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Young, talented and fed-up: scientists tell their stories

nature.com

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Re: Young, talented and fed-up: scientists tell their stories

#101

Post by Retric »

hprotagonist wrote: post #85
Retric wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do original microbiologist research on the cheap. For an extreme case, Einstein did useful theoretical physics without a lab. Money vastly expands the scope of work you can do, but breaking new ground is often less expensive than making minor refinements to well understood areas. PS: The real risk is will likely will go 20+ years without finding anything, but if you have tenure that should not be a problem.

You've never tried to buy a good microscope, have you? Kitting out a lab to do publishable work in a lot of fields right now is just jaw-droppingly expensive.

Good optical microscope's are really not that expensive and last a long time. (AKA under 1,000$.) The equipment costs can quickly go up with new electron microscopes running 500k-6mill etc. But, restricting yourself to the minimum equipment 1 person needs for a specific kind of research is significantly cheaper than a more abstract lab.

Further, used equipment can often be vastly cheaper.

Honestly, time and consumables really are the biggest issues.

Re: Young, talented and fed-up: scientists tell their stories

#102

Post by Chinjut »

reverend_gonzo wrote: post #35
JDiculous wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't it feel like a waste of your talents to have society employing you full-time to make rich people richer via gambling in the financial markets rather than something more beneficial to society? I don't blame you at all (I'm sure your quality of life is magnitudes of order better, and I'd do the same in your position) and this isn't personal at all, it just pains me that our brightest graduates are working in fi…

Do you ever feel that maybe you shouldn't talk about things you don't understand? Working a prop trading firm is nowhere near "making rich people richer via gambling in the financial markets". Furthermore, the majority of software/engineering jobs out there are not doing "something more beneficial to society". How many companies are really just ad-driven, marketing-driven. Yes, it would be nice if the entire world co…

Who said anything about standard issue ad-driven, marketing-driven software engineering jobs? Wasn't the alternative in this case brain/epilepsy neurology research?

Re: Young, talented and fed-up: scientists tell their stories

#103

Post by Bartweiss »

pvaldes wrote: post #66
eanzenberg wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you having children in grad school or as a postdoc? And three at that..

Because you can not get pregnant at 55yo. For many scientist women is a now or never.

I think people underestimate how long "making it" as a scientist takes. For most life plans, having kids while you're still in education or training is a crappy plan. For science, "education and training" can easily stretch to being a postdoc at age 40.

Waiting for kids until you're 'settled' just isn't a justifiable demand for a career that takes 30 years to become established.

Re: Young, talented and fed-up: scientists tell their stories

#104

Post by bluetwo »

I understand this article is mostly about the pressure of finding grants and doing research, but the role also includes teaching. I would be curious to hear, based on the experience of others, how much of the money generated by teaching a class goes to the professor.

Something like:

% = ($ Professor paid per Class) / (Students per Class * Number of Credits for Class * $ Charged per Credit)

At least by my calculations based on my own experience, 90% of the revenue here gets sucked up by overhead with only 10% going to the person teaching. If a non-profit was run this way, it would get shut down.

Re: Young, talented and fed-up: scientists tell their stories

#105

Post by nonbel »

whateveracct wrote: post #83
fsloth wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is wishing for a world where it would be better to help eradicate suffering rather than work to accumulate imaginary play chips bad?

Wishing for unrealistic fantasy to become reality is just that, unrealistic. Anecdote: Many of my high school friends and peers went on to pursue medicine. I pursued engineering. Multiple times I was asked by these people, "You're smart so why aren't you spending your life making a difference?" Your comment and its ilk remind me of that question.

I got into medical research because I wanted to help people. I left because (in my assessment) that is not what is going on at all. I would tell your friends to take a closer look at what they are doing to people and how they are assessing help vs damage. Basically, this projection came true:

"We are quite in danger of sending highly trained and highly intelligent young men out into the world with tables of erroneous numbers under their arms, and with a dense fog in the place where their brains ought to be. In this century, of course, they will be working on guided missiles and advising the medical profession on the control of disease, and there is no limit to the extent to which they could impede every sort of national effort." Fisher, R N (1958). "The Nature of Probability". Centennial Review. 2: 261–274

Re: Young, talented and fed-up: scientists tell their stories

#106

Post by Bartweiss »

timr wrote: post #72
kayhi wrote: post #8

In the HN spirit, where's the opportunity? How can we help improve the life of researchers? Start ups trying to help: Science Exchange (YCS11) https://www.scienceexchange.com/ : outsource parts of your research to companies Instrumentl (YCS16) https://www.instrumentl.com/ : identify and push relevant grants towards applicable research Experiment (YCW13) https://experiment.com/ : crowdfunding platform for scientific r…

As a former scientist, current startup person: please stop. This is crass. Startups that sell services to scientists aren't helping with the fundamental problem (i.e. there aren't many jobs, and there isn't enough funding once you have a job). Crowdfunding is nice in theory, but just makes the problem of vanity science worse than it is right now. Crowds don't know shit about science. If you want to help researchers,…

Frankly, crowdfunded science scares the hell out of me.

