A well-kept trade secret could theoretically last forever. But there is a risk. Unlike with patents, it is perfectly legal to reverse engineer and copy a trade secret. A patent lasts only 20 years, but during that period, the protection is far stronger: independent invention is no defense in a patent suit."

Isab,

Also... you are particularly dishonest here as for years I have been correcting you on your baseless claims of how the scientific process works.

During those conversations I have described to you my own background before... and yet here you are also acting oblivious.

Do you suffer from the same selective memory loss issues as Crid?

Each and every time I go over this you seem utterly astonished much like a dementia patent who needs to be continually reminded who their children are.

If you actually understood business Artemis you would understand why the person you described in the situation I described lost their job. And why it was the right decision for management to take.

I wish you well in your ivory tower.

Ben,

Between the two of us the only one secluding themselves from the facts and reality is you.

As ironic as it may seem to you, you are actually the one functioning within a so-called ivory tower.

The reason for this is that you have insulated yourself from ever having to admit you have made a mistake or error.

The following statement:

"In business you only publish when there is no economic value."

Which you contend is how you "chided" me on my "lack of depth".

Is completely and utterly false.

Do you not see the irony in how you choose to scold someone and end up getting your facts wrong... fail to admit your own error... and then claim that the other person is not recognizing reality?

Not to put to fine a point on it... but in the business world people recognize and respect people who own their mistakes... people who hide their mistakes get the axe.

It is really the one unforgivable sin... own your mistake and strive to correct it in the future and you will generally be okay... hide your mistake, act like it didn't happen, and pretend it is someone elses fault and no one in management will keep you on the team.

No Arty. I am aware of the culture you come from. In the wider business community publishing may generate prestige. But it is essentially making the best of a bad situation. Only very large organizations can support a department who's main goal is publishing papers. As I said, you are an academic.

As for why you don't get the 'narrow' problem, the unsaid words you are missing is 'for the price'. In the majority of the business community price is always part of the conversation. So much so that people don't even bother to mention it. You may as well talk about water still being wet it is that ubiquitous. So the full phrase would be PhDs are too narrow for the price they charge. I actually agree with you when you said
"They would already understand how grain growth works, they would already understand the concepts of stoichiometry and atomic doping, they would already understand stress, strain, and other materials properties.

They would fundamentally know how to grow and characterize thin film materials... they would be familiar with things like x-ray crystallography, raman spectroscopy, dI/dV measurements if they had any device background, etc..."

The problem is you can pick up numerous BS degree holders with those exact same qualifications. And the BS holders cost a fraction. This PhD is useless (at this price point). The cheaper guy will get to the correct solution within the same time frame and cost significantly less.

I actually listed one real life example of this. Other mentioned more. It is quite a common issue. My friend who was making $500/hr wasn't some kind of idiot savant who only knew one thing. The guy was brilliant in a number of topics. But he had only the one skill that commanded $500/hr. While he could contribute very well on a wide range of topics that one topic cut him out of other opportunities. No employer would believe he would stay with them if an opportunity for that $500 came up. Hence he couldn't get a decent stable job. At least not until he hid his skill set. This isn't a problem that is unique to PhD holders. But it is far more common for them than for others.

Now I've said the last I'll say on this topic. Feel free to continue to demonstrate your lack of knowledge as well as class.

Ben Says:

"No Arty. I am aware of the culture you come from."

It really doesn't seem like you are Ben.

Like always you first assume you know the facts... then draw your conclusions... and despite how many times the record is corrected and I inform you that your facts are in error your conclusions fail to adjust or change.

You are one of those people who can be described as having an already full cup.

There is no room for new information... it all just spills over the sides.

Please stop being content with having a full cup... that isn't supposed to be a point of pride or accomplishment.

Once your cup is full what a truly curious person does is get a larger cup to fill with additional information.

Ben Says:

"In the wider business community publishing may generate prestige. But it is essentially making the best of a bad situation. Only very large organizations can support a department who's main goal is publishing papers. As I said, you are an academic."

In the hopes that maybe... just maybe you have the potential to increase the size of your vessel and admit new information let me explain in detail why you have no idea what you are talking about.

You are completely focused on prestigious publication outfits associated with industry... like the T.J. Watson Research Center of IBM or Bell Labs.

What you have failed to understand is that this is only one piece of industrial publications... and yes these institutes and research centers do often publish papers more akin to what you might find coming out of a university.

However, that is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg Ben. There are many, many, many publications that come out of industry that are directly related to revenue producing products (and when I say directly I mean directly... these publications are not tangentially related by any stretch of the imagination).

Just to provide one example to prove my case, let's consider the drug Sildenafil developed by the pharmaceutical company Pfizer (you probably are familiar with this drug under its trade name Viagra). This drug became available for use in 1998... but was being actively published on my Pfizer research scientists as early as 1996:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0960894X9600323X

That is a publication in Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters (an academic publication). I draw your attention to the fact that the affiliation of the research scientists is listed as follows:

Departments of Discovery Chemistry and Discovery Biology, Pfizer Central Research

In other words... there are no universities or outside organizations attached to this publication. It was published by Pfizer and Pfizer alone... they didn't do this because they thought the drug had no economic value.

The published precisely because of their belief that it has enormous economic value, but in order to have a proper patent they needed to justify their claims with proper research.

Ben... I have tried to be kind here and just offer you the information.

It would be wise for you to just admit that you don't actually know what you are talking about here, it is the only possible way for you to learn something new.

Ben,

I was thinking about your acquaintance since that seems to be a driving force informing everything you believe.

How exactly was he paid $5/hr when the federal minimum wage is currently set at $7.15?

Is this story from a long time ago?

Were his employers violating labor laws?

Was he working off the books?

I cannot speak to this persons individual experience without more information, but something about the details of your story suggest an unusual and potentially illegal set of circumstances.

Also, the fact that he could only obtain intermittent contract work suggests something unusual about his focus or specialty.

You are not likely to get contracted hourly as a condensed matter physicist, or as an organic chemist, or as a biomedical engineer for example.

If I were to take a guess I would think he was involved in website/app development or something along those lines. Am I close here or way off?