when I signed up for studying at the
University I thought being a physicist
was my dream job but here I am on
YouTube how did that happen I think I
owe you an explanation when I started
studying at the University my
expectations were based on biographies
of scientists they wrote a lot of
letters to each other they went to
conferences they were thinkers and
tinkerers and had sometimes heated but
usually respectful arguments the is what
I expected yes that was hopelessly naive
I know but in my defense I don't come
from an academic background I come from
a family of teachers and accountants and
post office workers their normal people
I did an internship in the chemical
industry and another one in a bank
gleefully stamping transfer slips I just
didn't know anyone was a PhD and those
were the early 1990s you couldn't just
ask the internet and within a day you'd
have 2,000 people giving you advice and
some marriage proposals along with that
the first years at University were
glorious because For the first time in
my life I was in the company of other
people who were like me at school I had
always been the weird one for actually
being interested in science and maths
but at the University everyone was like
that we talked about everything from
maths to philosophy physics and politics
and yes alcohol was involved it was a
really good time and that was all very
nice except I was getting older and
still didn't have a decent job I made a
little money by selling oil paintings
those were the days people but I didn't
seriously think I was a particularly
good artist I really had to get a normal
job and stop asking my grandma to help
out with paying rent I thought that the
Institute of physics would give me a job
when I'd finished my Master's Degree
with good grades they technically at the
time that was called a diploma I thought
they'd give me a job because that had
worked for all the other students
previously if your grades were good
they'd offer you a job as a graduate
student it wasn't particularly great pay
but it was a real job and that's where
things started to go wrong because I
finished my exams with excellent grades
I didn't mean to brag but I think you
need this context but I wasn't offered a
job because I'm a woman I'm not guessing
that that's what happened I know because
they told me you see the guy who was
head of the Institute told me that since
I'm female I should apply for a
scholarship that was exclusively for
women in the Natural Sciences because
then the Institute wouldn't have to pay
for me makes sense doesn't it so well I
applied for the scholarship and got it
all right but the scholarship don't come
with any benefits like pension savings
and health insurance and I know they
sounds very German but these things
matter to us also I was now reminded on
various occasions that I wasn't actually
employed at The Institute I was just
there because I had this scholarship for
women and that was totally true this by
the way is why I'm against programs or
positions that are exclusively for women
I think that treating women differently
just reinforce is the Prejudice that
women are less capable than men but I
digress all right you might say stop
whining at least I did have an income
now yes so far so good at this time I
was the only woman at the Institute who
was not in the administration the next
problem was that the head of the
Institute made a lot of money selling
textbooks he wrote very little of these
textbooks himself rather he gave
assignments for parts of the books to
students and posts which is why in case
you've ever wondered these textbooks are
so discontinuous and partly repetitive
he expected me to also work for him to
which I said no I was then ordered into
his office in which he gave me a very
angry speech According to which I wasn't
loyal to all the other students who did
their part I told him that I was under
no obligation to work for him and didn't
care what the rest of the students were
thinking he got angry I left after him
he started shouting that I was fired and
physically shoved me out of his office
true story the irony is that he couldn't
fire me because if you remember he had
refused to hire me in the first place I
was paid by that scholarship for women
and that wasn't managed by The Institute
but by the office of the University
president I'm not just telling you this
because it's entertaining it was also a
rather rude awakening it made me real
realiz that this institute wasn't about
knowledge Discovery it was about money
making and the more I saw of Academia
the more I realized it wasn't just this
particular Institute and this particular
Professor it was generally the case the
moment you put people into big
institutions the goal shifts from
knowledge Discovery to moneymaking
here's how this works if a researcher
gets a scholarship or research Grant
then the institution gets part of that
money it's called the overhead
technically that's meant to pay for
offices and equipment and administration
Etc but academic institutions then pay
part of their staff from this overhead
so they need to keep that overhead
coming small scholarships don't make
much money but research grants can be
tens of millions of dollars and the
overhead can be anything between 15 and
50% this is why research and
institutions exert loads of pressure on
researchers to bring in grant money and
partly they do this by keeping the
researchers on temporary contracts so
that they need grants to get paid
themselves while the administrators who
are paid on the overhead usually have
permanent positions but you get used to
this kind of crap and the overhead isn't
even the real problem the real problem
is that the easiest way to grow in
Academia is to pay other people to
produce papers on which you as the grant
holder can put your name that's how
Academia Works grants pay students and
post talks to produce research papers
for the grant holder and those papers
are what the superviser then uses to
