Yesterday, the front page of Adresseavisen described how an elite reseracher (toppforsker) is being forced to leave her position at NTNU due to some ludicrous bureaucracy decision. Here is a link to the local news story (in Norwegian). This sucks, and the reasons for not only throwing her out of Norway but also out of the entire Schengen region are quite frankly steaming pieces of infested monkey crap. Her department backs her up completely, however, which is a good thing, albeit the only decent action to take.
But; the "journalist" responsible for this piece describes the situation as an elite researcher being thrown out of Norway after ten years, and now she works for free.
Like I said, the situation definitely sucks, but here's my problem: She's not a researcher, she's a PhD student. Moreover, the slant in the article makes it look like she's been a researcher for ten years, and now she's working for free. Fact: She has been in Norway for ten years, but started on her PhD in 2005. Quite the big difference. Also; not taking anything away from her at all, but claiming that a PhD student is an elite researcher is just plain dumb. Unless of course it's a field in it's infancy, or the PhD student in question has 25 years of research experience in that field.
Bad journalist!
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Yeah, right
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2 comments:
Well, that the journalist calls her "elite research" is a bit over the top, but maybe you need to call her that for Joe Everyman to understand that she has great qualifications and skills.
However, I can't believe that narrow-minded bureaucracy. Just because she was just spend her weekends with her husband (while working in Trondheim), she has no right to stay here and finish her PhD. It would have been good for her and good for NTNU to let her finish; it's not that easy to replace a PhD student in the middle of the theses, elite researcher or not!
Now that's just plain inflation.
Just like when every GP schmoe calls him or herself "Doctor". A doctorate is something specific, dammit! :-(
But I totally agree - this is beureaucratic bullshit, and doubly so as her PhD contract more than justifies a work permit, so why the other circumstances would trump that is just crap.
Not taking anything away from her skills at all, and there's absolutely no disrespect intended, but unless she's freakin' Feynman reincarnated, she ain't an elite researcher halfway through grad school.
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