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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.
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.
I'm sure Chinese Firms would love to have scientists educated at the top US Universities conducting research for them. America is fast becoming a Design and Services Economy, best to leave the real innovation to China and others.
Sadly that is true, that and a few other sexy items just grease the path.
I think the realization of us being $17 tril in debt, the decline in our national intelligence, the decline in our politically correct institutions of learning, our political commitment to mediocrity, and more such, have set us on the path for not doing basic research anymore as it does not get votes.
I think we are at the end, and some other nation, maybe China, will have to take over world "leadership."
Spot on. No funding = no tenure = bye-bye faculty position and no more lab. Very proud of the papers we put out and the 3 PhD students and 1 MS student that graduated before the end though. We had just uncovered a possible mechanism for how an actin-binding protein could be involved in invadopodia formation and cancer metastasis (cancer cells escaping their initial tumor).
Stop the presses, we need to run this new story!
We're at a point where there's nothing going for scientists. They have to fight, all simultaneously:
-for funding in a very crowded market
-Politicians trying to control the results of what they do, to the point where the scientific integrity is at risk
-Govt's muzzling you because they don't want pesky things like facts to get in the way of their ideology
-Idiot reporters who completely, constantly, and continually misrepresent your research (should it make the presses)
-umpteen bajillion quacks who don't know their ass from their mouth, yet somehow manage to convince people that they are right and that actual experts are wrong (ie: Jenny McCarthy, or whoever FoodBabe is)
Doing scientific research is hard enough as it is, without having to deal with the current environment of anti-intellectualism.
I'm honestly surprised that scientists arn't yet being marched into concentration camps at gunpoint.
Yes, suggest you are disproving it and Exxon will fund you up the wazoo.
Table-ized A.I.
Not just research... EVERYTHING is totally risk averse. This is why every new song sounds and looks the same. Why we keep getting remakes, reboots, and blatent copies of the same old story over and over in the movies. There is a "patch" for this with the indie film community and the indie music scene. An indie research community would be cool, but they keep arresting people trying to do basic chemistry at home. http://io9.com/5119166/teen-wi...
The lack of Leadership, and I mean true forward looking people who take risks to move the Nation forward are no where to be found. The mantra of becoming rich is gospel and quick monetization, quarterly Wall Street figures reign supreme.
The Leaders of the past few generations, those who would see a public interest and use the immense power and resources of the Government to enable it, are long gone.
So the question isn't really one of giving up... the question is one of choice and priority. If you have no vision and no real sense of purpose beyond enriching yourself when you occupy a position of influence, then the rot will spread and not just Scientists but many others will wither away as well.
We can spend on un-ending and meaningless Wars, enriching the military-industrial-political complex through war mongering, developing our sense of uber individuality where our selfish needs are supreme above any common good or we can choose to go after bettering the lives of our fellow humans by challenging ourselves to bigger better goals and being a good/reasonable neighbor.
You have a multi-billion-dollar-sales patented drug? Chip in 0.5% of the revenue to fund NIH grants. Or make your own equivalent grants to truly independant researchers.
Enter into a licensing deal on a drug patent? Chip in 0.5% of the revenue to fund grants.
He's not entirely wrong, especially when some projects like these get government funding...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
Prvate funding is more risk averse, and more short term than public... In today's business climate, long term thinking is the quarter after next.
That's kind of the point of the article. We are stopping use of tax dollars, and guess what? Private companies don't want to fund research, so it just doesn't happen. Great for your (short term) taxes, great for the companies (short term) profits, bad in the long term for absolutely everyone.
I assume that's exactly what I assume low-tax narcissists like you want.
No, actually the government was very dynamic at one time and got a lot of really impressive research done. Then people like you who think "government bad" started to complain about taxes and regulation, and over the course of the past 40 years or so, you've managed to suck a lot of life out of the government. It's the whole Gordon Gecko philosophy: greed is good. No, actually, it isn't. What's good is working together.
The Golden Fleece awards were mostly a load of anti-intellectual bullshit that had no comprehension of how mug applied science relies on basic science.
Clearly, we need to encourage more young people to go into STEM fields. Until then, more H1-Bs for the best and brightest biomed workers.
You save only 59 seconds over 8 miles by going 75 instead of 65. Do you really have to pass that guy? Do the Math!
True that it's political nonsense, but can you honestly agree that a study to find out how to buy worcestershire sauce is worthy of government funding?
