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[menotti]

The other thing is that most of your complaints are about the process of publication, rather than the research itself.  Can you work your schedule so you spend some time in the lab (or whatever) when Dr. Blowhard and his minions are not there?  It might help you focus on what you really like.

[academetic]

Let me know when you find your solution.  I'm starting to lose my zest for research for the same reasons you describe.  This may change if I get a ttjob and get to run my own research instead of trying to please Dr. Postdoc Advisor, but who knows.

I suspect the/my problem is more systemic. After all, Dr. Postdoc Advisor is just trying to fulfill or please his grant or tenure review requirements. What bothers me on a more fundamental level could very well be the incremental way research is carried out. This of course makes publications very important since the number of them is an easy way of quantifying progress.

I mean, initially we are sold on the idea of inventing great theories (consider your average PBS science show).  I suspect this is why most of us go into grad school rather than the 80hr work weeks and the truck driver income albeit with nice benefits - at least that was the case for me. So we spend grad school learning about the great theories.

And then it turns out that the job is not so much about taking risks and spending 5 years working on a theory that may or may not turn out to be good. That is way too risky for the grant organizations. Rather we take existing theories, add a little more detail and investigate case A, B, C, D, ... like everybody else.

It seems like the level of sophistication is measured out exactly to allow four annual publications. Go into more detail, and you're not publishing enough. Go into less and your research does not pass review. But I doubt that very many people get four original/groundbreaking ideas annually, I certainly don't. Most papers thus fall on the "our-work-is-very-interesting" level which is typically not that interesting to anyone but those who wrote it.

So the problem is that reality does not measure up to the idealistic image. Several posters have suggested changing reality. Become the candle in the dark. I'm fear that I could find myself unemployed over the course of a few years if I did not follow the party line. My question is thus .. how to change my idealism to match reality?

Some suggestions ..
1) Culture carrier - You're the carrier of the culture of your field - all the things that are unwritten. (If all professors suddenly died, it is highly doubtful that written publications would be worth much - one does not just pick up a book and start cranking).
2) If not you, maybe somebody else - While you may not be the great hope of your field, maybe you will inspire someone else. Wings of butterfly style.

[academetic]

Academetic, are you still working under Professor Blowhard?   If you are, this too shall pass, and you can get back to setting your own standards when you move on.  You will need a little recovery time, but don't take too much.  If you are not still working for him, you need to stop carrying him around with you.  He is like an abusive parent from your past or an abusive ex-intimate partner.  Dismiss him.  You are letting him still order you around.

There is another way to look at it.  What can you learn from this experience?  If you got things published using your own standards before Prof. Blowhard, get back to what you were doing right.  If you never quite got anything ready for publication before Professor Blowhard came along, then his advice can be a reminder to help you break the impasse.  You can find your own balance.   

I'm no longer working there but you are probably right that he is still affecting me. I struck gold with my PhD thesis so I have several publications and many outside collaborators.

I think what I learned from my experience was that not everybody has the same set of values as I do. One may liken this to being an undergraduate. Some focus maximizing their GPA and stay clear of hard courses, and work harder on raising grades from D to B than B to A. Others want the courses to be as challenging as possible, torpedoes be damned. I think I also learned that the latter proposition is as self-destructive for a research career as it is during the GPA years. This is what bothers me. We, as a field, seem to focus on making as many B-grade papers as possible rather fewer A-grade papers.

[hollow_man]

academetic,

Do you have good reason to think that you are going to revolutionize your field with the Next Great Theory? Because if not, then your advisor is simply doing you a huge favor by trying to teach you to get real, and get a little humility.*

I really, really don't understand all the sympathy you're getting here. From your posts here (maybe there are others in other threads that reveal more?) I can see no way in which you are being abused.

*--I'm in a very different field from you, but scaling down my research projects was one of the most important things I've learned in grad school.

[academetic]

academetic,

Do you have good reason to think that you are going to revolutionize your field with the Next Great Theory? Because if not, then your advisor is simply doing you a huge favor by trying to teach you to get real, and get a little humility.*

I really, really don't understand all the sympathy you're getting here. From your posts here (maybe there are others in other threads that reveal more?) I can see no way in which you are being abused.

