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Tingley is one of many young scientists who are deeply frustrated with life in research. In September, Nature put a post on Facebook asking scientists who were starting their first independent position to tell us about the challenges that they faced. What followed was a major outpouring of grief. Within a week, nearly 300 scientists from around the world had responded with a candid catalogue of concerns. "I see many colleagues divorcing, getting burnt out, moving out of science, and I am so tired now," wrote one biomedical researcher from Belgium (see 'Suffering in science'). Nature selected three young investigators who voiced the most common frustrations; here, we tell their stories.
But are young scientists whining — or drowning? Our interviewees acknowledge that they are extremely fortunate to have an opportunity to direct their own creative, stimulating careers, and they are hardly the only professionals who are expected to work hard. It's easy for each generation to imagine that things are more difficult for them than they were in the past.
But some data and anecdotal evidence suggest that scientists do face more hurdles in starting research groups now than did many of their senior colleagues 20–30 years ago. Chief among those challenges is the unprecedented number competing for funding pools that have remained stagnant or shrunk in the past decade. "The number of people is at an all-time high, but the number of awards hasn't changed," says Jon Lorsch, director of the US National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) in Bethesda, Maryland. "A lot of people with influence on the system recognize this is a serious problem and are trying to fix it."
It seems we can spend trillions of dollars on wars, or on science, but not both.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 27 2016, @11:50PM
For me, it would have been a mid-career shift. I actually started - got back into studies, made sure the numbers lined up and all that, so I could get into the right places, started getting to know professors - all the stuff you'd expect.
Then I realised a few key facts:
First, science only pays for itself if you build a business on it, which requires engineering, marketing - all that uncool dad pants sort of stuff.
Second, science is only paid for by other people (maybe) if you do what they say, not what you want. If you're incredibly lucky, those can overlap, but the usual answer is no.
Third, most actual academic science is incredibly bound up in politics (the usual sort), academic politics (of course), and turf wars (kind of overlaps the academic politics, but makes it damn near impossible to do sensible cross-disciplinary work).
Fourth, the competition is insane. What's actually worse from my perspective is that a large proportion of Ph.Ds more or less seem to have ended up there by sheer inertia. If you talk to them about why they did it, many sort of shrug their shoulders, and the more articulate ones say something about staying clear of the corporate mess. Sure, there are some who duct-tape you to a chair while they explain in lavish detail why they find the scales on an insect's wing utterly fascinating - but they're the minority.
I realised, in the end, that if I wanted to do research I'd be better off doing it as a hobby, paid for by my day job, and not seeking some grant or permission from a dean who may or may not want me to succeed that week.
We already know the reasons, of course. Idiotic corporate law that encouraged short term returns over long term research; a ludicrous over-supply of postgrads owing to a progressive hollowing-out of the school system, then the progressive devaluation of the bachelor's degree, while universities work like crazy to produce lots of people for fat cash.
But that doesn't make it suck any less.
My primary proposal would be to sort out some kind of tax credits for establishing and running research programmes. That alone should motivate companies strongly. That will change the short time while we get back to fixing the schools and universities.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday October 28 2016, @12:03AM
This one is my favorite problem, because even with decent funding and a cadre of talented scientists telling others what they don't want to hear and then becoming subject to marginalization or even smear campaigns doesn't further the cause of truth. Big businesses will squash your findings or even murder you if your research has potential to take too much out of their bottom line, and of course the climate* and PC useful idiots with make a lot of duckspeaky noise as well. The truth is not "politically correct."
Look what they did to James Watson [wikipedia.org] and William Shockley [wikipedia.org] -- both too brilliant for their own good. In fact, Shockley is still on the Southern Poverty Law Center's "Extremist List."
* Note: I believe that dumping millions of tons of toxic shit into the environment is bad and changes it for the worse, however, I also believe that the issue of climate change is an overly-exaggerated and overly-politicized ruse used to further other gains under the guise of altruism.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by zugedneb on Friday October 28 2016, @12:23AM
The Watson guy is an idiot...
While speaking at a conference in 2000, Watson had suggested a link between skin color and sex drive, hypothesizing that dark-skinned people have stronger libidos.[86][87] His lecture argued that extracts of melanin – which gives skin its color – had been found to boost subjects' sex drive. "That's why you have Latin lovers," he said, according to people who attended the lecture. "You've never heard of an English lover. Only an English Patient."[88]
The white and asian people are farthest from the monkeys, but they also have the most brutal and cunning form of warfare. We have evolved, for better or worse. The way out of barbarism is a type of cold mind who does not fear it's own death or gets devastated by random pukanas, and is mentally capable to handle the conflicts that you can read about in the history books... Thus, more thinking + less emo...
So I believe, or rather, observe, that the white man has the most "agent Smith" like character, that is general intelligence, that is not very tightly connected with the emotional needs of mankind of earlier versions.
