| >> I said this one WASN'T. HAHAHAHHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHH, ROFL Come on dude, I am sorry but you are wrong. Not just wrong but it seems you fundamentally misunderstand how world works. See Peter Higgs is a Genius. The moment he published that paper, he knew that he essentially could do nothing, and the University would never "risk" losing him and waste potential payoff, even worse be ridiculed for firing a potential Nobel laureate. Also as wikipedia shows during all those years his research on Bosons kept him winning awards. The University got far far far more than what they could have expected for when he eventually won the Nobel prize. Keeping him employed is equivalent to holding an option with enormous expected pay-off at small yearly recurring cost. >> My example wasn't about compensation, clearly. It was how long you continue to keep an underperforming employee in a position just because they did good work in the past. Except in academia having a seminal discovery, worthy of Nobel prize is equivalent to having large equity in that field. And from point of view of the University, losing such a person is equivalent to losing stake in delayed recognition of that work. |
I'm not saying that having a Nobel Laureate on staff isn't worth something. I'm not saying that they should have fired him. I'm simply saying that I can understand the view in the earlier post where it was said that Higg's isn't a great example of why today's publishing climate is a bad thing.
The original article was about a Nobel Laureate who "wouldn't be productive enough for today's publishing climate". The implication is that this means that there is a problem with today's publishing climate. There may be, but Higgs isn't a good example of why. He was arguably not productive enough even for his earlier lower pressure time. He just put out one very brilliant piece of work that made up for it.
But that is in no way an indictment of the current academic focus on publications. There are other reasons and examples of why the current climate is a problem, but Higgs isn't one. The Higgs lesson in this context is "get a Nobel and you can do whatever you want". If you don't have a Nobel you're going to have to consistently produce research, and while the pressure to do so wasn't as high in the 70s and 80s, one paper every 3-5 years is pretty awful in an environment where publishing research is the goal.