Blog Tag research
Dr Con Man: the rise and fall of a celebrity scientist who fooled almost everyone
There has been much soul-serarching at KI regarding the Maccchiarini case. However, it is unclear if anything has truly been learned. The drive towards "exellence" at all costs still permeates the research environment. Publish first. Publish best. What is clear is that innocent people have lost their lives and no one has taken real responsibility for the events that created this monstrosity. Academic science needs to perform some serious introspection to determine our way forward. In a world that demands profits from academic endeavors, where every grant needs a business model, and those who publish fastest are the winners - we are loosing something. The serendipity of science that leads to that eureka moment is being sacraficed. In its wake, we are left with a world in which the realm of scientific discovery is sadly diminished.
How we lost the world-changing power of useless knowledge
This article highlights a distrubing global trend. The merging of market capaitalization with academics. It is not longer acceptable to be an academic pursuing knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Every EU grant demands a section on the market impact of the reserach. How will the proposed experiments lead to a marketable product? What is the business plan for the project intellectual property? What type of return on the investment can be expected over what time frame? The line between venture capitalists and funding agencies is merging - to the detriment of discovery science. The closing line of this article makes a powerful point - "The point of study is to create a civilisation worth saving." The world has lost sight of that - and we are all poorer.
Addressing Biomedical Science’s PhD Problem
And yet another article on the dwindling prospects for a career in academics. If you are going to get a PhD, you really need to ask yourself why. This quote from the article really says it all: “They’re really not ‘alternative’ careers anymore,” says Larry Petcovic of careers services company SciPhD. Rather, for today’s bioscience PhD workforce, “it’s academia that’s the alternative now.”
A man for our season
And as our vineyards, fallows, meads, and hedges,
Defective in their natures, grow to wildness,
Even so our houses and ourselves and children
Have lost, or do not learn for want of time,
The sciences that should become our country. Henry V, V, ii 54-58
An interesting piece on the malaise afflicting science. The point that I find most poignant is that the article was written in 1997 - yet could easily have been written yesterday. What does this say about the ability of the scientific community to address the significant issues facing the very foundation of academic science? Concerns raised almost 20 years ago are if anything even more valid today. Particulary the words "Can politicians be educated to know what science is and to value it for its long-term benefits, rather than putting their trust in the new cult of short-term management?" The answer would unfortunatlely appear to be no.
Unreliable research: Trouble at the lab
For a quantitative reflection of the effects of the current research climate upon the scientific process, look no further than this article in The Economist. We live in an era where the number of publications is more important than the content, or in even being correct. It has become a numbers game where administrators and funding agencies can simply add up the number of papers published and the cumulative impact factors as the sole metric for career advancement and funding. The result is that, accordinlgy to an NIH source, it would be hard to reproduce at least three-quarters of all published biomedical findings. Yet another sign of a broken system....
Here is a link the original article in The Economist
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