Slashdot Mirror
Let Researchers Try New Paths (nature.com)
Writing for Nature journal, scientists and professors Tolu Oni, Fabio Sciarrino, Gerardo Adesso, and Rob Knight, discuss an issue researchers have been facing a lot lately. The scientific enterprise is stuck in a catch-22, they say. Researchers are charged with advancing promising new questions, but receive support and credit only for revisiting their past work. They say that often times while examining one thing researchers are able to uncover several other important things, but deviating from the path is something frowned upon for various reasons among the industry. From the article (condensed): Most striking are the barriers to achieving impact. Our research often led us to questions that had greater potential than our original focus, typically because these new directions encompassed the complexities of society. We realized that changing tack could lead to more important work, but the policies of research funders and institutions consistently discourage such pivots. When reviewers assess grants or academic performance, they focus largely on track records in a particular field. Young scientists, who must focus on developing their careers, are thus discouraged from exploration. Our own experiences provide a glimpse of the well-intentioned forces that can keep researchers from trying other paths. This challenge is not new. Physicist-turned-structural biologist Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, who is president of the Royal Society, worked for several years in a job with funding that was contingent on a steady stream of publications. This forced him to ask safe but incremental questions. To pursue what became his Nobel-prizewinning work (on the structure of the ribosome), he moved to another institution where he could ask the questions that interested him, irrespective of the chances for publication. As he describes in his Nobel biography, the decision required an international move and a large pay cut.
Some time ago tenure system was devised to protect researchers who explore new paths. They could not be fired just because they seemingly accomplish nothing for years for a chance that they may suddenly revolutionize their field or something.
Nowadays universities in USA have turned into money making businesses which are all focused on whether a professor can bring grants or profitable patents disregarding long term benefits for exploring new paths.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
What we're seeing is the result of capitalism's reach getting to scientists. The focus of institutions has moved from discoveries of research to the monetary benefits of research. The reason for this is plain as day, a lack of funds. The question is, who is restricting funds and what is their motive. If you find this, you'll discover the problem.
Capitalism has it's place but using it everywhere will lead to disaster.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
By the way, the National Science Foundation is training researchers in marketing and other traditional business skills. They want to improve the success rate of moving research out of the lab and into the marketplace so they are teaching researchers to do customer discovery, an iterative product development cycle, realistic planning to move from early adopters to a more mainstream market, etc.
This approach is founded on two false premises:
1) The only valuable scientific research is that which results in immediately marketable ideas, processes, and products
2) We have the ability to know beforehand which avenues of inquiry are likely to result in profitable results
Scientific inquiry is terribly distorted when it's results-driven rather than exploratory. Any work that doesn't seem to have good money-making prospects will be abandoned or, worse yet, never undertaken. Ironically, when we reject science that might help humanity or that just seems to satisfy curiosity, (but which some crystal-ball gazer deems unprofitable), we may also end up not following up on ideas that might well be very profitable. That's because we think we can predict the future, but we can't. As I said in an earlier comment, "we don't know what we don't know".
Besides all that, do we really want those sharp and capable scientific minds having to spend time marketing themselves and their work? Wouldn't we be better off letting them get on with what they're already good at and passionate about?
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Quantum mechanics? Relativity? Newtonian gravitation? There's been a lot of basic research with no apparent near future applications.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes