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> even from famous scientists in the field whom you'd expect to be super busy. On a given Tuesday, are famous scientists in the field super-busy? I honestly

> even from famous scientists in the field whom you'd expect to be super busy. On a given Tuesday, are famous scientists in the field super-busy? I honestly have no guess and would believe either answer.

radus 5y ago
Yes. Writing/editing papers, grants, grant renewals, dealing with graduate students (mentoring, defenses/other events), post-docs (mentoring, job applications), meetings (with lab, department), consulting, occasional lecturing -- and that's only scratching the surface..
jkhdigital 5y ago
My rule of thumb is that anyone who is near the top of any field of human endeavor is going to be super-busy at all times. Otherwise, they probably wouldn’t be where they are.
pvaldes 5y ago
> On a given Tuesday, are famous scientists in the field super-busy? Not necessarily. It depends. 1) Scientific work is not linear like driving in a highway, it happens in bursts and is full of dead ends. It deals with complex problems that hadn't being solved before (or you don't know how to attack it), so there is a lot of try-miss. You can do more work in a day that in two months, specially if you work with alive organisms and must to respect its cycle life (Cetologists can't do much field work in winter for example). When I classified my first giant deep sea crustacean I lost several weeks trying in all the wrong groups, first locally and then worldwide search. After realizing my mistake and discarding all, solved it in ten minutes. 2) Researchers are often teachers also. Is not the same calling them in August than in May when they hide under a 50 cm high stack of tests and homework to review 3) Some really famous scientists, have a lot of non famous scientists doing the real work. They mostly build the team and design the experiment and then wait, check a few times and sign the result. 4) Journals take time to answer, is not uncommon to wait a couple of months to just being forced to resend the article to other journal.

radus 5y ago

Yes. Writing/editing papers, grants, grant renewals, dealing with graduate students (mentoring, defenses/other events), post-docs (mentoring, job applications), meetings (with lab, department), consulting, occasional lecturing -- and that's only scratching the surface..

jkhdigital 5y ago

My rule of thumb is that anyone who is near the top of any field of human endeavor is going to be super-busy at all times. Otherwise, they probably wouldn’t be where they are.

pvaldes 5y ago

> On a given Tuesday, are famous scientists in the field super-busy? Not necessarily. It depends. 1) Scientific work is not linear like driving in a highway, it happens in bursts and is full of dead ends. It deals with complex problems that hadn't being solved before (or you don't know how to attack it), so there is a lot of try-miss. You can do more work in a day that in two months, specially if you work with alive organisms and must to respect its cycle life (Cetologists can't do much field work in winter for example). When I classified my first giant deep sea crustacean I lost several weeks trying in all the wrong groups, first locally and then worldwide search. After realizing my mistake and discarding all, solved it in ten minutes. 2) Researchers are often teachers also. Is not the same calling them in August than in May when they hide under a 50 cm high stack of tests and homework to review 3) Some really famous scientists, have a lot of non famous scientists doing the real work. They mostly build the team and design the experiment and then wait, check a few times and sign the result. 4) Journals take time to answer, is not uncommon to wait a couple of months to just being forced to resend the article to other journal.