"On Academics - A worm's eye view!"

- S R Das

Every now and then I undertake the sobering exercise of examining the academic profession. Why this usually seems to follow a period of great unproductivity has eluded me so far, but no doubt there must be some correlation and sooner or later I will write a profound paper on this, suitably titled - "The interaction of failure and thought - a time series perspective" which will no doubt revolutionize the econometric literature in this area. Come to think of it, its pretty obvious, one cannot both think and work at the same time. If it were possible, academics would not then be able to look upon the 'working classes' with the disdain we currently do. Those who can, do, and we pity them for it. Those of us who cant, teach, I am afraid.

Nothing I ever said was important till I became an academic. Now everything I say is the MOST important, by definition. My deeper understanding of issues has shown me that people make incorrect statements all the time, especially other academics. I fail to understand this. I also find that for some reason the ones making the most meaningless assertions appear to be working in my specific sub field. I am in the process of remedying this, and will soon edit my own journal to ensure that the rot does not spread. I will charge very heavy submission fees so as to deter deviant thinkers and to access the best referees that money can buy.

Last week I was pondering the role of academic journals, and it amazed me how similar the process was to that of wine making. I was browsing my latest issue of "The Retrospective of Financial Analysis" and reading the abstract of a paper titled "Omega is Dead: Why Size Dominates Higher Order Moments, A Multicentury Analysis" I was struck by the fact that this paper had been revised only sixteen times. Surely the editor knew the authors well. Standards were slipping. I remember a time when papers were never submitted and published in the same decade. Yes, its so much like the making of good wine - take your time and let the referee jump on the paper. I recall with fondness the manuscript submission instructions - "…if papers are not vague enough to be revised several times, we consider them unpublishable..". Acknowledgments are truly a fine art, and authors will readily complement at least fifty people (in descending order of seniority) on their assistance in eliminating all the terribly useless original ideas from the paper, leaving thereby only the mistakes, which of course are completely their responsibility.

There are two kinds of academics: theoretical ones and empirical ones. The theoretical academic will make up a hypothetical situation (just for fun) and then develop all the machinery to prove that such a purported situation must be false. The more famous of such results are called 'impossibility' or 'irrelevance' theorems. This is definitely getting somewhere, because by circumscribing falsehood, we must be nearer the truth (in a relative sense, a la Einstein). Theorists are in a perpetual search for the truth. Having found it, they will then explain it to us ordinary folk in a mystical and mysterious way, in special journals in which data is forbidden.

The empirical academic is more down-to-earth. In fact he is so down to earth that he is perpetually with his nose to the ground sniffing for data points. Once he has collected enough data, he will take gobs of it and throw it into neatly ordered tables with an even number of rows. He will call the odd numbered rows 'parameters' and the even numbered rows 't-stats'. The most popular game these academics play is called "Magic Number 2". They will keep throwing numbers at tables until almost all even numbered rows have numbers greater than 2. Then they will write a paper describing how many hours it took to collect the data points and how at the first throw, the table came out just great. This practice is called econometrics. Sometimes, not having control over the data, the academic realizes that he just cant win the game of MN2. He then decides to become a theorist. But the more resourceful ones decide to go the "non-parametric route" which is just another word for just making up the data. This takes great skill.

New empirical techniques are being discovered every day, and data which refused to confess in the past is now lining up neatly in the even numbered rows. Without exception, a new technique is usually broader in scope and the profession instantly applies it to all the data sets that exist. This has been known to speed up the journal process substantially, but is often looked down upon as 'new wine in an old bottle'. However, there is almost universal agreement that this is more efficient than gathering new data, especially since it is well known that the answers remain the same anyway.

Every now and then, despite ones best efforts to keep the writing vague, one makes the mistake of submitting a paper to a journal which is clearly too focused to be published. Like just yesterday I received this rejection letter…

" Dear Sir,

I enclose the referee report on your paper. The referee finds that the paper is clearly not involved enough to be published at a journal of repute such as ours. You will notice that the report is incomplete which is a clear indication of the fact that the referee did not think it worthwhile going on. In verbal communication, he indicated to me that your paper would be better suited to a practitioner journal where your audience would be substantially larger, and would probably have the time to read your work. We wish you success in your endeavors and encourage you to submit your more confusing work to us…"

Sometimes I will get lucky and receive what is known as a "revise and resubmit" (R&R, but not in the usual sense). This is a positive signal requiring you to redo your work by throwing numbers at tables using several suggested techniques. The range and sophistication of the suggestions is truly mind boggling. Take the ordinary over-educated, easy-going person and make him referee a journal paper - it will convert him into the most imaginative human being of all time. Here is the solution to the declining school system: make referee duty compulsory.

Despite the great things about academics, there is a dark side to it as well. The ugliest are turf battles. Every once in a while someone will found an area so confusing that only he can understand it. People will speak of him in great awe, and yet there will appear renegades who will try and make sense of the paradigm, which would totally destroy its value. Or even worse, someone may try to develop a competing, even more confusing paradigm. These turf battles are major events in the life of an academic, demanding such strenuous effort that it takes a severe toll on the person, necessitating long periods of rest. Fortunately, we have a system addresses this problem - its called 'tenure'. It is the system's way of saying - "enough!".

I truly love academia, don't you?