I'm all for government funding of basic research, but has anyone considered that maybe the lack of funding is due to closer scrutiny of funding bunk?
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
"lack of government regulation"? The fucking government made them the monopoly they were.
Jesus, all the anti-government nut jobs came out for this article.
The obvious solution is to return to traditional methods: establish an independent income, then take up scientific research as a hobby.
Historically, our most notable scientists were working at day jobs or otherwise independently wealthy, and did amazing research on their own as a hobby. Some devoted entire wings of their house towards scientific research, amassing a collection of equipment (or specimens) over decades.
Henry Cavendish, of the Cavendish experiment, is one such example. The experiment was so delicate that air currents would affect the measurements, so Cavendish set up the experiment in a shed on his property and measured the results from a distance, using a telescope.
There used to be a term "Gentleman Scientist" for this, but it might more accurately be called "self-funded research".
Consider Paul Stamets as a modern example. With only an honorary doctorate, he is co-author on many papers and has proposed several medications, including treatments for cancer.
I could also nominate Robert Murray Smith to the position. His YouTube Videos are as good as many published Chemistry papers.
The benefits are obvious: You get to work on whatever you think is interesting (or fruitful), you can set your own pace, and you can draw your own line between supporting your dreams and your lifestyle: If you have a family emergency, you can pause your research and spend more money on personal welfare. It also forces you to come up with more efficient (read: less expensive) ways to work.
There's a wealth of useful equipment on eBay and other places, big expensive equipment is not out of the reach of the dedicated researcher. Ben Krasnow has three (I think) electron microscopes. I personally own a UV/VIS spectrophotometer. a microgram scale, and a Weston cell.
The idea that "research can only be done at the behest of government" or "is only associated with university" is a modern fiction. Government would *like* you to believe that everything depends on their whim and largesse, but it's not the only, nor even the best way.
Build a lab and start tinkering, or join a hackerspace. Lots of people do it. Lots of good science is done this way.
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.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The reviewers who decide which projects receive funding are risk-averse to the point where innovative research is all but off the table.
One of my all-time favorite quotes:
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough." -- Alan Kay
Ezekiel 23:20
I doubt one could even begin to count the ways that government helped Bell along.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
So.. let's mod the idiot +4 insightful, because we're apparently dumbfucks who believe stupid-conspiracy theories about science funding.
So here's the Actual breakdown of NSF research funding(which is about 80% of their total funding, with the rest allocated to science education and overhead).
Now, back to that first link. About 1.75% of research funding goes to environmental research of any sort, which is the umbrella category for climate change research among a fuck-ton of others. half goes to defense research.
So if you want an "easy target" for money, there's your answer. Not paranoia about evil climate change researchers. Next is health, with a good 25%ish, which is the thing that this article whines about. So, yeah, change from an area that gets 25% of national research spending, to one that gets 2. Good job.
Or tell the Pentagon that it can be used to kill Muslims.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
It is also the mechanism whereby it is distributed that is the problem. We get grants for a few years at a time for discrete projects. When one of these grants is not renewed, a lab can basically collapse and then shut down completely. This prevents long term thinking and taking the risk on something that won't fit in that 2-5 year window and on that specific project. The NIGMS at NIH is trying out a new way to provide more stable funding in exchange for less overall funding for some labs. Think of it as funding people rather than projects (http://watersheding.wordpress.com/72314-mira-mira-on-the-wall-whos-the-fairest-grant-funding-system-of-all/). I think it is a good start.
I am assuming you never licensed a patent from a university. I can assure you that they have become quite adept at extracting money from the licensing of some pretty pathetic patents.
I recently inherited the handling of our licensed technology portfolio, and I can assure you that we pay a pretty penny for some almost trivial, but essential patents.
The downside is that universities are beginning to use this calculus in their decisions to bring on key researchers, and to focus their efforts on "profitable" ventures, leaving a lot of really important, and interesting basic research to lie fallow, because there's no obvious pay out from it. Things that used to be the bread and butter of academia research.
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress
I want to reassure you, we have the best governement money can buy!
Seriously?
http://www.theguardian.com/env...
The Koch' brothers also funded the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatur project, which started out with key people being sceptical about global warming. But the data convinced them otherwise:
http://www.theguardian.com/sci...
In fact, the conspiracy theory that the government is funding climate scientists who say that global warming is real and caused by human activity with the purpose to strengthen the government's authoritarian grip on society is a myth. But also the more plausible idea that scientists exaggerate their findings to get more funding does not seem to be true:
http://arstechnica.com/science...
