I recently read an PLoS Biology Perspectives piece – about how ‘the granting system turns young scientists into bureaucrats and then betrays them’. I found it to be a very interesting read. Often, I look around myself and wonder how things got to be the way they are. I hear people saying that it’s ‘publish or perish’, and, understandably, I see them obsess about publications and publishing. It has always struck me as rather… unscientific. Actually, it’s funny: it kind of reminds me of the way professional school-’bound’ undergrads obsess over things without really stopping to think of… value, purpose, and integrity. I know because I was once swept up in that as well. It’s a widespread problem is what it is: what has happen to the world, and its people?
But I digress. I need to focus on the subset, not the superset. The article criticizes the approach that granting agencies take in giving funding, and discusses the resulting negative effects. I wonder if anything can change — perhaps any time soon. The article ends with this statement: “…only false objectivity is offered by evaluating real people using unreal calculations with numbers of papers, citations, and journal impact factors. These calculations have not only demoralised and demotivated the scientific community, they have also redirected our research and vitiated its purpose.”