Pretty much every time I've seen it, it consists of some fringe researcher promising one weird trick to cure A, B, and C. They don't get funding through traditional channels, because actual experts recognize the subtle-but-inescapable reasons they won't succeed, so instead they go to crowdfunding to squander a bunch of public money.

I'm sure this could work, genuinely viable projects lack funding all the time, but it's generally because they weren't sexy enough for the grant committee. If the NIH thought it wasn't exciting enough, what are the chances the general public will choose it over some guy promising to cure cancer with nanomachines?

Re: Young, talented and fed-up: scientists tell their stories

#107

Post by hprotagonist »

SilasX wrote: post #95
hprotagonist wrote: post #9

"if you pay a man a salary for doing research, he and you will want to have something to point to at the end of the year to show that the money has not been wasted. In promising work of the highest class, however, results do not come in this regular fashion, in fact years may pass without any tangible result being obtained, and the position of the paid worker would be very embarrassing and he would naturally take to…

Sorry if I'm missing the point of this quote, but it seems wrong to me that you "can't point to something to prove the money wasn't wasted".[1] You can always do some variant of "we tried this, it didn't work; in the future, you no longer have to spend money to see if this will work." Right? [1] Removing the triple negative: it should always be possible to prove the money accomplished something.

From a business perspective, you're right enough. Academic research is not business oriented -- and Thompson was saying that it should not be.

When discovered, there was nothing particular monitizable about quaternions, and they were not found as a consequence of any business enterprise looking for new tools -- but Hamilton didn't starve to death because he failed to capitalize on them. 80 years later, suddenly we rediscover the fact that we've solved gimbal lock and can easily describe quantum states.

Re: Young, talented and fed-up: scientists tell their stories

#108

Post by mattkrause »

Retric wrote: post #101
hprotagonist wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've never tried to buy a good microscope, have you? Kitting out a lab to do publishable work in a lot of fields right now is just jaw-droppingly expensive.

Good optical microscope's are really not that expensive and last a long time. (AKA under 1,000$.) The equipment costs can quickly go up with new electron microscopes running 500k-6mill etc. But, restricting yourself to the minimum equipment 1 person needs for a specific kind of research is significantly cheaper than a more abstract lab. Further, used equipment can often be vastly cheaper. Honestly, time and consumabl…

Where are you shopping?

Florescent microscopes are in the low six figures and others are much more expensive. A confocal microscope is typically several hundreds of thousands of dollars, potentially approaching $1M if it has all the bells and whistles. Super-res and high-throughput imaging can also consume essentially infinite amounts of money.

You could probably get a usable brightfield microscope for around a $1,000 but realistically, you're not publishing much with that alone.

Re: Young, talented and fed-up: scientists tell their stories

#109

Post by seanopedia »

markkat wrote: post #49

I've been in biomedical research for 15 years, and I am leaving the lab atm. Many of my peers are as well. It's not a viable or enjoyable career anymore. Funding is extremely political, and proposal reviews border on arbitrary. Typically, the funding has been decided by seniority and politics, and the review is justification. I imagine that it will get better eventually, but I can't wait for that to come to pass, and…

If you don't mind me asking, are you moving to somewhere in the biomedical industry?

Re: Young, talented and fed-up: scientists tell their stories

#110

Post by hprotagonist »

Retric wrote: post #101
hprotagonist wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've never tried to buy a good microscope, have you? Kitting out a lab to do publishable work in a lot of fields right now is just jaw-droppingly expensive.

Good optical microscope's are really not that expensive and last a long time. (AKA under 1,000$.) The equipment costs can quickly go up with new electron microscopes running 500k-6mill etc. But, restricting yourself to the minimum equipment 1 person needs for a specific kind of research is significantly cheaper than a more abstract lab. Further, used equipment can often be vastly cheaper. Honestly, time and consumabl…

Any decent fluorescent scope + base + optics + laser + dichroic will run you well north of 250K. Just the objectives are 10-20K. Two photon, more like 750. You want to do funny stuff like FRET or PALM or STED? You'll spend 700 grand on parts, and a year building the thing yourself because nobody sells them.

You will not publish anything good enough to get tenure if all you have is widefield and a lamp in basically any biomedical field.

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