Can a Decade Without Publications Impact a PhD Advisor's Role?

[pivoxa15]

How much of a problem is to have a Phd advisor who hasn't published anything in area/field A for over a decade where A is the field I like to do the Phd in?

 

[JasonRox]

What year are you in?

 

[pivoxa15]

I'm entering grad school so research is on the agenda. But not Phd right away. I'm just thinking about it now.

 

[cristo]

It depends completely on how you define a "field." The point of having an advisor is that s/he can help guide you for the first year or so and teach you "how to research." You probably won't be doing groundbreaking stuff to start with so it wouldn't matter that much, but later, when you do start properly researching, you need someone who is familiar with the sort of research you're doing, in order to help you. However, without an actual scenario, there is no way to answer the question.

 

[f95toli]

Generally speaking, it is a bad idea.
There are, however, a few cases where it might work out. E.g. if you in reality will be working mostly with someone else who is active in the field but for some reason can't be a supervisor (e.g. a guest researcher, an experienced post-doc etc).
The main problem as I see it is that "social networking" is very important in science, being able to collaborate with scientists from other groups, universites etc can be crucial in some fields (and definitely most fields in experimental physics).
If he/she hasn't been active in the field for a long time the risk is of course that he/she does not have a good network and that can cause serious problems for you in the end.

 

[user101]

Why hasnt he published anything?