RenaSciQuestion network · The Renaissance of Science E7The Academic Assembly Line

E7Academic careersFurther topic

The Academic Assembly Line

Professionalization, Tenure and “Publish or Perish”

?Once research became a job, where did the passion for knowledge go?

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  1. 01When did being a scientist become a job?
  2. 02How was research broken down into an assembly line?
  3. 03Why does more knowledge make people narrower?
  4. 04Where does the pressure to publish come from?
  5. 05Why do academic careers look like a Ponzi scheme?
  6. 06Why do people who don’t love knowledge go into research?
  7. 07Can science turn from a career back into a labour of love?

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01/07Hired

When did being a scientist become a job?

The amateur gets a staff badge

In 1834 the Cambridge scholar William Whewell recorded a new word in a book review: on the model of “artist”, people who studied nature could be called “scientists”. Before then, nature was studied mostly by aristocrats, clergymen, physicians and amateurs from every walk of life; afterwards, research universities, laboratories and the doctorate turned science into a profession with a way in, a ladder and a salary.

In November 1917 Max Weber gave a lecture to students in Munich, “Science as a Vocation”. The German Beruf means both a calling and a job, but Weber began with the cold realities of the second: whether a Privatdozent (an unsalaried lecturer) ever rises to a full professorship is “simply a gamble”; “I know of hardly any career on earth in which chance plays such a role.”

Follow-up questions
Read deeperWhat is wrong with research becoming a job?↘
Asked from elsewhereE1CountingE3Narrow gate

William Whewell. Lithograph by Eddis, 1835. Wellcome Collection · Public domain

02/07Assembly line

How was research broken down into an assembly line?

Big Science and its “research labourers”

In the 1930s Ernest Lawrence built cyclotrons at Berkeley and launched “Big Science”: machines so complex that neither the best theorist nor the ablest experimenter could manage them alone, and whose daily upkeep demanded a great deal of tedious labour. Many of the jobs called for no lofty ideals, only for following procedure. This is when the people now known in China as “research labourers” – literally “research migrant workers”, hired hands for routine lab and data work – first appeared. During the Second World War, the uranium-isotope separation plant at Oak Ridge took on some ten thousand country girls to watch its meters. As Kenneth Nichols, who headed the project, recalled, they beat Lawrence’s PhDs in a production race because they had been “trained like soldiers ‘to do or not to do—not to reason why’”, while the scientists could not resist chasing the cause of every small flicker in the readings.

So the assembly line entered the laboratory. As the economist Paula Stephan points out, American university labs are “overwhelmingly staffed by graduate students and postdocs”, who are flexible, temporary – and cheap.

Follow-up questions
Read deeperHow was research broken down into an assembly line?↘
Asked from elsewhereMAssembly line

A chemistry laboratory at the Wellcome Physiological Research Laboratories: row upon row of benches. Line drawing, early twentieth century. Wellcome Collection · CC BY 4.0

03/07Burden

Why does more knowledge make people narrower?

The death of the Renaissance man

In 1963 Derek de Solla Price estimated that eight or nine in every ten scientists who had ever lived were alive at that moment. As knowledge piles up, anyone who wants to reach the frontier must first shoulder an ever heavier load. The economist Benjamin Jones analysed more than two million US patents: between 1975 and 1999 the average inventing team grew from 1.73 to 2.33 people; inventors made their first invention later and later in life, and those who invented alone found it ever harder to switch fields. He called his paper “The Burden of Knowledge and the ‘Death of the Renaissance Man’”.

The “all-sided man” whom Jacob Burckhardt found in the Renaissance is growing ever rarer in modern science. Neighbouring fields might as well be separated by mountains; like the builders at the foot of Babel, specialists can no longer understand one another. But the load need not be carried by people alone: AI can get through more literature than anyone could read in a lifetime.

Follow-up questions
Read deeperWhy does more knowledge make people narrower?↘
Asked from elsewhereMAssembly line

At the foot of Babel the builders no longer understand each other and fall to quarrelling. Etching by van der Gucht. Wellcome Collection · Public domain

04/07Perish

Where does the pressure to publish come from?

Publish or perish

“Publish or perish” was already doing the rounds in American academia in the first half of the twentieth century. At first it even carried a note of encouragement; only later did it become a law of survival. In 1981 William Broad, a reporter for Science, wrote that in some circles the “least publishable unit” was a polite name for chopping data into fragments: four short papers instead of one long one. In 2018 John Ioannidis and colleagues identified 265 hyperprolific authors who, in at least one year, had put their names to a paper every five days on average; the number of such authors grew about twentyfold between 2001 and 2014. Of the 27 who completed a questionnaire, 19 admitted that for more than a quarter of their papers they had not met at least one of the criteria for authorship.

This is not a question of morals but of incentives. Publications are counted, so some slice their results like salami, some put their names on work they did not do, some mass-produce. Sisyphus’s boulder rolls back to the foot of the hill every day: make your quota this year, and next year you start counting again from zero.

