How I learned to stop worrying and love networking and marketing
There has been some hubbub triggered by twitter user @SimonBowmaker quoting Susan Athey's comments on the importance of networking in academic science. I think that younger me would have decried those comments saying, like many others did1, things like “this highlights everything wrong with the system” or “why must everything be transactional?” or “one more example of how science is not a meritocracy.”
Older, wiser me2 agrees with some of the specific points raised, but heavily disagrees with the vibes.3 In fact, list the people you want to meet and see how you can go about doing so is good advice and I have done this (you should too). In fact, last week, I was happy to finally meeting Chris Quince in person as he’d been on my to meet list for quite a while.
Social skills are skills. It is at least as meritocratic to select based on networking skills as it is to select on ability to conduct good research. Networking is hard work, social skills are not trivial to acquire or implement.
Networking vs. Nepotism: Networking does not make you a nepo baby. Calling your uncle on the Harvard faculty to get you a talk there is nepotism, cold emailing another scientist is not.
Sales as a service. Academics often shy away from the term sales or marketing or networking associating it with grubby commercial endeavors rather than the nobility of research. However, I now look at sales (in the scientific sense of promoting your work) from the perspective of providing a service. As a researcher, I have findings that could be helpful for others, but they might not know about them, so promoting by work to them is helping them.
Some people out there have metagenomes that they want to extract MAGs from.
By pointing them towards SemiBin, I do believe that helps them.
This sounds as it was written by the used car salesmen association, but in academia, we also have a reputation that stays over the long-term. If you don’t actually have something good to sell, people will catch on.
Making the hidden curriculum less hidden is good. As an example and variation on the above: you can invite yourself to give a talk at most institutes if you happen to be in town and there is someone on the faculty there that works on related topics to yours. A short email has a 30-50% success rate (often failures are more about calendar conflicts than anything else). Many young people are surprised when they first hear that this is very common, while more senior people reply with well, of course. In fact, many institutes like to have external speakers (relevant external speakers!), but are constrained in how many they can invite because it’s expensive. So, if you invite yourself over, this makes everyone happy.
Results are oversold in papers as much as in person. Maybe at this point some of my readers are thinking that this is all fine and good for me to say because my science is so good, but the problem is that there are other people who are overselling their results. This is, however, as much of a problem in traditional papers as in talks and discussions, if not more. And you certainly hear a lot more about the shortcomings of third-party papers when you discuss in person than you ever do if you are only reading the peer-reviewed literature.
There is a lack of job specialization in academia. As I noted before, “Science currently combines a ridiculous emphasis on field hyper-specialization with a ridiculous lack of job specialization.” You might agree with me that it is necessary for a research project to have a marketing component, but while a scientist might be brilliant at conducting experiments and obtaining results, they might not necessarily be the best person to market or communicate their findings, so maybe that should be someone else’s job. I am frankly a bit conflicted on this as I can also see the pitfalls. This critique applies more broadly, though: why is the person who does the science the same person who writes the paper?
Maybe this is also a relevant time to repost that I am happy to get a Zoom coffee with anyone who wants to chat science, Australia, or anything in between. Just schedule it on my calendar.
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Unrelated, 🦘🐨 news
I am recruiting PhD students for my group in Brisbane. See the ad or get in touch if you have any questions.
After some visa-related delays (some countries still only have an SQL by post API), we are finally physically moving to Brisbane in a week, landing on the 6th.
Another area where I flipped 100% in the last few years is avoiding directly criticizing people by name. Whereas early internet would have seen this as cowardly and sneaky on my part, my intention is never to pile up on individuals (rather just to discuss the ideas) and as the internet has become nastier, I am resorting to subtweeting people. In this case, several commenters made very similar claims which I paraphrase here.
Or more cynical me. You decide
Older, wiser me is also more cognizant of the importance of vibes.