DYSPEPSIA GENERATION

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Science remains humanity’s best hope for solving its most vexing problems, from feeding the malnourished, to finding alternative energy sources, and protecting us from pandemics and meteorites. But the way we train scientists now is not optimal for tackling these big challenges. Rather than thinking big, the current system encourages students to think small. It provides potent incentives for behaviors that are sometimes detrimental to not only scientists but also science and, by extension, to society as a whole. A winner-take-all hyper-competitiveness discourages cooperation, encourages poor scientific practices and deters new talent from entering the field. Graduate programs since World War II have produced excellent postdoctoral fellows. However, attempts to create well-rounded scientists have been thwarted by an increasingly demanding, grant-focused environment. As a result, we channel students into already narrow and highly specialized areas, teaching them more and more about less and less. One sad consequence is the inability of many scientists to talk about their work and ideas in a way that’s comprehensible by voters, politicians and even scientists in other fields.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 16th, 2016 at 04:53 and is filed under Think about it.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.