The train stopped.
Random unscheduled interruptions are frequent; you can’t let yourself get jittery over every one of them. Usually, the train starts again within two minutes.
Two minutes passed: the train remained stationary.
Now it was time to dial up the nerves and listen for an announcement.
Here it was. An object was blocking the track.
Bloody hell. We all know what “object” means. I hoped they were Ok — otherwise it could be a very long delay.
I looked out of the window, because I’m a curious fellow who’s interested in his surroundings. We were passing through a town. A quite nice town. Through some well-scrubbed brick houses I thought I spotted part of a Waitrose sign. I started to look up our location on google maps when the man next to me said,
“This is one of the wealthiest areas in southern England.”
“What town is it?”
“It doesn’t matter — you can’t afford to live here.”
“Really?”
“There’s not an academic living within a 25-mile radius.”
I looked this impertinent chappy up and down. It was clear that he knew what he was talking about; he too was a professor.
It’s rare to meet one of my own species in the wild, so we immediately fell into conversation. After some standard dreary whinging about the dire state of higher education, and the criminally low level of research funding as a percentage of GDP (still below 50%!), and the jaw-dropping stupidity of the general non-professorial population, he settled down to tell me a truly incredible story. It might just have changed my life.
He worked in the field of P—1. This field has a long and venerable history, and when I realised that I was speaking with one of its princely practitioners, I had to struggle to hide an instinctive sense of awe and respect. (A professor’s power is measured in disdain.) I was surprised to learn, however, that P— had gone through some ups and downs that had been hidden from an otherwise admiring public.
“Our experiments are the pinnacle of modern science, of course,” he said, with admirable understatement, “but they stopped telling us anything new many decades ago. The only thing we’ve really learned is that we can keep churning out data by means that everyone considers miraculous, and performing analyses that no-one can comprehend, and writing papers that no-one can read, and the funding will continue to flow.”
I was shocked, and I told him so.
“I’m shocked,” I said.
He shook his head sadly. “But we faced a crisis. All of the geniuses who built up this field are dead, or senile. None of us really have a clue what we’re doing, or why we’re doing it. All we know is how to keep getting data, and writing papers. And of course securing more funding.”
“That’s terrible,” I said.
“Huh!” he scoffed. “I haven’t got to the terrible part yet.”
There was more?
“Since there have been no actual research problems to solve, there’s been no way to rise in G— by scientific talent. Promotion is based purely on patronage.”
The field of G— did not sound so different from many other fields.
“But,” he said, “the difference is that we’ve been in this situation for much longer than anyone else. So we know where it leads.”
“Where does it lead?”
“It is almost too terrible to tell.”
For God’s sake! He couldn’t put me on the hook like this and then leave it. Fortunately, there was no sign that the train was going anywhere, so eventually he had to continue.
“The students and postdocs realised that the only thing that mattered for their career progression was to make their professors happy. The professors knew the power they held, and indulged it more and more. First it was just the students getting them coffee or covering a few lectures or doing some babysitting. Then it got worse. A postdoc became a personal assistant and a valet. Then a veritable slave — not just pandering to the professor’s every whim, but withstanding continuous abuse and mistreatment, screaming and overwork and sleep deprivation, and, inevitably, serious violence. And of course the most depraved of sexual abuse.”
“That’s why A— is famed for its excellent gender diversity?”
“Indeed.”
I was sceptical. “Many professions have a similar incentive structure, and they don’t sink to such despicable levels of abuse.”
“You’re surprised? That nerds are especially prone to insecurity, immaturity and sadism?”
I admitted I was not.
“Of course, there was a problem,” he said. “Do you know what it was?”
I felt I could identify quite a number of problems, but he was such a part of that broken world that he did not see them. He had a different problem in mind.
I hazarded a guess. “The next generation of professors were merely sycophants and toadies, and there was no-one with any actual scientific expertise?”
“That didn’t matter — we ceased doing any real science long ago. But you’re close. We needed a true leader class who could sit in high places and make sure the funding kept flowing. In the beginning it was fine. Everyone knows that the key work of science needs only a handful of brilliant minds, and the rest may as well be done by trained monkeys. So we made sure to nurture those few brilliant people, and for a while they maintained our mandarin class.”
