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> well, there are all these universities and professors who have tenure, there are all these journals, there are all these systems and people have been promised
by DrScientist 3y ago
> well, there are all these universities and professors who have tenure, there are all these journals, there are all these systems and people have been promised lifetime employment.”
Odd that tenure is singled out as the core of the problem. I'd say the undermining of tenure is a large part of the problem.
Research is hard - very hard - you are being asked to discover stuff nobody else has - to push the boundaries of knowledge. I would argue that the idea that one failed research project, and you are out on your ear because of a gap in publishing - is a core part of the problem.
In terms of medical doctors doing research - I'd argue that's a special dangerous mix - medical doctors need to have an element of self-belief just to be able to do their job ( life and death decisions ). Instilling it is part of the training.
That self-belief, plus a lack ( in most cases ) of any in depth scientific research training is a dangerous mix.
Medical training != science training.
In this specific case I have no idea about the rights and wrongs.
- pas 3y agoResearch might be hard, harder than whatever else the rest of the world is doing, but the tenure system is not giving us the best researchers. It rewards those that are at the right place at the right time, it's mostly luck of the current spectacle, and then it sets those "accomplished" people up for failure as they eventually see their luck running out. They are very motivated to use less and less ethical tools for years to keep producing "results".
- AlexandrB 3y agoThis also describes the ultra-wealthy quite well, but few are in favor of a wealth tax.
- DrScientist 3y agoEh? Why does having job security motivate you to make stuff up - incidentally, the only way you might actually lose your job?
- pas 3y agonot the job security, but the same thing that is required to get into that job with the job security
- mplanchard 3y agoWeird how the continuous weakening of the tenure system over the past 20 years or more hasn’t upped the research quality then
- pas 3y agoResearch quality went up in fields where the community (and/or the funding orgs) started demanding things like pre-registration, data availability, and so on.