41–50 of 293 posts
I think it is a fair question how to organize science for best results (maximum productivity ?). I am no fan of pressure to apply for grants, which is particularly strong in the US. Also the amount of pressure/effort needed to get permanent/tenured position is very large. While this is clearly a big drain on people, and some people cannot handle it, either because they don't play the game well, or just live/work bala…
I am a casualty of this. I was originally intending to follow an academic career, until I discovered that my career would be dependent on my ability to secure grants. Something that if I was not bad at (which I think is unlikely), would at least be extremely stressful for me. It isn't the only reason I decided to to switch to being a software engineer, but it is a major reason.
Strange that the author does not mention she joined BioNTech:
https://biontech.de/sites/default/files/2019-08/20140202_Bio...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know fraudulent science is performed in many university labs. If you read the papers you will see only what you think is science. But the results are falsified. The slides are fake. So maybe output is high but determining what is true output is hard. And nearly no one replicates. I'm sorry that I can't give you info. It's not useful to me or my family to prove this. But consider this a warning. If you move subtly e…
I've spent many years in the academic spaces, both in public genetics labs as well as in computer science departments. I've never encountered anything like what you claim, and no one I know in academia has either. Extraordinary claims like yours need proof, no one will or should take you at your word, especially when there is the weight of many others experiences that cut against your claims.
Your epistemological strategy is correct. And for all I know you are more correct. After all, given any random arrangement of points there will be clusters. And assuming you draw circles randomly, some circles will coincidentally appear full of points. But if the circle is the space of visibility of a sapient being, they will mistakenly determine that all of space is full of points simply based on their own circle.
So just because my immediate circle has encountered this enough may not mean that this is common.
Unfortunately, there is no true way for us to safely exchange information on this front for the positive case (there is fraud), only for the negative case (there is no fraud). So I guess we each act as if this circle is the entire plane and maybe the world will apply sufficient pressures to tease out who is right.
> universities ... expect faculty in the medical schools to pay their own way with either clinical work or external research funding. This puts tremendous financial pressure on eager young medical researchers, sometimes leading them not to the projects that are most needed or that they are most passionate about, but to the projects that will get them funding. Sometimes it feels as if the current system we have in the…
Honestly, the early phases would be pretty much the same. There would be researchers who want grants to do experiments and to get the grants they would need to impress boards of their peers. So basically the system we have today.
Well, it's no surprise that people optimize to the metric that's available, right? Private labs aim to make production things. Public labs aim to collect grants. The only real hope for modern science is a business with a long-term view. That's because that business is only rewarded if their thing works. If there was ever a time when public academics worked for science, it is no longer that today. Now it is occupied b…
The follow on from this is rather more problematic. If you are prioritizing production things, then it means you'll severely limit the topics you explore. Anything that would take too long to get to market, or is too risky, or is too theoretical, will never be prioritized. This is the reason for the tenure system, to give true freedom to explore novel and future oriented work. Things that won't pay off for decades, i…
A long time ago, I heard the opposite view. Researchers only establish tenure once they've spent a long time on a specific path, and empirically, later-career don't suddenly throw out their decades of commitment to one path to explore ground once they're protected by tenure. This rings pretty true to me, based on everything I know about the scientific establishment (and my model of human psychology). There's a reason "science advances one funeral at a time" is such an old saw.
> universities ... expect faculty in the medical schools to pay their own way with either clinical work or external research funding. This puts tremendous financial pressure on eager young medical researchers, sometimes leading them not to the projects that are most needed or that they are most passionate about, but to the projects that will get them funding. Sometimes it feels as if the current system we have in the…
Give money to brilliant scientists with no strings attached. Let scientists among themselves figure out who is brilliant. If the system gets corrupted, a second group of scientists will emerge who claim to be the real deal. Let them battle it out and choose the smarter group for further funding. In other words, do it the way it was done before the influx of the administrative overhead.
Would this involve an application? Perhaps a committee?
Wow, there is a lot of negativity towards science in this thread. Um, yeah, it could be better. But it's mostly a matter of personal courage. Of course institutional funding is not the best incentive for the best science. Good science comes from courageous individuals in courageous communities. Not financial incentives. Good science takes courage.