How healthy is science today? Well, the report is mixed. On one hand, we are witnessing tremendous scientific progress. We often take past achievements for granted -- cell phones and GPS, the explosion of the digital revolution, the eradication of smallpox, jet planes and the green revolution, which has greatly reduced the likelihood of famines. There are new targeted drugs to treat cancer and HIV infection, rovers exploring Mars, and progressive decoding of the genomes of life. On the other hand, science is showing signs of stress and even outright dysfunction. We must get the scientific enterprise back on track.
Among the general public, science faces increasing skepticism from individuals who either do not understand its methods or do not like its conclusions. Witness the acrimonious debate about global warming, recurring efforts to keep evolution out of school textbooks or controversy over the need for universal vaccination.
Throughout the world, most basic research is supported by public funds, but these have become scarcer at a time of global economic crisis. Only eighteen percent of grant proposals submitted to the National Institutes of Health, the main government research funding body in the United States, are approved -- down from around thirty percent in the 1980s. Federal investment in research and development as a percentage of GDP has continued to decline to historically low levels (the economist Paula Stephan has noted that we now spend almost twice as much on beer as the government spends on research). Other concerns include increasing regulation of scientific experimentation, an imbalance in the scientific workforce such that many young scientists cannot find jobs in science and deteriorating infrastructure as obsolescent equipment and facilities are not replaced.
The current wonders of science are a result of investments made by prior generations who bequeathed us knowledge for our use and well-being. It is now our challenge to ensure that the pace of knowledge is maintained so that future generations have the tools to deal with the unique challenges they will face.
There are also serious problems within the scientific establishment itself. The reward system in science is based on an ancient winner-takes-all economic model that fosters competition while also creating losers. Society benefits from this competition as scientists race to solve problems but competition that becomes too fierce can also have unhealthy consequences. In sports, disproportionate rewards to winners have triggered doping scandals. In science, the goal of a prize, a grant, or a job can occasionally lead scientists to take shortcuts and wade into a cesspool of misconduct.
Before discussing this topic further, let us first make clear that we believe the overwhelming majority of scientists to be hardworking and honest individuals who are principally motivated by curiosity about the natural world and a desire to use their expertise for the benefit of humanity. But even a few individuals engaging in misconduct can do great damage, especially when they work in areas of enormous importance to society such as autism, cancer, and aging research. Such scandals are highly visible and can serve to erode public trust in science.
A measure of the health of science may be found in the rising number of retracted scientific papers. There are convincing data to indicate that this number has been rapidly increasing in recent years and that a large substantial proportion of these retractions are due to misconduct. We recently published two editorials in Infection and Immunity, and presented at the March 27 meeting of the National Academies of Sciences committee on science, technology and the law.
To an optimist, the increasing rate of retractions can be seen as evidence that science is self-correcting and that it ferrets out miscreants. However, the number and the consequences of retractions are anything but a cause for optimism. Each retraction represents a tremendous waste of money, human resources, and prestige, and some have even misdirected the course of science. Moreover, retracted papers represent only a fraction of flawed studies, and there is ample reason to fear that the stresses and perverse incentives that occasionally lead a few to commit misconduct are also discouraging scientists from pursuing high-risk ideas that might lead to revolutionary breakthroughs and engendering biases that can undermine the credibility and reliability of scientific literature.
The critical importance of science to humanity, along with evidence that this endeavor is under increasing stress, suggests the need for a renewed dialogue among scientists and with the society that they serve on how best to improve the scientific enterprise. We have tried to jump-start this discussion by proposing a set of reforms regarding the culture of science, the methods by which scientists work and train, and the structural foundation of societal support for science. Consideration of reforms involving culture and methods will principally take place within the scientific community, but structural reforms that involve the stabilization of research funding and creation of new opportunities for young scientists will require engagement with and support from the larger society.
We call for nothing short of a major reformation of the scientific enterprise.
Humanity faces major challenges in the 21st century, including climate change and other environmental degradation, population growth, increasing morbidity from chronic illnesses and emerging infectious diseases, rising demands for energy, epidemic obesity and malnutrition, and the information explosion that has accompanied the digital revolution. Although each of these problems has political dimensions that can ameliorate or aggravate their consequences, ultimate solutions lie in the scientific realm.
As working scientists, we continue to believe that science represents humanity's best hope to address its most serious challenges. We are not so naïve as to believe that a call for reform by itself will lead to reform. As Machiavelli dryly warned, "There is no more delicate matter to take in hand, nor more dangerous to conduct, nor more doubtful in its success, than to set up as a leader in the introduction of changes." However, many great reforms throughout history have started as a conversation among concerned citizens. The health of the scientific process is sufficiently important to the future of society that we have no choice except to try.
