Are we not scientists?

One of the things that dumbstruck me the most during my last postdoc position was the open despises expressed by my former supervisor towards sciences, and more specially towards computer science.

I am fine with almost any opinions as long at consistent with the position of the person that pronounces it. In his case, he was head of a team in a computer science department in a private research institute that doubles as a private university.

And this was not just posing or something that came out once. It is something that he would pleasantly and repeatedly state in weekly and private meeting, he was both proud and serious about it.

He even bragged once that he didn't like algorithms and computer science because they were too hard, while he didn't want to go to the industry because they asked too difficult concrete problems for him to deal with.

Academia was a perfect notch were he could get an insane salary for minimal work and responsibilities. He said it and mean it, in a weekly group meeting, in front of about 10 grad students and two postdocs.


Let us get a bit deeper in the behaviour of this academic hero:

Regarding teaching, he copy/pasted his course material on open source course. I wrote and graded the exams.

Regarding research, students and postdoc did the work and he orientated them. I should rather write disorientated because the bastard had not much more idea on how to do research.

By bastard I actually mean: cocky, showy and madly in love with himself assistant professor earning 15 000 USD monthly for little achievement and involvement and which started humiliating when he couldn't manipulate me anymore.

Let me be a little more specific on his scientific incompetence:
- he despised and didn't understood computer science in general. Algorithms are for him complicated stuff he is absolutely happy not knowing and doing.
- regarding coding he loved one liners, not the smart and tantalizing ones, but the ones that are called "docomplexstuff(data, params)" from "complexstuflib". Because he had not fucking idea how to code anything
- he has little more clues about the very reasearch topic of the lab, his lab: computational social science, because he only started three years ago on the suggestion of his closest friend.
- he aim only a quick win, which is the reason why he switched field to work in computational social science: it is easy to get publication in important journal with little work to show for

His approach to science is:
- choose a title and figure that would make it to "science" or "nature", i.e. a very general and inspiring result - yet totally unfounded at the moment. (He displays disdain for anything lower ranking, yet he never get published there, and generally doesn't get published often)
- make subordinates work on it, and push them very hard to the hinge of burnout
- totally ignore the output the work if it doesn't yield what he hopped and start anew with a fresh title and figure ideas
- when really stuck, which happened on a regular basis, get back to his well connected and knowledgeable friend for advice.
- the main assets of his friends, that he was unsuccessfully trying to copycat are: being brazen, knowing a bazillion buzzwords and their reference (not the content!) and profound understanding of the the politics of scientific publishing (which for the latter his: suggest your famous friends as your reviewers)

That's it the guy didn't care a shit about doing science, i.e. pushing the boundaries of knowledge to do useful and beautiful things. All he is interested in is earning shitloads of money and being famous. Worst, he has 0 ethics and 0 morals: he would pat you in the back when he needs you and stab you when he does not.

I had to suffer this well groomed and well mannered incompetent and manipulative prick for more than a year. Needless to say that he was shit-scared by my refusal of his work ethics as well as to get caught not knowing. Quite unfortunately this guy still holds his position and as an army of grad student that can say anything because they risk being thrownout. I will expose his behaviour and attitude more precisely in another post.

Getting back to the main point of this post, this seems to happens often in science: politically-slick and scientifically incompetent persons getting to high positions. What is the point of doing science in such a case? For them, for their institution and most importantly, for us?