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This is an argument against specialization. You can’t do extremely difficult things while spending 20-30 hours a week on business management, public outreach, a

This is an argument against specialization. You can’t do extremely difficult things while spending 20-30 hours a week on business management, public outreach, and fundraising. Since that’s the world were living in, might it explain how our tech progress has gotten less impressive in the last 2 decades?

pishpash 6y ago
So it is somebody's job to sell to the public, but it may not be the researchers'.
dec0dedab0de 6y ago
So they should band together and hire a PR firm, it's possible for something to be your responsibility without having to do the work yourself.
- coliveira 6y ago
  So now you propose that scientific researchers fight each other using advertisement and PR campaigns, and spend more of their already small grants, just to do what they were trained to do? Who would benefit from this other than PR companies?
  - dec0dedab0de 6y ago
    In this case a PR firm would be mostly about getting articles like this written, so maybe they already started. It's either that or they naturally grow their own Neil deGrasse Tyson, or Bill Nye to popularize their cause. The bottom line is they're essentially living off the government, so they need to compete with everyone else looking for tax money.
- pvaldes 6y ago
  > they should band together and hire a PR firm Maybe they should do it, yes, and I'm being 100% serious. That would solve a lot of newspapers abuse, always delighted to sell a history about crazy eccentric being chased by bees in some jungle, fourty years after falling in a pond at 8Yo. Journals seen politics or sports(wo)man as clients (they pay), but scientists... are products. They don't pay. Is a never-ending caricature.