> Our brutal science system
Brutal or setup for lazy bureaucrats who don't want to work the brutal hours is takes to be an outstanding scientist?
Our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines
151–160 of 293 posts
Re: Our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's been a question I have no answer to: What do we do with all these smart people? Currently most just go inside hierarchical workplaces where they have to learn to play office politics and carry out meaningless job functions in exchange for financial security. We don't have a Bell labs anymore, science is getting more expensive and most of the venture capital money goes to software rather than to the more capita…
It seems like this is exactly the kind of thing that a government is useful for. Why not have more publicly funded research institutions that employ them, and put them to work on useful research without having them worry about grant considerations, teaching classes, or the publishing treadmill?
One possible reason is that highlighting funny or bad examples of taxpayer-funded research is valuable political fodder [1]. Plus, at least one wing of American politics is extremely against publicly funded stuff in general. Although I was happy to just discover that there's an apparently bipartisan "Golden Goose" award given annually to government-funded research that sounds silly but has proven to have meaningful applications [2].
Re: Our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines
#153I 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.
I too considered the academic route and had some very interesting, concrete, and I think useful ideas of what to study. I was discouraged from it by existing Ph.D's who warned me about how absolutely brutal the system is and how hard it is to do anything.
I'd say we've bureaucratized science to death.
Re: Our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines
#154I 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.
I wouldn't call myself a casualty, but I was definitely considering being a professor and definitely decided not to after seeing how ridiculously hard my adviser had to work despite her being famous and well funded. It just didn't seem like a job that one could do for decades without ruining their health. I'm amazed by the people who do manage to do it, but I'm confident that my decision was the right one. Instead, s…
If you’re looking to get back into the materials research industry doing applied ML, now is a great time — no need to wait five years. In my experience there’s a lot of demand for people conversant in both fields, a lot of interest in adopting this kind of work, and a growing set of interesting opportunities.
I work in this field at a national lab, but in my experience there are a lot of industry players trying to figure out how to grow in this area
Edit: take a look at what the technical societies are doing. MRS and TMS have been rolling out educational programming targeted towards industry members. I’m not in the catalyst field really, but I’m sure ACS and AICHE have similar programming, and following that thread is probably a good way to figure out who’s interested
Re: Our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines
#155Is it counterproductive that we expect researchers to work in universities and become professors? It seems like there should be more outlets for the calling. Our universities are proving to be a bottleneck. I see how there is an often-natural relationship between cultivating knowledge and disseminating it to students. However, we need and have more prospective researchers than universities are willing or able to supp…
The issue is that there are too many barriers to commercialisation and the current stakeholders have too much power. The profitable fields like medicine strictly limit the number of people accepted (the official explanation is that there aren't enough residencies, the unspoken reason is that the American Medical Association wants to keep salaries up) and FDA drug approval laws err on the side of caution; better to ha…
> the unspoken reason is that the American Medical Association wants to keep salaries up
I used to believe this, but the AMA claims that it's actually the US Congress that is keeping the number of residencies low [1]:
> The American Medical Association (AMA) adopted policy at its Annual Meeting today to build upon its efforts aimed at modernizing and increasing funding for graduate medical education (GME). The new policy calls for the AMA to continue advocating for legislation that removes the caps on Medicare-funded residency positions, which were imposed by the Balanced Budget Amendment of 1997, to help ensure an adequate physician workforce to meet the nation’s growing needs for health care services.
I'm not an expert on this though, so it's possible that this is all PR doublespeak.
[1] https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-fun...
Re: Our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines
#156I 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.
It's a hard and frustrating career. I work on an academic lab but the chances of me having an independent research program are very low. However, everyone who wants something from you -- especially your PI -- will string you along in the hope you will stick to your low paying job. I am trying to find a better job in industry but the jobs I see posted tend to be for data science (I am not a strong stats person) or too…
It might be better for you to take the hit now and land a junior job and progress from that than continue to wait for the perfect job to arrive.
Re: Our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines
#157Here’s a prior article and HN thread on “Managing Academia” and it’s conclusion. > If a job is complex, multifaceted and involves subtle trade-offs, the best approach is to hire good people, pay them the going rate and tell them to do the job to the best of their ability. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14021885
Please, that's such a copout. To "hire good people" you need to 1. attract and 2. identify them. If you don't create attractive conditions, good people will go elsewhere; if you do offer, say, financial incentives and personal prestige, bad people will flock too, so you need to identify good people. Further, the whole show is dynamic, good people can turn bad if wrong incentives exist, or you can lose them if more at…
Wouldn’t it make more sense to reverse that order?
1. Identify good people.
2. Attract them.
Beyond a certain amount of financial security, what attracts me is probably not what attracts you.
Re: Our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines
#158Avery Oswald died without winning the Nobel, in spite of proving that DNA is the hereditary material (it was thought that amino acids were at the time). Many held him back including his own supervisors. Science is sometimes shit.
Re: Our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines
#159I 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.
Biomedical engineer with a 2.977GPA. Lots of extra curriculars, volunteered in labs, 160 credit hours of mostly STEM classes, lots of grad-level courses, relevant work experience, but GPA was 0.023 too low to pass the automated filters and I didn't get into any of the grad programs I applied for. I ended up doing fine in software development though. Also, the Wright Brothers didn't need a research lab to invent fligh…
There's many issues in our science system, but it may be a blessing that you got rejected.
I'm a senior software engineer. My wife has a PhD in biochemistry from a top university. When she graduated she could not get a job anywhere. We both agreed she should choose a different path and she started a business in a totally unrelated field.
Meanwhile someone like me...I'm literally turning away interviews. I have no doubt she'd be able to be success in the IT industry amongst the many roles offered if she had chosen the path. And many of her peers have self studied, dropped their grad programs and get hired by the likes of Facebook, Microsoft.
Pragmatically, the smartest one would never get into fields with limited jobs and pay. I'd rather pick a field so I can feed my family, than to save the world.
The US will get leapfrogged in R&D as the brain drain goes towards generating ad revenue (For the record I do not work for a company that relies on generating ads)