Umm. The rift between academic and industrial reappears .... Here's something to bear in mind, maybe?
The rewards, intrinsic motivations, opportunities for action, and sources of esteem for academics and industrial people seem to be often very different. It doesn't make a lot of sense to criticise "them" for being different from "us". So don't let's let ourselves slip towards blame games. Opportunities are limited on both sides. Obviously, industrial people have to make some money, and may not have the opportunity to support research. Perhaps less obviously, most academics have training and experience in only one area of research. They don't have the opportunity to do any other kind, even if what they're trained in turns out not to be the most "relevant to real life" as they say. The other thing to remember is that many different people are doing many different things in "real life" and therefore it's pretty well impossible to say that a piece of academic research is completely useless. "Real life" is not just professional programmers and software engineers dealing with horrendous amounts of code, it's also hobbyists and non-specialists and spreadsheet users and scripters and students and so on. We all need to be a little careful of making generalisations from our own everyday situation, and of judging outcomes only by one criterion. We can't create collaboration by sheer will power. The phrase that goes around these days is evidence-based practice, in which the people who are actually doing something in the world make their decisions on the current state of the evidence. This can be encouraged by funding academics to create useful summaries of the current state of the evidence, and of course by creating research initiatives, funded at least partly from outside academia. This seems to work in some health-related areas, although I don't know in detail how well it works. PPIG people have made attempts in these directions but there have been problems (though Derek Jones's mighty tome is maybe a success). If any of you folk out there see your way to furthering the cause of evidence-based practice, that would be good news and I'm sure it would be well received by both industrialist and academic types. Thomas Green Umm. The rift between academic and industrial reappears .... Here's something to bear in mind, maybe? (Please forgive me if it sounds preachy or obvious. It's just such a pity when people with the same overall aims fail to make common cause.) The rewards, intrinsic motivations, opportunities for action, and sources of esteem for academics and industrial people seem to be often very different. It doesn't make a lot of sense to criticise "them" for being different from "us". So don't let's let ourselves slip towards blame games. Opportunities are limited on both sides. Obviously, industrial people have to make some money, and may not have the opportunity to support research. Perhaps less obviously, most academics have training and experience in only one area of research. That means they don't have the opportunity to do any other kind, even if what they're trained in turns out not to be the most "relevant to real life" as they say. The other thing to remember is that many different people are doing many different things in "real life" and therefore it's pretty well impossible to say that a piece of academic research is completely useless. "Real life" is not just professional programmers and software engineers dealing with horrendous amounts of code, it's also hobbyists and non-specialists and discretionary programmers and spreadsheet users and scripters and students and children and so on. We all need to be a little careful of making generalisations from our own everyday situation, and of judging outcomes only by one criterion. One phrase that goes around these days is evidence-based practice, in which the people who are actually doing something in the world make their decisions on the current state of the evidence. It already happens to some extent (witness Steven Clarke's enquiry to the PPIG list) but it can be encouraged by funding practice-aware academics and scholarly non-academics to create useful summaries of the current state of the evidence, an approach that seems to work in some health-related areas. I don't know in detail how well it works but I know people in some health areas who are enthusiastic about it and are prepared to put great efforts into creating usable research summaries. PPIG people have made attempts in these directions but there have been problems (though Derek Jones's mighty tome is maybe a success). If any of you folk out there see your way to furthering the cause of evidence-based practice, that would be good news and I'm sure it would be well received by both industrialist and academic types. Thomas Green 27 Allerton Park, Leeds LS7 4ND +44-(0)-113-226-6687 http://homepage.ntlworld.com/greenery/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PPIG Discuss List ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Discuss admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss Announce admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/announce PPIG Discuss archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/
