When Scientists Give Up

New submitter ferespo sends a report from All Things Considered about the struggle for scientific funding in today's political and economic environment. "Federal funding for biomedical research has declined by more than 20 percent in the past decade. There are far more scientists competing for grants than there is money to support them." It's a tough situation for new scientists trying to set up labs. In addition to all of the scientific work they do, it's essentially a full-time job in addition to that to maintain funding. The reviewers who decide which projects receive funding are risk-averse to the point where innovative research is all but off the table. The consequences of this are two-fold: not only are we giving up on the types of research that led to so many of today's marvels, but many promising young scientists are giving up on the field altogether.

Comments

If you think medical funding is bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Try the "not immediately useful" sciences, like astronomy, which are shedding researchers like crazy as the NSF / what-have-you cuts their budgets and increase "proposal pressure". Just talking to a PhD will reveal two hard truths about being a scientist: you will never be rich and you will never have job security. It takes a special kind of crazy to be a scientist these days.

Re:Easy solution

[MightyMartian]

A lot of basic research does not produce profits in anything like a marketable timeline, and yet, without basic research, marketable discoveries won't happen at all. You can't feed yourself on developments that might take years to produce results.