Scientific Research is the cornerstone of progress. It is sadly all too common, though, to see science pushed to the wayside. Vox recently asked scientists the following question:
“If you could change one thing about how science works today, what would it be and why?”
The answers they received are sobering.
It’s All About the Money
In order to conduct research, scientists must secure grants. Unfortunately, the pool of available money seems to grow smaller every year. There are many factors that affect what’s there for scientists, but the competition for funds grows fiercer every year.
Poor Design due to Improper Incentives
Scientists get more prestige if their findings are new and novel. More prestige means more money. Studies can thus be affected by a bias on the part of the researcher attempting to force a certain result.
“Novel information trumps stronger evidence which sets the parameters for working scientists.” — Jon-Patrick Allem, postdoctoral social scientist, USC Keck School of Medicine
The Lack of Replication
Good science means replication. The tradition of taking the findings of another and duplicating their process to see if you reach the same conclusion is the gold standard. This duplication is not done often enough, though.
Why? Incentives.
“Jon-Patrick Allem, a social scientist at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, noted that funding agencies prefer to support projects that find new information instead of confirming old results.”
Peer Review Is a Problem
Think about it this way. If you had to choose between doing the job for which you will receive prestige and acclaim and reviewing the work of someone else, you’d likely choose the former. Peer review falls into that latter category. The system as it is just doesn’t work.
The Issue Of Paywalls
Put simply, scientific journals are expensive. What’s the point of publishing if hardly anyone is going to read about your findings?
“Large, publicly owned publishing companies make huge profits off of scientists by publishing our science and then selling it back to the university libraries at a massive profit (which primarily benefits stockholders),” Corina Logan, an animal behavior researcher at the University of Cambridge, noted. “It is not in the best interest of the society, the scientists, the public, or the research.”
Poor Communication
“‘If I could change one thing about science, I would change the way it is communicated to the public by scientists, by journalists, and by celebrities,’ writes Clare Malone, a postdoctoral researcher in a cancer genetics lab at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.”
In a country where 40% of the citizens “don’t believe climate change is a serious problem” and 35% of parents think vaccines cause autism, it’s not surprising to hear that scientists see a problem in communication.
High Levels Of Stress
Forget about job security and stability. Labs are often running on short-term grants, and the researchers working in them are paid very little, considering their education. They are also usually working without any benefits.
“This lack of flexibility tends to disproportionately affect women — especially women planning to have families — which helps contribute to gender inequalities in research. (A 2012 paper found that female job applicants in academia are judged more harshly and are offered less money than males.) ‘There is very little support for female scientists and early-career scientists,’ noted another postdoc.”
What’s The Solution?
The article linked above, as well as this related one, offers several possible solutions for these problems, including increased transparency and changing the incentive structure, among others. The biggest thing to remember, though, is that science, for all its flaws, still works.
And now, because this is Liberal America after all, here’s Cenk Uygar talking about how most scientists are Democrats:
Image via Flickr by The Kingsway School under The Creative Commons License 2.0.
