3 ms·

Author here - this essay is the result of a year (and 100+ interviews) of my figuring out how life sciences work. (there are also discussions of it on reddit [1

by guzey 7y ago

Author here - this essay is the result of a year (and 100+ interviews) of my figuring out how life sciences work. (there are also discussions of it on reddit [1] and on twitter [2]) [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/cqxcey/how_life_sciences_actually_work_findings_of_a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/cqxcey/how_... (16 comments) [2] https://twitter.com/alexeyguzey/status/1162017187919478784 https://twitter.com/alexeyguzey/status/1162017187919478784 (28 responses)

triska 7y ago
That's a very nice essay, thank you for putting this all together! Personally, I think that many of these points are also valid for computer science. However, for CS, I think short-terminism (which the essay mentions as less of a problem than initially thought, although it features heavily for example in point 9) would be well worth investigating as an important additional issue, because building software systems can take so long. Many interesting and worthwhile long-term CS projects (such as complex compilers for new languages, new operating systems, intelligent teleteaching environments etc.) had to be terminated or significantly changed or restricted, or cannot even be started in an academic context due to this reason.
nextos 7y ago
Congrats. It's the first essay I read that addresses most big issues, including the (broken) PI model and how most senior authors use peer review in a monopolistic way. I've made a pretty big discovery, which is on its way to Nature and bioRxiv in a couple of weeks, so I think it's a very fertile field compared to pure CS (where I was before). But working in Life Sciences is also a much worse experience due to the big amount of politics and naivety your article discusses so well. So I have serious doubts as to whether I should continue my career in academia, despite great offers, pursue my ideas in a startup, or generate some patents and move back to CS.
ArtWomb 7y ago
Terrific stuff. I'd be interested in hearing your opinion about where additional funds would come from. And the areas most in need of allocation. Life sciences research can be a black hole. Infinite funds and data in, with very little usable output. At least that tends to be the perception ;) An additional trend I've noticed is that many senior researchers tend to veer away from the pure research and discovery that marked early triumphs. And veer into issues of cruft, turf wars, plumbing, and "technical debt" later in their careers. A kind of "low hanging fruit" mentality sets in. In ML research for example, issues of reproducibility and generalizability need to be solved before trust can be placed in the system. And while I recognize the ethical need for theoretical foundations to be rock solid before deployment at scale. I am wondering if that's the class of problems the most brilliant minds should be working on. It's only now that we are getting hard metrics about the return on research expenditures. And while its currently in vogue for administrators to use these stats competitively and make claims like "UCL published more Neuroscience papers than MIT last year". We should start to see more wise allocations of research dollars into the areas of development most needed. Thanks!
- guzey 7y ago
  As I wrote in https://guzey.com/patronage-and-research-labs/ https://guzey.com/patronage-and-research-labs/ - my hope is that philanthropists and foundations will be deciding to experiment more and to allow scientists to pursue research differently... Wouldn't want to point to specific areas - rather I think that we need to find brilliant people and back whatever they're working on.
lazyjeff 7y ago
Thanks so much for doing this original research and writing it out so clearly. I'm not in the life sciences, but about 40% of my funding is NIH, and this does seem to mostly match my impression of the biases people have of biomedical funding as well as the reality of things. There did seem to be some cognitive dissonance about people saying that funding is harder for younger PIs, that students don't have creative flexibility, etc. versus what I was actually seeing, so I'm glad your study captured that. I appreciate the nuance in the claims. PS: have you thought about writing these findings up to publish? I'm not exactly sure of the venue, but maybe even a slightly more general audience magazine?
- guzey 7y ago
  I thought a bit about publishing it somewhere but I honestly have no idea where and how this actually happens...

by guzey 7y ago

triska 7y ago

That's a very nice essay, thank you for putting this all together! Personally, I think that many of these points are also valid for computer science. However, for CS, I think short-terminism (which the essay mentions as less of a problem than initially thought, although it features heavily for example in point 9) would be well worth investigating as an important additional issue, because building software systems can take so long. Many interesting and worthwhile long-term CS projects (such as complex compilers for new languages, new operating systems, intelligent teleteaching environments etc.) had to be terminated or significantly changed or restricted, or cannot even be started in an academic context due to this reason.

nextos 7y ago

Congrats. It's the first essay I read that addresses most big issues, including the (broken) PI model and how most senior authors use peer review in a monopolistic way. I've made a pretty big discovery, which is on its way to Nature and bioRxiv in a couple of weeks, so I think it's a very fertile field compared to pure CS (where I was before). But working in Life Sciences is also a much worse experience due to the big amount of politics and naivety your article discusses so well. So I have serious doubts as to whether I should continue my career in academia, despite great offers, pursue my ideas in a startup, or generate some patents and move back to CS.

ArtWomb 7y ago

Terrific stuff. I'd be interested in hearing your opinion about where additional funds would come from. And the areas most in need of allocation. Life sciences research can be a black hole. Infinite funds and data in, with very little usable output. At least that tends to be the perception ;) An additional trend I've noticed is that many senior researchers tend to veer away from the pure research and discovery that marked early triumphs. And veer into issues of cruft, turf wars, plumbing, and "technical debt" later in their careers. A kind of "low hanging fruit" mentality sets in. In ML research for example, issues of reproducibility and generalizability need to be solved before trust can be placed in the system. And while I recognize the ethical need for theoretical foundations to be rock solid before deployment at scale. I am wondering if that's the class of problems the most brilliant minds should be working on. It's only now that we are getting hard metrics about the return on research expenditures. And while its currently in vogue for administrators to use these stats competitively and make claims like "UCL published more Neuroscience papers than MIT last year". We should start to see more wise allocations of research dollars into the areas of development most needed. Thanks!

guzey 7y ago
As I wrote in https://guzey.com/patronage-and-research-labs/ https://guzey.com/patronage-and-research-labs/ - my hope is that philanthropists and foundations will be deciding to experiment more and to allow scientists to pursue research differently... Wouldn't want to point to specific areas - rather I think that we need to find brilliant people and back whatever they're working on.

lazyjeff 7y ago

Thanks so much for doing this original research and writing it out so clearly. I'm not in the life sciences, but about 40% of my funding is NIH, and this does seem to mostly match my impression of the biases people have of biomedical funding as well as the reality of things. There did seem to be some cognitive dissonance about people saying that funding is harder for younger PIs, that students don't have creative flexibility, etc. versus what I was actually seeing, so I'm glad your study captured that. I appreciate the nuance in the claims. PS: have you thought about writing these findings up to publish? I'm not exactly sure of the venue, but maybe even a slightly more general audience magazine?

guzey 7y ago
I thought a bit about publishing it somewhere but I honestly have no idea where and how this actually happens...