True that it's political nonsense, but can you honestly agree that a study to find out how to buy worcestershire sauce is worthy of government funding?
I have no idea. Can you provide a copy of the actual report? Or only third-hand accounts of this report from an obviously biased source (Wikipedia links to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article that describes the organization the gives out the Golden Fleece Awards, with a three line summary of the report in question---what assurances do we have that this summary is accurate?)?
If the report's only purpose in life was to explain how to buy a bottle of Worcestershire sauce, then there is a problem. But is that really why the report was commissioned? Is that really all it says? Is is possible that the report is about purchasing food in general, with the sauce as an example? Is it possible that the report was commissioned in order to demonstrate how Byzantine the process of buying supplies is in an effort to cut down on paperwork in the long run? How do we know that the report actually cost $6,000?
Rhapsody in Numbers
"Assuming that oil companies fund studies that disprove man-made global warming and governments fund studies that prove it, "
There are no studies that disprove it. Their are papers that cherry pick one thing and then go on about it being a reason to doubt AGW.
Fact of the matter, AGW is EASY science, and easy to test. AGWs exact impact on climate is harder science.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Seriously?
http://www.theguardian.com/env...
The Koch' brothers also funded the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatur project, which started out with key people being sceptical about global warming. But the data convinced them otherwise:
http://www.theguardian.com/sci...
right... and that's even to be expected. I don't fault the oil industry for funding research that furthers their goals. It makes sense.
The problem is with the public. You have less than 100 credible scientists worldwide that have a problem with the idea of Climate change being a problem created by human activity. And of those only a few actually flat out deny it entirely. The entirety of the rest of the scientific community world wide, scientists that number in the millions, fully support the idea. This isn't just a majority, it's a broad and overwhelming consensus. There are more scientists that deny Relativity, Evolution or Continental drift, than deny climate change. If you doubt the scientific consensus on climate change at this point you're just an ideolog that will argue your political point until the house burns down around you.
The amount of money that Exxon spends -- actually the amount of money that the entire oil industry spends on climate research -- is dwarfed by government funding. By an order of magnitude. These are easily obtained figures, just look them up.
How much of that government funding is spent on big ticket items like building, launching and collecting data from satellites, or maintaining and collecting data from a large network of weather stations, or deploying and collecting data from 3,600 ARGO floats? Those are things that someone like Exxon are unlikely to fund for any reason yet the information they collect is quite valuable.
No. No it is not.
You are lying.
You are spreading myths.
Assuming that oil companies fund studies that disprove man-made global warming and governments fund studies that prove it, you would expect to see a 10-to-1 ratio in the number of studies published for AGW versus against. And that's pretty much what you see out there.
No it is not what you see out there.
Your statement belies a belief that who pays determines the outcome. Believe it or not, most scientists have a tremendous amount of integrity and follow the rigor required by the scientific method. That's why you dont see many of them working for oil companies. Some scientists have worked for oil companies (or any company) and gotten the "wrong results" and ceased to work for those companies. The gentleman who did research on herbicides re: frogs is one such. Other scientists found themselves massaging data and keeping their jobs. They are in the minority however. And among government funded scientists you can find both flavors of scientist, those for and against. The key difference is, no one has had funding cut off due to results.
In short: you are full of it.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
I wouldn't be surprised to see countries such as BRIC members, EU members, or other countries start trying to woo the best and brightest for economic gains.
It may not be profitable to do R&D in the next quarter, but governments will greatly profit in a longer interval. For example, Paraguay's stake in their hydroelectric dam might not have meant much in the next quarter when they went in with Brazil on building it... but it has guaranteed the country completely energy independence for now and the near future.
Government funding will still be around. It just won't be the US who hands over currency.
The problem is that we don't have enough people graduating with STEM degrees. All the smart people people at Fox news know this.
Didn't we see an article recently (like this AM for me) discussing lack of reproducability in studies?
And not as in "noone bothered to reproduce our study", but "we couldn't even reproduce our own study when someone paid us to"....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Gee, if only someone like Barry Goldwater had warned his fellow Republicans about the consequences of climbing into bed with the Jesus freaks.
