4 ms·

The difficulty being you write papers to support grants and funding that some nebulous institution, or govt.dept made, to support research they want to happen,

The difficulty being you write papers to support grants and funding that some nebulous institution, or govt.dept made, to support research they want to happen, not necessarily the right research.

jonathanstrange 9y ago
What do you mean by 'right research'? Proper scientific method will give reliable results no matter what motivations the scientists or their institutions have. Do you perhaps instead have 'right' or 'wrong' priorities of science funding in mind? That's a political issue which should ultimately be decided by the voters and the representatives they choose.
- aaavl2821 9y ago
  Not always. There are many unknowns in research you can't control for. Some assays / models just aren't that reliable even though they are gold standard. Sometimes the equipment and reagents you use produce unexplainable results. For example, a lab I worked with was trying to make a particular type of immune cell less "aggressive". They tried all kinds of genetic modifications, hit it with different cytokines, changed its nutrients, etc, but nothing worked. Then they used a different flask, and the results were amazing. This was a reproducible phenomenon. They had no way of knowing the equipment they used would change the immunological phenotype of their cells, but it did. There are so many confounding factors like this: reagent source, air quality in animal facilities, how you use a pipette, etc
  - jonathanstrange 9y ago
    I'm glad you've found the error, because you were using proper scientific method. ;)
    - aaavl2821 9y ago
      More like dumb luck, but that certainly seems to be part of the scientific method sometimes
- kingkongjaffa 9y ago
  You can absolutely make a career in academia by chasing whatever the Funding agencies want you to chase, because that's where the funding is. Doesn't mean your research is actually contributing to anything useful though. Look at this :https://www.epsrc.ac.uk/funding/calls/irc-targeted-therapeutic-delivery/ https://www.epsrc.ac.uk/funding/calls/irc-targeted-therapeut... a couple of companies are paying for research that THEY want done. Doesn't meant that research is actually benificial for the field of study. People from minorly related fields will be applying for this and doing research for them just to get funding, not because they have an interest in the field or in the research results.

The difficulty being you write papers to support grants and funding that some nebulous institution, or govt.dept made, to support research they want to happen, not necessarily the right research.

jonathanstrange 9y ago

What do you mean by 'right research'? Proper scientific method will give reliable results no matter what motivations the scientists or their institutions have. Do you perhaps instead have 'right' or 'wrong' priorities of science funding in mind? That's a political issue which should ultimately be decided by the voters and the representatives they choose.

aaavl2821 9y ago
Not always. There are many unknowns in research you can't control for. Some assays / models just aren't that reliable even though they are gold standard. Sometimes the equipment and reagents you use produce unexplainable results. For example, a lab I worked with was trying to make a particular type of immune cell less "aggressive". They tried all kinds of genetic modifications, hit it with different cytokines, changed its nutrients, etc, but nothing worked. Then they used a different flask, and the results were amazing. This was a reproducible phenomenon. They had no way of knowing the equipment they used would change the immunological phenotype of their cells, but it did. There are so many confounding factors like this: reagent source, air quality in animal facilities, how you use a pipette, etc
- jonathanstrange 9y ago
  I'm glad you've found the error, because you were using proper scientific method. ;)
  - aaavl2821 9y ago
    More like dumb luck, but that certainly seems to be part of the scientific method sometimes
kingkongjaffa 9y ago
You can absolutely make a career in academia by chasing whatever the Funding agencies want you to chase, because that's where the funding is. Doesn't mean your research is actually contributing to anything useful though. Look at this :https://www.epsrc.ac.uk/funding/calls/irc-targeted-therapeutic-delivery/ https://www.epsrc.ac.uk/funding/calls/irc-targeted-therapeut... a couple of companies are paying for research that THEY want done. Doesn't meant that research is actually benificial for the field of study. People from minorly related fields will be applying for this and doing research for them just to get funding, not because they have an interest in the field or in the research results.