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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: -1, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday October 28 2016, @12:45AM

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Friday October 28 2016, @12:45AM (#419661) Homepage

    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]

    Starting Score:    1  point
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  • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday October 28 2016, @07:13PM

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday October 28 2016, @07:13PM (#419931) Journal

    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...