In genetics, this would relate to the density of neurons connecting certain things with others, but nowdays this is "common" knowledge. The effects of it is not so common.
I also tend to mention to women that one of the reasons of their freedom is the rather cold + intelligent nature of the north-european man, that this type of man is not emotionally complicated enough to want slaves, but they get kind of angry.
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday October 28 2016, @12:45AM
Generally speaking, you don't see as many uncivilized Asians as you do uncivilized Africans nowadays. A major exception is in China, where people literally defecate in the middle of shopping malls, but that's a problem of overpopulation per Calhoun's mouse experiments rather than an inherent barbaric trait of Asians. In fact, Asians have perfected a rather civilized behavioral trait - repression. Asian salarymen may spend every night of the week getting trashed at titty bars with their bosses after work, but that's the worst they're gonna do.
Those with darker skins, however, lack the subtleties of repression. They are rapists, beheaders, cannibals; and all because they have the vestigial remnants of violence the ancient Orientals do, but without the executive control that Orientals have maintained over the years through their strict adherence to heirarchy and tradition. Orientals have violent tendencies, but are orderly. Swarthy humans have violent tendencies and behave in a chaotic manner.
In certain circumstances, aggression and chaos can be a good thing, adequately controlled and harnessed. For example, the Italian or Portuguese is just aggressive and chaotic enough, but civilized enough, to harness his more negative traits to his advantage whether or not he is consciously aware of that. Inbreed a few hundred generations, and you get the Arabs, who lose all ability of self-control and break out into perpetual violence. The explanation of Africa's situation goes without saying, although Blacks have a stronger instinctual intelligence. Hillary Clinton herself is courting Blacks though her understanding of their culture: Urban barbershops, jive talk, upright basses, and bongo beats. [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday October 28 2016, @07:13PM
You're trying too hard, Eth. Good trolling is very much fire-and-forget. You want easily and quickly-reproducible snippets you can more or less cut-and-paste. This looks like you got entirely too invested in it. Careful, or you might start believing what you post; there is a reason drug dealers don't usually sample the goods.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2016, @12:25AM
Ah, I'm not surprised to see your Nazi scientist side finally come out. Eugenics is bad for a variety of reasons, and only arrogant blowhards think differently.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2016, @12:42AM
"They" didn't do anything to Watson or Shockley, both of them said some stupid racist shit that wasn't backed up by scientific evidence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and controversial extraordinary claims with a long, dark history require incredibly convincing evidence of the highest standard. Old fossil scientists/emeritus professors are kept around for institutional prestige and will be dropped if they are more trouble than they are worth.
This isn't limited to racist shit either: Lynn Margulis prompted the journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" to stop the preferential treatment of National Academy members because she pushed through some stupid extraordinary shit claims to be published and lower the reputation of the journal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Margulis#Metamorphosis_theory [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2016, @02:36AM
Ironically, Shockley probably started to suffer from the effect of heavy metals poisoning right around the time he decided to abandon semiconductor research.... As you probably know semiconductor manufacturing was quite messy....
(Score: 2) by zugedneb on Friday October 28 2016, @12:08AM
...a ludicrous over-supply of postgrads...
This, and others mentioning "insane competition", is a proof that most of us are fairly capable, and we live with wrong economic system. Or?
One remedy is (since you do not like new economic ideas) is that we dismantle the education system, and let only a selected few get it, so that we can return to the good old times when the plebs (95+% of population) could be addressed properly: namely as _trash_.
Or?
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2016, @12:17AM
Read again.
Nowhere did I propose not educating the masses. In fact, I proposed fixing high schools; raising their standards to the point that all those prerequisites in current colleges are superfluous. What we currently think of as AP courses should be the norm.
To think of it another way, if a bachelor's is the new high school diploma, let's make high school diplomas the new bachelor's. And then let's stop wasting so much time and money on an idiotic, inefficient way of running the credibility of our colleges into the ground.
In fact, let's make that the new slogan: educate the crap out of the masses. Educate them until they cry. They'll thank us eventually.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2016, @12:24AM
95% of the population is already trash, since we provide them with an abysmal level of education. A grand majority of colleges--and certainly K-12 schools--are horrendous; only people without a proper education don't see this.
(Score: 1) by zugedneb on Friday October 28 2016, @12:29AM
dunno, if we speak about the "civilized" world and not the "devastated/colonialised", the education if good.
I come from commie country, and education was good.
Now live in scandinavia, and education is good...
Compared to the problems they inherited, chine and most of asia is also ok.
Usa and Canada is not the dumbest either...
So I would not call 95% trash, but it is kind of strange, that "fuel the shopping" is still the main mentality behind stuff, even in private conversations amongst the 1337...
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2016, @12:56AM
The problem is that people who received a terrible education are less likely to recognize that their education was terrible, so you end up with uneducated people defending abysmal school systems which rely too much on rote memorization and refuse to recognize the rote memorization. The gap in quality between the greatest schools and the mid-range schools is far too large.