Recently started my postgraduate course, and have found a somewhat disgusting reality.
Publish or perish. Nowadays to publish papers, if possible on prestigious magazines, is what every scientist must strive to. No longer you do science and see what happens. Rather, finding positive results and publishing is what matters today.
Publishers making billions out of the work of scientists who earn nothing back (Elsevier, etc). The career of scientists depending on quantity and quality of papers. Which must be done within a certain time and budget limit. Most of the time research has been already predefined by the laboratory or professor.
Scientific research has become too, a cog in the machine. I’m sure many of you will say that “scientific progress has never been better”, but is it really?
Just because more papers are being published does not mean relevant or useful knowledge. For example, many papers of the same topic will be published with just minor differences. For example, someone used 1mm of alcohol on the experiment. Someone else used 2mm of alcohol. And you get two papers. Yet both of them irrelevant for the topic in question. There is no fundamental or significant progress.
An environment that fosters creativity, time, and and an economical system that allows more budget for research is the best option in my opinion.
Publish or perish. Nowadays to publish papers, if possible on prestigious magazines, is what every scientist must strive to. No longer you do science and see what happens. Rather, finding positive results and publishing is what matters today.
Publishers making billions out of the work of scientists who earn nothing back (Elsevier, etc). The career of scientists depending on quantity and quality of papers. Which must be done within a certain time and budget limit. Most of the time research has been already predefined by the laboratory or professor.
Scientific research has become too, a cog in the machine. I’m sure many of you will say that “scientific progress has never been better”, but is it really?
Just because more papers are being published does not mean relevant or useful knowledge. For example, many papers of the same topic will be published with just minor differences. For example, someone used 1mm of alcohol on the experiment. Someone else used 2mm of alcohol. And you get two papers. Yet both of them irrelevant for the topic in question. There is no fundamental or significant progress.
An environment that fosters creativity, time, and and an economical system that allows more budget for research is the best option in my opinion.
