Being a life-sciences refugee myself, I read this essay and noted that my intellectual response to it was very discordant with my emotional response to it.<p>Intellectually, I think the author did a very good job and although like any scientist I could nitpick, grossly speaking I found myself agreeing.<p>Emotionally, however… Having been through the wringer I would ask any reader to consider not just the “central tendencies” viewpoint but the “this is YOU going through this” viewpoint.<p>If you are doggedly determined and personally consumed with getting into a fantastic lab to bootstrap your career so that you can slave away for essentially minimum wage with no benefits so that you could get a research position for which you might get a job security at the age of 42 to 45… Seriously?!<p>For many, that prospect looks very different when you’re closer to twenty than fifty.<p>Here’s another view point: the system is horribly horribly broken, leaving a trail of collateral human damage… But there are so many people throwing themselves at the meat grinder that inevitably greatness occasionally arises.<p>Do I sound bitter and cynical? Perhaps. But living the experience, for me and many many others, is rather different than reading summaries of what the life is like.
One issue I ran into personally is incremental vs fundamental research. In the drive to get publications, which provides evidence of production so you can get grants, better jobs, more money, better publications in higher journals-- the quest for all that leads to very small steps in research. There are proportionally far fewer biologists than there used to be working on fundamental, big picture type work. One counterpoint may be that the low hanging fruit has been picked. However, I feel it's also a cultural problem. To do well, so many of us biologists get caught in the incrementalism loop rather than thinking bigger.
Author here - this essay is the result of a year (and 100+ interviews) of my figuring out how life sciences work. (there are also discussions of it on reddit [1] and on twitter [2])<p>[1] <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/cqxcey/how_life_sciences_actually_work_findings_of_a/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/cqxcey/how_...</a> (16 comments)<p>[2] <a href="https://twitter.com/alexeyguzey/status/1162017187919478784" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/alexeyguzey/status/1162017187919478784</a> (28 responses)
One additional point is needed to complete the picture. Life sciences research is now almost completely dependent on technologies and reagents provided by a small number of commercial entities. Building custom equipment or synthesizing reagents has become almost impossible because institutions have gotten rid of their science support facilities and staff.
Aren't you kind of mixing engineering with science?<p>We still have plenty of opportunity for optimization of scientific discoveries in biology, what we don't have plenty of is new scientific discoveries.<p>I am just asking, maybe I am missing something but read like that to me.
I'd recommend the following book:<p>How Economics Shapes Science
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Economics-Shapes-Science-Paula-Stephan/dp/0674088166" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Economics-Shapes-Science-Paula-Stepha...</a><p>It looks into key challenges of the scientific labor market.