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Our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines

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Re: Our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines

#191

Post by alpineidyll3 »

JadeNB wrote: post #169
alpineidyll3 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many faculty getting the most funding are never involved in writing the papers attributed to them. (Source: years spent at the top five universities and my own faculty experience) Would work simply: fund students directly. If faculty contribute training or ideas students can grant authorship. Faculty/postdocs still peer review papers.

> If faculty contribute training or ideas students can grant authorship. I don't know a particularly good way to get around this issue and still reward faculty for collaboration with students, but, in this situation, faculty are just going to pressure students to 'recognise' their (the faculty's) contributions with an authorship—say, by threatening to withhold a recommendation letter.

That threat is always there, these changes would only put more power into student's hands.

Re: Our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines

#192

Post by mcguire »

alpineidyll3 wrote: post #147
timr wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The grant system completely compromises most faculty'$ ability to do anything with their decades of training besides sell themselves. I agree that the academic world is broken, but this narrative that success -- in any field -- isn't dependent on your ability to sell yourself is problematic. I left academia behind because I saw that it was a brutal, improbable grind, sure, but mainly because I could see that the sa…

It's true one must advocate for one's self. It's not true that we should choose structures that require more self promotion than productivity. Academia used to be rife with corners where obscure problem solvers could live a decent life. The pressure for grant monies and summer salaries have done away with those corners and it shouldn't be so.

On one hand, I've heard E. Allen Emerson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Allen_Emerson) complain that he was hoping with tenure he'd be able to just go off and work on whatever interested him.

On the other...there is no other hand.

Re: Our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines

#193

Post by fma »

phobosanomaly wrote: post #117
idrios wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's unfortunate to see people disadvantaged by pursuing a truly difficult major. A 2.97 in bioengineering could represent someone who simply took more challenging courses, and got lower grades because the courses were truly difficult. A straight bio major might have a 3.8, but never had to work through a year-long Pchem sequence, instead padding with softer, more grade-inflated courses.

The GPA is an interesting system when you sit down to think about it. I came into college with almost 30 general education credit hours. I received the International Baccalaureate diploma in high school. I only needed 1 more gen ed course to fulfill my requirements.

So imagine me, a 18 year old jumping immediately into fairly difficult courses my freshman year...adapting to college. Whilst my peers are taking English 101 and inflating their GPA. I did not receive internships offers my early years in college and I feel this had a big part of it.

Re: Our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines

#194

Post by reasonabl_human »

TheWaywardProf wrote: post #79

I am in the middle of this right now; new professor at top-10 university in CS (with a PhD in biomedicine). Funding science is a frequently-debated topic and everyone is aware there is a problem, but one part is that in the US we have combined four different organizations: federally-funded scientific research organizations, post-highschool education, vocational training (doctors, lawyers), and professional sports. Pe…

Really appreciated this breakdown, thanks!

Re: Our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines

#195

Post by marcinzm »

birdsbirdsbirds wrote: post #37
cs702 wrote: post #11

> 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.

Battle it out how? Colosseum fight to the death with giant beakers for weapons? Someone makes the decisions on which group is smarter and that person is thus an administrator of the system. They will in turn hire out sub-administrators to better manage the various groups of scientists and then create a system of grants to remove the inefficiency (and slowness) of groups battling it out. And here we are.

Re: Our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines

#196

Post by idrios »

GlennS wrote: post #186
idrios wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So I'm no in the US so not familiar with your GPA system, but couldn't you just take one more class which you knew you'd do well at to push that over the line?

Yup, and I did consider it. But another semester of college just to boost my GPA would've been expensive. I don't have regrets how things turned out, but point is my story is common

Re: Our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines

#197

Post by dmitryminkovsky »

idrios wrote: post #65
dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Biology-focused hacker spaces are on the rise so there are still ways to do research. I am very interested in this concept. Are you thinking of any in particular? I really wish people invested in public spaces people could go do science, particularly chemistry.

I joined one called "BioCurious"[1] in the SF Bay area to work on a project making a fluorescence microscope. The project was advertised on Meetup.com which is how I found it, and there were other similar projects that met up weekly. If you paid a membership fee though you got 24/hr access so I met a person there outside of academia who was using the lab's resources to continue the neuroscience research he had done f…

Thanks for sharing. I'm in Baltimore, too. Please post these places if you have a chance. Would love to check them out when possible. Searching the web, I have found https://bugssonline.org/.

Re: Our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines

#198

Post by dmitryminkovsky »

gww wrote: post #70
idrios wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I joined one called "BioCurious"[1] in the SF Bay area to work on a project making a fluorescence microscope. The project was advertised on Meetup.com which is how I found it, and there were other similar projects that met up weekly. If you paid a membership fee though you got 24/hr access so I met a person there outside of academia who was using the lab's resources to continue the neuroscience research he had done f…

If you haven't seen it Lior Pachter at CalTech has been sharing open source / 3d printable designs for lab equipment [1]. [1] https://twitter.com/lpachter/status/1354955229532360707

Thank you!

Re: Our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines

#199

Post by chii »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #180
bnralt wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It used to be the case that doing science for most of the last 2000 years was a matter of deep curiosity and farnsworth-level application. Something , at least in the US, has changed. What would you say is different from say 50 years ago ? Why is it that now everything says "Made in China" while less than 40 years ago everything said "Made in USA" ? Why does china have ~200 COVID19 vaccines while the US only has 3 or…

> instead to start tinkering on their own, unhindered.

But where do these money/resources come from? What stops somebody from "tinkering" in a way that does not produce any useful results, but is costing money?

The grant writing process sucks a lot. But it serves a purpose (albeit poorly) - that of weeding out people who aren't actually interested in producing output, but want the grant as "free money". Unfortunately, the grant writing process is costly (for the researchers), which takes the time away from the actual research.

Re: Our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines

#200

Post by raziel2701 »

reasonabl_human wrote: post #177
raziel2701 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have continued to publish and never have I been instructed to make the papers be open access. No one is enforcing that mandate. The research I've been a part of is wholly funded by the taxpayer and papers that I published after the mandate continue to not be freely available.

Perhaps they fall under export control due to being applicable to national defense?

No, national security stuff is simply not published. The mandate is not enforced.
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