= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
pewpewlasergun comments on Biomedical research, superstars, and innovation - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (19)
It is to an established biomedical researcher's favor to promote the impression that they have a rare and valuable skillset, and to imply that there is a shortage of people like him. As you pointed out, for 200,000 you could have your pick of top employees, so he obviously doesn't actually believe that one is worth that. When I was considering a career in biomedical research, these are the factors that swayed me away from it:
Frequent layoffs and closing of research centers by industry.
An abundance of highly qualified people - when I talked to post-docs and grad students in various departments those in biomedical research had more publications, had gone to higher status schools, and had the most difficulty finding positions. This could be because I talked to those on the low end, but the average age of R01 recipients has climbed - indicating that its taking longer for everyone to become an established researcher.
Several articles have come out claiming a large portion of published research is wrong. Up to 50% of academic studies can't be replicated by industry.
Thanks, this is useful inside information.
Research positions should be considered like professional sports positions. Few slots, lots of varying levels of interns, farm teams, and semi pro teams, and all of them being funneled to the "real" professional ranks. Huge supply of applicants for limited slots. Not a great position to put yourself in, unless you have some basis for believing that you're just better than the rest at some combination of researching and lobbying for a position.
Not completely wrong, but the difference is of course that even though it is true that the academic bigshots are much more productive as others, the situation is not quite as extreme as in professional sports (where, e.g. no one wants to watch tennis players that aren't at least in the top 100 in the world). Hence the pay structure or the institutional structure should hardly be as extreme either.
Well, strangers don't. There's a built-in audience for things like high school football games, though.
I agree. The research pyramid isn't quite as pointy as professional sports, but you still need to do the math on applicants vs. positions, and factor in that researchers at the top have much longer careers.