*--I'm in a very different field from you, but scaling down my research projects was one of the most important things I've learned in grad school.

I'm trying to remain anonymous here by not giving out too much detail, but yes, there is more to the story than what I've given out in this thread.

I think I figured out that I wasn't going to turn the entire field around when I was 19 or 20, so that's not the issue here. I think the problem is more a question of perfectionism as has been pointed out: A problem of conflicting standards for the point when the research is considered good enough. It is probably fair to say that "good enough" is a rather sliding scale depending on who you ask. I mean, you can compete on quantity or quality. Due to the extreme specialization it is often difficult to know what quality is until some other researcher picks up a topic. Sometimes he'll discover that he has to redo all the previous calculations because the previous authors did not bother to verify their results. It may even be that the previous authors know about the problems but "manage" to not mention them in their paper. Yes, I could adopt the same attitude and publish half-baked goods like crazy, but then I might as well write soap operas or manuals for kitchen utensils.

My issue is not so much the interpersonal skills of Prof. Blowhard, but the quality/integrity standards that we work under. I think that is where I lost it. That is - in becoming fully aware that there's a lot of s**t being knowingly published because it can be.

In other words .. research is not about doing "great work" but about doing "a lot of work". I do not mean great as in "Great" but as in "to the best of my abilities" - something I can be proud of.

In retrospect you could say that my supervisor did do me a huge favor. Of course in the process he completely turned me off academic research. I know grad students who (in retrospect) were lucky enough to get guys like him as their PhD advisor and left academia with a Masters or a PhD without wasting any time. Conversely, I also know people that have gone through more than one good postdoc postion and landed tenure and now wonder if this is the really what they signed up for.

I think there's a great deal of bait and switching going on. After all, we don't sign up for upfront large salaries, benefits, etc. Instead we sign up for the working environment which sometimes in retrospect turns out to be different than what is advertised.

[hollow_man]

Thanks, that helps a bit. There are certainly people in my field I would have a hard time working under for that reason. In fact, my own advisor is less passionate about his work than I hope to be, even though he's nominally "big."

The thing is, "perfectionism" is a sliding scale, so it's hard for anyone else to really appreciate what your situation is like, without reference to the details. If he's really turning out shoddy work, I am sorry for you, and I take back my qualms.

[mdwlark]

Prof. Blowhard does not represent or define "academic research."  There is a lot of excellent research going on in all fields.  There is also some trivial stuff that gets published.  Good researchers know the difference and they all talk to each other and ignore the rest.  When you get out from under one professor, and have a TT position, you will define what excellent is for yourself.   

[juniper]

It sounds like you have 2 problems - 1 is that you perceive that style is being valued over substance. Mdwlark said exactly what I was thinking:

Good researchers know the difference and they all talk to each other and ignore the rest.

This is definitely true in my field. At conferences, as soon as you talk to someone at their poster (or after their talk), you can tell who is blowing smoke and who is the real deal. If you put out quality work, the "real deal" types will recognize and value your contributions.

I feel for you because I had a Blowhard type for a grad advisor - he didn't do anything really unethical but he was flashy and somewhat ethically-compromised. It was depressing and I almost bailed out several times. My first post-doc was with Prof. Absentee (brilliant, but never around) - that didn't help. My 2nd post-doc was with Prof. Quality, a decidedly non-flashy, thoughtful person with high quality standards. He is now the president of my main professional society, which is heartening (quality is recognized).

On your other issue, I agree with those who have pointed out that with research, progress is mostly incremental. If NIH supports your research, part of the problem is the flat NIH budget - wildly novel projects may be at a disadvantage even if they are potentially groundbreaking (note however there is a grant mechanism (R21) for funding exploratory projects and they do get funded). Incremental isn't exciting but that doesn't mean it's poor quality. It can be quietly satisfying.

[mingus]

It's a rat-race.  Right now, what you should do is listen to Prof. Blowhard.  After you get a nice, tenured position, you can do the right thing all you like.  Of course, by then you will have realized it's a rat-race, and the advise to those under you will be ... Look it all depends on what you are after, where, when, etc.  When I was much younger, a senior prof whom I still respect told me this: "When it comes to publications, some places weight them, some places count them, and some places actually read them.  Choose your sort of place and then act accordingly."