Why PhDs shouldn’t be required
Just how many wacky people do you want to hire?
People often think that a PhD teaches someone how to do science1. We people who have PhDs love thinking this, because it says everything and nothing at the same time as sounding great. But what exactly is “doing science”?
You might be thinking that doing science is largely a matter of analytical ability. I think that’s we’re taught in elementary school, and it is reinforced all the way to getting into graduate school.
It turns out that analytical ability is just about as important in science as any other job. The same for good habits, motivation, communication, and grit. In fact, doing science well is mostly like doing anything else well with one exception: an ability to create, sustain, and abolish your own opinion that borders on mental instability.
There are only two jobs in the world which require you to argue passionately for a belief you cannot prove. The first is CEO. The second is a scientist. Core to the process of hypothesis testing in good science is testing the hypothesis - an often extended affair, for the duration of which you must explain to higher-ups, grant funders, collaborators, colleagues, and family why you believe this could be true. And amidst the competition from all the other hypotheses, all without indubitable proof, it behooves you to sound like your hypothesis not only could be true but is probably true, lest you not be provided with the resources to even test it. Furthermore, most people must persevere in saying “I believe this is probably true” alone, because science has been preached as an individual endeavor, and the economy of thought favors assigning responsibility to individuals.
Sustaining these actions requires (of a human being) one of two possible mindsets: a strong sense of conviction, easily discarded, or a strong delusion2. It must not waver in the face of waves of opposing but also unproven hypotheses, nor when exhausted from running experiments into the wee hours of the morning. And yet if a single experiment proves your hypothesis incorrect, as often happens in science, you must be able to take one of two paths: you must abolish your conviction immediately(good science), or you must continue in delusion(bad science).
Humans were not made to do good science in its current form. We have a tendency for monogamy and religion; we feel safest when we have faith. Good science asks you to first preach your faith and then be ready to abandon your faith. When we can’t do that quickly enough(and we mostly can’t), we resort to mental gymnastics, retconning our reality until it fits both the first and the second faith. This causes a lot of whiplash and gaslighting for everyone around us. It can make it hard to be a responsible person.
The other possibility, which is also more palatable to human nature, is we persevere in our conviction all the way into bad science. We couldn’t manage the mental gymnastics nor discard our strongest opinion, even at the cost of being wrong. We continue what we’re doing until someone reputable happens to believe us, possibly because we’ve now dedicated ourselves to being convincing instead of right. This can cause a lot of arguments and wasted resources. It can make it hard to produce real-world outcomes.
When you post a job that specifically requires a PhD and not just “equivalent experience,” you are requiring one of the above personalities3. And some positions (like professors and startup founders) really do need that to be successful. But most jobs not only do not need those characteristics, they also do not want those characteristics. In comparison to hiring someone with a proven work record, hiring a successful PhD is a risk. Even riskier is hiring an entire team of successful PhDs, with no one to attenuate the characteristics they’ve developed for the past half-decade. Why would you intentionally do that to your organization?
P.S. For anyone reading this who is currently debating doing a PhD, I do have something personal to say. The first, is that it is possible to find a place where you’re not pressured to be delusional. The second, is that becoming someone who is capable of bearing their own conviction alone and discarding it at will will teach you a level of stability and self-assurance that is undoubtedly comforting. You will have learned that you can house both opinions which are embarrassingly wrong and incredibly right. Being able to access an ability to handle and maintain such cognitive dissonance is to be able to access a profound peace within yourself.
Wait, a PhD teaches you something?
They are, up to a point, indistinguishable to an outsider. This leads to some pretty incredible personalities in academia, but this is a separate point.
This might not be the case if someone hasn’t had a very successful PhD publication history, or alternatively if they’ve been lucky, or not alone.