I may have been appalled, but I was also taking notes. I stopped now and asked, “So what went wrong?”
“It just didn’t work. Most fields have tiers of expertise and vision, in between the leaders and the lab rats. But A— didn’t have that, and things fell apart. Funding dropped. We were worried that we would have to give up our gravy train — and our sex slaves and personal grape peelers and bottom wipers.”
I have to admit I found this disappointing. After all, I am a professor, and I do find it distasteful to have to wipe my own bottom. Surely there was some way to save their godly lifestyle?
He saw my sad look, and chuckled. “Don’t worry! The solution was obvious!”
Phew! “What was it?”
“Our pathetic minions! We had made sure never to let them have any positions of real power — the funding panels and the government policy committees — but we had missed a key fact of human psychology: the utterly brutalised are the most brutal! We took the most horribly humiliated and downtrodden and abused of our junior faculty, and we sent them into the funding meetings — and they were absolutely vicious! It was beautiful to witness. Soon they were bullying everyone and the suckers from all the other fields were cowering in fear. Our funding went through the roof!”
I was relieved by this happy ending. There was only one thing I didn’t understand.
“It sounds like the perfect system,” I said. “But why are you revealing it to me?”
“Because I was one of those shamed and beaten and crushed researchers. And I was sent to the top to treat my colleagues as I had been treated. But I can’t take it any more!”
Yes, that I could understand.
“You feel a moral repugnance,” I said.
“No, of course not,” he snapped. “It’s all very well to mistreat people — but I miss being mistreated myself!” He looked at me imploringly. “No-one yells at me any more. No-one hits me. No-one makes me wish I was dead.” He started to cry.
I was just as surprised and horrified as you would have been. But, unlike you, I have a phenomenal brain, and it was mere fractions of a second before I hit upon the wider implications of what he had told me. I formed a fantastic plan.
I peered at him over my spectacles. “I suppose you are very good at identifying weak petty officials and bending them to your will?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Naturally. Why?”
“I want you to locate the conductor and have us both moved to first class.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because now you are going to work for me. You will come back with me to the University of —, and help me transform my own research field of N—.”
“Hmm. How much will you pay?”
“Nothing. You will not be paid. Most of the time you will not even be fed. You will live in my basement and my children will perform medical experiments on you.”
His eyes lit up. “Really? You’d do that for me?”
“That and much, much more.”
Within five minutes we were seated in the First Class coach and I delivered my next set of instructions.
“You know this wealthy town we’re passing through. You will leave the train and visit the high-end eating establishments. You will fetch me a bottle of champagne and some oysters, followed by a medium-rare steak and an excellent bottle of Chateauneuf-de-Pape, and to finish, a perfect crème brulee and a Havana cigar.”
He looked out of the window across the town.
“What if the train leaves before I get back?”
“I guess you’ll have to be quick.”
“Very good, sir.”
“But if you need to, push someone else onto the track.”
Afterword: You might ask who would be foolish enough to tell this story in public. Don’t worry: everyone will think it’s fiction! Just to be sure, I added an obviously unrealistic detail at the end — anyone who has ever travelled by British railways will know that no-one, and I mean no-one, not even the King, gets to disembark between stations.
Slightly-later-word: Many more of these heart-warming stories are available in the Table of Contents, plus lots of other goodies, including some that contain elements of truth. In somewhat related news, last week I read an article that, among other things, extolled the virtues of crudity and bawdiness in humour. I completely agree: we need more humour that is shocking and raw and subversive; our minds need a regular shake-up. I’ve also been reading Shalom Auslander’s Fetal Position. That’s what was in my head when I wrote this piece, but as you see, it’s pretty tame. Being subversive is harder than it looks. I will keep trying.
A recent podcast on the history of the em dash — yes, you are allowed to be stunned by the rarefied pursuits of the intellectual class — informed me that Jane Austen often provided only the first letter of a name or place or profession, to give the impression that it was too dangerous to reveal or had been censored, and to add to the story a hint of intrigue and provide readers with the fun game of guessing just what it was that had been hidden. Given that it really is too dangerous to reveal my new acquaintance’s research field, I will do the same.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.