The opinions and recommendations are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of their affiliated institutions, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, University of Washington or American Society for Microbiology.
Just consider for a moment that the reason the scientific research and biotech communities keep insisting that the ratio of new PhDs to entry positions must be kept high is so they can obtain high caliber applicants. But the "best and the brightest" look at the writing on the wall while still undergraduates and decide to not stick their foot into the bear trap. The result is that applicants to graduate schools and biotech firms "aren't what they used to be in my day", etc, and a high volume of PhDs really is necessary to get the high caliber applicants.
What if instead there were clearly satisfying career options for most PhDs; a better balance between applicants available and positions? Then undergraduates would see the sense in entering research graduate schools and the programs would get more of the "best and brightest".
That scenario can't happen with the current exponential growth of PhDs. Consider: a researcher needs to graduate many additional PhDs in order to fuel their research effort. The work is very labor intensive in life sciences, and has to be done cheaply. This necessarily produces an exponential growth in new PhDs. This is self defeating. No one wins in the status quo.
You don't get better research by creating fewer PhDs. All you get is pharmaceutical companies leaving the country to find the PhDs they need.
That we have "too many smart people and not enough farmers" is an age old boondoggle that didn't work for Stalin and Mao, either.
And no, in the 30 years I've been around academic research (in the life sciences mind you) I've seen zero grooming for industry. Occasional talk about it yes, but actual training, no. Also mixed in that empty rhetoric is talk about "unconventional career options" in patent law and teaching. Never mentioned is the fact that patent law firms need people with a law degree. Schools, at least public schools, can't take you unless you have an education degree. Private schools aren't too happy with you either without an education degree. Bioinformatics? Same. You need a computer science degree. The PhD in research is a waste of time for any of those careers, and will actually be viewed as a negative by some potential employers. So I don't doubt that there are some ethical and conscientious grad programs out there that actually care about their students getting a job after they graduate, but for the most part large numbers of grad students and postdocs are there strictly for cheap labor. The result is not in the best interest of US academic research or biotech.
I can't think of anything that is not agitated when approaching dehydration. This kind of work has a negative effect on the business of science in general.
I think this is trivializing a complicated matter that turns on the idea that science is thought to be self correcting. Nothing could be further from the truth. Where monied interests whether corporations are tethered to competing scientists for research funds, things can and do go awry. For instance our experience with the scientific community has been upended by these aforementioned competing forces. These two paragraphs best sum up the scenario and these are not isolated incidents.
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Its not "thought" to be self correcting. "Science is self correcting" meaning "The research community itself discovers, adjusts, and responds to errors and fraud." is just a statement of fact. No one else does it. Its not the answer to the question "Are errors and fraud efficiently and thoroughly dealt with in the primary liturature?" and, to the extent that anyone knows, the answer is "Yes". Papers are withdrawn, and research directions die on the vine, not because of any contribution of The Creationism Research Institute, or some such outsider, but because researchers themselves discovered problems.
Less and less likely. The NIH is shifting more of its money to "translational" research and away from basic research. Teaching hospitals are unabashedly telling their basic science researchers that they either get into "translational" research right now or face early retirement. You would have hoped that so many supposedly smart people wouldn't be so stupid.
In the end it is likely, anyway, that most orphan disease research will have to be done with grants from either the public or super-angels. The VC model is broken and much of big pharma is setting their hopes on re-formulation plays and line-extensions rather than on breakthrough research.
They won't. But then, they never have. That's not how the system works. You don't apply for a million dollars right away. You apply for maybe $25,000 or $50,000 and prove that part of your idea works. Then you apply for a larger grant and do more research and you prove that you know what you are doing. Eventually, maybe a decade, maybe two decades later, you can form a large research collaboration that can apply for a hundred million dollar grant, or more.
The more we limit the output of PhDs in this country, for whatever reason, the faster our high tech industries will take their business off-shore.
This is all aided and abetted by direct funding to graduate programs. This has to stop. If a PI can't afford to feed, shelter, and cloth their grad students then they shouldn't have them.
And even within physics, which I personally happen to know about, the problems of the solid state physics community are very different (and probably a lot closer in kinds of issues found in life sciences) from those of high energy physicists and astronomers.
So I think that a much more detailed analysis by a panel of scientists from different disciplines, would paint a much clearer picture, than the attempt to look at all of science from a rather unique (and very well funded!) perspective.
In any case, if someone were to speak about "science in general", it should probably be someone from the physical sciences community who can actually identify gps, cell phones and jet aircraft as products of TECHNOLOGY, rather than science proper.