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posted by martyb on Thursday October 27 2016, @10:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the choose:-fed-up-or-starving? dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2016, @12:42AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2016, @12:42AM (#419660)

    "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]