This is an opinion of yours, regardless of your stating it as fact. There are numerous examples of scientists faking data, fudging data, faking entire studies and seeking confirmation for their bias. They are human with each and every human foible others have. You are also incorrect in that there are a large number of scientists working for oil and other venues you personally don't care for. Your disregard for them only shows your bias - again, opinion, not fact.
Yet again, utter bull. There are numerous examples of funding drying up if the agenda is not met.
About the time Kock brothers became politically active and Fox News made people hate science...
As an academic from the EU, I don't think we pose much of a threat. We face the same problems of declining funding, increasing competitiveness, the spreading plague of "excellentism", and risk-averse research. Combined with that our research professor salaries are not even half of those at the top universitities in the US.
You're mostly right about this coming from Republicans.
However, in the spirit of the original post, Democrats deserve some shame too.
For example, this stuff about Title IX and sexual assault is basically a witch hunt, where academic campuses are being turned into "legal protection-free zones" essentially, that allow the government to (1) deny privacy rights of victims that would be granted to them elsewhere, and (2) circumvent due process that would occur elsewhere. If you're a male on a college campus, or will be, you should be angry and/or scared as hell right now. I'm all for victim's rights, but that includes a right to their autonomy as human beings to decide when they want to pursue charges, and a right to innocence on the part of the accused until proven guilty.
Democrats have their own brand of thought control when it comes to academic review processes and IRB constraints as well.
The bottom line is that university campuses, traditionally among the most protected areas in terms of free speech, are becoming horribly politicized in general. Political extremists, left or right, are having a difficult time with universities being places that they can't control, and are trying to end that in multiple ways. (I'm pretty independent, and see the two-party system as being the real threat at the moment.)
Science is hard and requires years of experience. Virtually no PhD students produce ground-breaking discoveries, simply because they aren't at the level of expertise yet where they can do that. A PhD is a way of obtaining the expertise required to carry out research.
However, whenever you hear about a lab that discovered something amazing, it's almost certain that the grunt work of carrying out experiments and collecting data was done by grad students. You're right that most scientists are stuck doing boring, repetitive, non-creative work, because guess what, that's exactly what most of science is.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
With every post of yours I have the good fortune to read, I am imbued with the sense you really don't have a clue what's going on in the world. I'm sure you think you do - you seem to have gathered some things to hold on to and assume they represent reality, but it seems you go no further than that. You are happy with your choices, and will do nothing to challenge them or to even ensure they're correct.
The fact you think you know for sure that ground-breaking physics research will never lead to anything with practical value highlights this point wonderfully.
I wouldn't be surprised to see countries such as BRIC members, EU members, or other countries start trying to woo the best and brightest for economic gains.
I think this focus on the "best and brightest" is actually a part of the problem. Sure, you'll need certain skills to run a research group, but these skills are found in many people and not just in the top of the batch. Beyond a certain point, the individual abilities of a researcher tend to be only weakly correlated with the actual research outcomes. There are many examples of people doing amazing science even though they are generally not considered to be top-notch scientists, even including Nobel laureates.
Science is an inherently risky business, with most scientists not finding out anything really exciting during their entire career and only very few ones will hit something that turns out to be really big. But you cannot possibly know in advance what this next big thing is going to be and who will find it, otherwise this wouldn't be science at all. In such an environment, the best investment strategy is to allocate your funds evenly across as many scientists as possible (I think it was Taleb who showed that). Of course, you have to make sure that each scientist gets enough money to run his or her group, but this optimal strategy is exactly the opposite of the current trend towards mega-chairs involving multiple labs and dozens of grad students and postdocs.
OS Reviews: Free and Open Source Software
You are entirely full of shit. Look into Bell Labs sometime, which employed a ton of PHds in physics, math, and other theoretical disciplines. They did more fundamental research than almost any other institution during much of the 20th century, and you have them to thank for creating the entire fucking information age. They produced a little thing called the transistor, millions of which sit inside your computer, enabling you to bitch about physics online. Not to mention developing information theory, lasers, the first communication satellites, the cell phone network, and way back in the day the telephone lines and vacuum tubes to enable your words to be heard plain as day by somebody on the other side of the country.
If you don't believe fundamental work in physics has produced anything of value, then you must not use the internet, a modern car, watch TV or DVDs, listen to music (even much of radio is digital now, and anyway it is all amplified by transistors), or talk on a cell phone. Not to mention the constant increases in battery life, memory density, computer speed and storage capacity. Every single one of those comes down to fundamental physics, a bunch of eggheads "going to seminars and debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin".