Seeing a short video by Turing Award winner Yann LeCun entitled "There is a problem with incentives for Chinese scientific research," he said: "China has some bad trends in the field of scientific research.China has a lot of very smart people, a lot of very good researchers, a lot of excellent scientific research results, especially in artificial intelligence and computer vision.But there are also plenty of bad papers that are retracted months after publication.Part of the reason for this is the problem of incentives in China's academic system.His word is truthful, and it hurts.
As we all know, scientific research results are an objective factor in evaluating the hard power of scientific and technological personnel, and a sign of their influence in their peers.Since ancient times, the "scientific research incentive" mechanism, which regulates income distribution through differences in scientific research results, has been indispensable at home and abroad.Scientific and reasonable scientific research incentives should promote scientific and technological progress and help create a positive academic atmosphere in the institution.Senior teachers told me that in the 1950s and 1960s, our school's promotion mechanism was more scientific and reasonable, and teachers' promotion titles attached importance to both scientific research results and undergraduate teaching.Our geophysical exploration department, Mr. Zeppelin, was promoted to lecturer because of the excellent teaching throughout the school.Even Peng Zhizhong, who gained worldwide fame in the 1950s for determining the crystal structure of grape stones, was promoted to associate professor (and elected to the 3rd National People's Congress).It can be seen that although there were no obvious scientific incentives at that time, the title was promoted fairly and equitably, and the public was convinced.
I have had the privilege of completely experiencing the evolution of the school's scientific research incentive policy since the reform and opening upIn a sense, some of our university teachers, who insist on scientific research exclusively, are the beneficiaries of the scientific research incentive policy since the reform and opening up.I have also been paying close attention to the output of science and technology incentive policies of relevant academic institutions in China, and have also used various opportunities to learn about the scientific "incentives" of international academic institutions.China's scientific research incentive mechanism and policy since the reform and opening-up can be roughly divided into three stages (only personal understanding):
The first stage: mainly to break the decades-old rice distribution mechanism.In the 1978-1980s, a number of "elderly titles" had to be resolved, and promotion to the title of the Cultural Revolution University had been suspended for more than 10 years.In addition, this stage produces some unthinkable distribution initiatives when salary promotion indicators are limited.For example, in the 1969 and 1970s of our group of students who stayed in school, both couples adopted the "two-dimensional one" method in the same unit of the school, that is, only one spouse is promoted to the first level of salary.There is no obvious "scientific research incentive" at this stage, because everyone is in the beginning or recovery stage of scientific research, and the difference in scientific and technological achievements is not obvious.
Second stage: I speculate that Nanjing University attaches importance to SCI papers in the mid-1980s, which belongs to the stage of quantitative scientific research incentive mechanism.I also began to pay attention to the SCI (Science Citation Index) literature database created by Eugene Garfield, the American Institute of Scientific Information.This stage is reasonably fair to the first stage of science.The main feature of the appropriate scientific and technological achievement quantification mechanism is that we can provide visible objective scientific and technological achievements to participate in the relevant review.The data speaks."As an established key university, the promotion of teachers in 1995 for the first time put forward specific quantitative indicators for scientific research achievements, such as the promotion of professors as associate professors.Teachers in schools who have long been committed to learning and have produced a lot of results are the main beneficiaries of this stage.Because the "moderate quantitative incentives for scientific achievement" at this stage have widened the gap between teachers' titles and incomes, although some people have expressed their opinions too suddenly about scientific incentives, they seem to have nothing to say.
Stage 3: This stage is called the "highly quantitative research incentive policy" stage.Obviously, the introduction of scientific and technological incentives at this stage has an era background.In order to shorten the gap with developed countries in science and technology education as soon as possible, policymakers in relevant departments in our country put forward "forward thinking" and "curve overtaking" to catch up with and overtake the world's advanced countries in a short time.At present, highly quantified scientific measurement and evaluation measures, commonly known as number evaluation, are the products of this era background.Some of these technology incentives seem plausible, emphasizing quality rather than quantity.For example, based on the influence factors of journals, academic journals are divided into "369" in disguise, highlighting the publication of natural index journal papers, and achieving some "one paper against the world" scholars.Admittedly, if an international peer recognized "world-shattering" scientific achievement, such as Professor Peng Zhizhong's above-mentioned achievement of "crystal structure of grape stone" deserves great praise and praise.In fact, any basic scientific achievement to be recognized by peers sometimes needs to be time-tested, and publication is only the first step.Even the top papers are published only after a few (usually no more than five) experts have reviewed them.It turns out that some of the results published in the top papers were later unknown and did not cause a "scientific revolution" in the field, and some "top papers" were even retracted for errors or other reasons.It is also the main characteristic of this stage to attach importance to the citation of papers, thus pushing forward the phenomenon of high citation papers and high citation authors.Industry peers are clear that citation depends on a number of factors, such as hot areas, the size of the author base, and so on.Highlighting "high-citation papers" has given rise to some bad citations, such as abnormal self-citation phenomenon.To this end, the relevant state management service departments issued a "break the five" call, but the long-term formation of impetuous utilitarian scientific research incentive policy negative effects need time to correct.
Practice is a test of whether any "incentive policy" is scientific and reasonable.In recent years, we have published academic theories, even "high-cited papers", and the number of "high-cited authors" is rapidly approaching or even surpassing that of some developed countries in Europe and the United States.However, we rarely see Chinese scientists who can make outstanding contributions to the development of the world's science.As far as I know, European and American universities also have different forms of scientific research incentives, such as outstanding professors and title professors, which are the products of scientific research incentives.However, their "scientific incentive" mechanism is "silent".This kind of scientific research incentive mechanism, which follows the law of scientific development and talent growth, has achieved brilliant achievements in the development of education and science in Europe and the United States.
Bad scientific research incentive mechanism violates the law of scientific development and talent growth, undermines fairness and justice, aggravates the impetuosity and utilitarianism of scientific research, hinders scientific progress.Some of us claim that undergraduates from some of our country's prestigious universities contribute to Western countries after graduation.In fact, as long as a careful investigation will find that our undergraduate students, even after graduation, are basically unlikely to directly find jobs in European and American academic institutions (including enterprises) to contribute to these countries.Most of them experience full postgraduate study at European and American universities, and some experience postdoctoral research, which lays a solid foundation for their scientific research thinking methods and abilities.Many of our older generation of meritorious scientists have also received systematic scientific training in Europe and the United States, such as those with "two single star meritorious" scientists.At present, some scholars with outstanding academic achievements are active in domestic universities, many of whom have completed their postgraduate education in Europe and the United States, and some have returned home after many years of work.Therefore, we should support these prestigious university students to go to Europe and the United States to receive advanced scientific research education, and we welcome them to return home to contribute to national economic construction and social development.
We should gradually improve the scientific and reasonable incentives for science and technology, so that our academic institutions can cultivate high-level scientific and technological talents.I believe that with long-term persistence, perhaps one day we will also be able to attract many students from Europe and the United States to receive our education, so that we can make our own contribution to the development of higher education and science.This is the sentiment and state of "science without borders, scientists have a motherland".