Follow-up questions
Read deeperWhere does the pressure to publish come from?↘
Asked from elsewhereMPerishE2Counting

Sisyphus, Ixion and Tantalus: the boulder pushed uphill, the burning wheel, the fruit forever out of reach. Etching by Grignion, 1790. Wellcome Collection · Public domain

05/07Pyramid

Why do academic careers look like a Ponzi scheme?

The base of the pyramid

An American engineering professor trains, on average, 7.8 PhDs over a career, and in a steady state only one of them can take over the professor’s post; for half of all PhDs to stay in academia, the field would have to grow by 14% a year. In 2010 The Economist reported that the fiercest critics likened the research doctorate to a Ponzi or pyramid scheme, and that universities had found PhD students to be “cheap, highly motivated and disposable labour”. In autumn 2023 about 68% of faculty at US colleges and universities were off the tenure track; in 1987 the figure was about 47%.

In China the number of doctoral graduates rose from 55,000 in 2016 to 112,900 in 2025, while births over the same period fell from 18.83 million to 7.92 million. There are no national statistics on “up-or-out” tenure reviews. In Wuhan University’s first round in 2018, 48 people formally applied and 6 were promoted; those who did not pass could still renew for another three-year term. A pyramid only stays up while newcomers keep pouring in; with the population shrinking and university expansion at its peak, there will be fewer and fewer professorships to go round.

Follow-up questions
Read deeperWhy do academic careers look like a Ponzi scheme?↘
Asked from elsewhereMPerishE5Threshold

A great tower under construction: bricks fired, stone cut, layer upon layer. Etching. Wellcome Collection · Public domain

06/07Motive

Why do people who don’t love knowledge go into research?

For bread and butter

Learning for pleasure is natural and deeply human; learning for marks, grade-point averages, certificates and a meal ticket is the alienated form. Industrial society needs vast numbers of cogs, and to become a cog you must first master a specialist skill; once research became a profession, it also became one more way for many people to earn a living. They do not necessarily love knowledge. They simply need a job – and the assembly line never needed love in the first place.

There is nothing shameful in chasing fame and fortune; the great figures in the history of science were mostly well connected and fiercely competitive. What is frightening is when fame and fortune are all that is left. Marx saw it long ago: labour is alienated not because the pay is too low, but precisely because pay is all there is.

Follow-up questions
Read deeperWhy do people who don’t love knowledge go into research?↘
Asked from elsewhereMCuriosityE4Squeeze

Hogarth, Industry and Idleness: the industrious apprentice, favoured by his master, stands in the counting house above the workshop. Engraving, 1747. Wellcome Collection · Public domain

07/07Exit

Can science turn from a career back into a labour of love?

The end of the line

Any skill that large numbers of people can be drilled into by rote, AI will soon learn too – and learn better. Tools like AlphaFold have already shaken up molecular biology, and sooner or later some of the jobs done by “research labourers” will pass to machines. This is not all bad news. The telegraph put running messengers out of work, yet the marathon became a sport; when a craft no longer earns anyone a living, there will still be people who practise it for pleasure and for excellence.

Ideally, the arrival of AI would turn many professions back into “liberal arts”, pursued not for a living but for knowledge and taste. Reality may turn out worse: once the skills people live by become obsolete, many may stop wanting to learn anything at all. That everyone can be a scientist does not mean that everyone has to be one; but for those with a genuine passion for knowledge, the door has never been open so wide.

Follow-up questions
Read deeperCan science turn from a career back into a labour of love?↘
Asked from elsewhereMTurning point

The Artillery Ground, London: streets and rooftops packed with people watching Lunardi’s balloon ascend. Print. Wellcome Collection · Public domain

E7The discussion goes on

The discussion goes on

?Once research became a job, where did the passion for knowledge go?

Once research became a job, where did the passion for knowledge go? The manifesto argues that science suffers from a threefold alienation. This deep read pursues the first two: specialization and professionalization; and an evaluation regime centred on publication, together with an academic job system that comes close to a “Ponzi scheme”. It begins with the birth of the word “scientist” and passes through Weber’s “Science as a Vocation” and Lawrence’s Big Science, to see how the burden of knowledge pushes people into ever narrower corners, how “publish or perish” became a law of survival, and how the doctoral pyramid is held up by a steady stream of newcomers. Finally it asks: once AI takes over the assembly line, can science turn from a career back into a labour of love? Most of the figures come from the United States and China, and things may well be different elsewhere; where the evidence is only partial, the text says so.

Deep readThe Academic Assembly Line: Professionalization, Tenure and “Publish or Perish”~5,031 words · 8 questions · 36 sources↗
  1. 1What is wrong with research becoming a job?
  2. 2When did being a scientist become a job?
  3. 3How was research broken down into an assembly line?
  4. 4Why does more knowledge make people narrower?
  5. 5Where does the pressure to publish come from?
  6. 6Why do academic careers look like a Ponzi scheme?
  7. 7Why do people who don’t love knowledge go into research?
  8. 8Can science turn from a career back into a labour of love?

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