apply for more grants the result is a
paper production machine in which
students and posts are burned through to
bring in money for the institution most
of that money comes from your taxes
after my PhD I applied for another
scholarship and got that and then I got
a post job and a grant and another job
and another job and another Grant and so
on and I began to understand what you
need to do to get a grant or get hired
you have to work on topics that are
mainstream enough but not too mainstream
you want them to be a little bit edgy
but not too edgy no it needs to be
something that fits into the existing
machine scery and since most grants are
3 years or 5 years at most it also needs
to be something that can be wrapped up
quickly the more I saw of this the more
I realized this wasn't how I wanted to
spend my life the other thing that
happened was that the more I saw off the
foundations of physics the more I became
convinced that most of the research
there wasn't based on sound scientific
principles I know this sounds wild like
I'm the crank Next Door on YouTube and
maybe that's what I am but I like to
think that my argument was and still is
very academic I never intended it to be
offensive I just explained why thinking
of new particles isn't a good strategy
for progress in physics and why that had
gotten an entire discipline stuck and
naive as I was I expected physicists to
think about it I expected rational
debate but that never came no one was
interested no one is interested they
were interested in writing more papers
and that's what they need all these
particles and other wild ideas for to
write papers to get grants to get post
dos to write more papers and round and
round it goes meanwhile I had moved half
around the world because that's standard
for postto it's just expected of you and
at some point you just accept the
constant moving as normal because the
only people you know also do it it's
it's incredibly hostile to personal life
detrimental to mental health and women
suffer from it more because our
reproductive reality is that we need to
start families earlier than men by my
mid-30s I had somehow miraculously
managed to get married and have two
children but I couldn't find a job
anywhere near my husband so for several
years I commuted from Frankfurt to
Stockholm and yes those cities are
actually in different countries after 5
years of my murder commute I just
couldn't do it anymore my mental health
was worse than ever I was permanently
stressed out I was feeling guilty for
not working more and not spending more
time with my kids I had several nervous
breakdowns I was constantly ill I
decided I'd go back to Germany and not
move out of the country again until the
kids were out of school instead I
applied for research grants on projects
that lasted one two or 3 years and that
could be located in Germany a lot of
water has flown under the bridge since
so let me be honest at this point I
figured out what you need to put into a
gr proposal to get the money and that's
what I did I applied for Grants on
research projects because it was a way
to make money not because I thought it
would leave an impact in the history of
science it's not that what I did was
somehow wrong it was and still is
totally state-ofthe-art I did did what I
said I do in The Proposal I did the
calculation I wrote the papers I wrote
my reports and the reports were approved
normal academic procedure but I knew it
was just as most of the work in
that area is currently and just
as most of academic research that your
taxes PID for is almost certainly
the real problem I had I think
is that I was bad at lying to myself of
course I Tred to tell myself and anyone
who was willing to listen that at least
unofficially on the side I do the
research that I thought was worth my
time but that I couldn't get money for
because it was too far off the
mainstream but that research never got
done because I had to do the other stuff
that I actually got paid for then Co
came and it reminded me how short life
really is I pivoted applied for funding
on the research that I wanted to do that
I was afraid wouldn't get funded it
didn't get funded and so here we are on
YouTube where I talk about why I love
science and hated at the same
time this sounds like a sad story and in
some sense it is because it's the story
of a young scientist whose dream died
and it's the story of an old scientist
who thinks they could have made a
difference if it hadn't been necessary
to get past five reviewers who didn't
share my interests because that's what
it comes down to eventually it's not
that they say there's something wrong
with your proposal it just doesn't
excite them because it's not the main
current interest my problem has always
been that I just didn't fit in but
there's a happy ending in that I found
you a community of people who share my
interests well more or less or why the
heck have you not been watching my video
on indefinite causal structures it's
been quite a change to switch from
Academia to being self-employed I had to
learn how to write invoices I had to
register a business I have a tax
consultant two agent and a 12 person
team that's distributed over half the
world very steep learning curve mistakes
were made but eventually today I feel
good about it because unlike academic
research this is an honest trade you get
some of my knowledge I get some of your
attention I like the Simplicity of that
and I'm also heartened that there are so
many people who care about obscure
problems in the foundations of physics
though I think you underestimate the
relevance of indefinite causal
structures so that's my story no more
and no less please do not think that my
experience with Academia is universal or
that I've claimed it is I know many
people who love Academia the way it is
and who think it's working just fine I'm
just not one of them
have never been and I don't think I'll
ever
be I'm not sure if I'm going to post
this video it's a bit too much isn't it