Why science is cool
The thing I love most about research science is how varied the gig actually is. You get to be analytical: Experimental strategizing, analysis of data/experiments, problem solving, writing, coding, constructive criticism of your own and others work. You also get to be creative: experimental design, data visualisation, graphic design, oral presentations + public speaking. You get to work with legitimate experts who casually and nonchalantly cover your biggest weaknesses, while teaching and passing knowledge and skills onto the next cohort – just as you were taught. Probably the best part is the potential to be humbled on a good day. Sometimes you get to plant the ‘First!’ flag on something new. Your work can have an impact on other science and sometimes other humans if you’re really onto something, long after your life is over. You work for the public (if funded by government grants) which feels like an important responsibility to me. Industry science is important too!
Why science isn’t cool and the structure of modern science
For such a banger gig, the structural design of the research science industry is saddening to me as it drives incredible people away. The vast majority of the highly educated, intelligent and motivated people I have worked with and known are now out of the game and I don’t blame them. This is in no small part due to any combination of: poor job security, abusive workplaces + lab heads, sexism, low grant success (sexism at play here too) + shrinking pools of money and the ridiculous micro-metrics used to evaluate careers.
This isn’t about academic purity - the fact that most careers can’t even absorb one terrible early supervisor or unyielding PhD/postdoc project without tanking their future career and funding opportunities outlines how truly fragile and inefficient modern science is. In my opinion, the projects and lab you sign up to is mostly a dice roll and on average the game of modern science rewards the lucky few. I say this as someone who has had nothing but overwhelming support, encouragement and guidance throughout my career and been given opportunity after opportunity to succeed from both colleagues and supervisors and well thought out projects.
I’ve known colleagues (PhD students and postdocs) across a considerable number of institutions who have:
- been sexually harassed + assaulted by their supervisors
- been physically and verbally assaulted when experiments don’t go as predicted
- their contributions and authorships on manuscripts diluted, downgraded and in several cases, first authorships taken away (the most important metric if you want longevity in research)
- had mental health problems be handwaved and their character questioned
- whom their supervisors were being negative referees for job applications, decimating their ability to even work in science
- been treated like assembly line workers instead of their skills being cultivated
Even when these things were reported to the university/faculty at the time, there was often almost no blowback on the supervisors/aggressor.
Why science investment is a good economic strategy
Funding science is simply good long-term economics [1-4] and only short-sighted governments cut funding. It has an insane return on investment (ROI) of an estimated 20% [8]. The Australian government for example, does not invest in R&D appropriately - historically around 0.61% of GDP and currently at ~0.56% [4], far below the OECD average of 2.71% [6]. This is in line with Australia’s long-term galaxy-brain strategy of: ‘Me dig rock out of ground. I sell. U buy’, placing us as the 82nd most complex economy (Economic Complexity Index) [5]. Instead, we spend taxpayer money on training PhD graduates and largely do not provide them with meaningful opportunities to establish their careers within the country, due to poor funding schemes and incredibly low success rates, ultimately resulting in brain drain [7].
Some ideas
I don’t have all the answers and I’m sure there’s lots of good ideas in this space, but the game needs to change if it wants to thrive. We’re in the prime age of technology, instruments and data required to push human knowledge to the next level, but it needs bodies. It also needs to jettison the parasitic for-profit publishing model which is nothing more than taxpayer-funded corporate welfare with extra steps.
Supporting links and references:
[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2017.21752
[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6818650/
[6] OECD (2023), Gross domestic spending on R&D (indicator). doi: 10.1787/d8b068b4-en (Accessed on 21 June 2023), https://data.oecd.org/rd/gross-domestic-spending-on-r-d.htm
[8] https://sciencebusiness.net/system/files/reports/Why-fund-research_.pdf
