Below is a link to a rather frightening policy paper that everyone should read. The authors (a bunch of very heavy hitters in American science policy) point out the obvious: science support can't keep doubling and pumping more students and buildings into the mix will only make the problem worse. The current system is essentially built on the backs of low paid grad students and post docs supported by grants, doing the work while the PI's try not to drown in ever increasing paperwork. Additional research facilities are funded indirectly by the feds, and require yet more research to service the resulting debt. A house of cards has been built on soft money requiring ever more research to keep it going.
"Hypercompetition" has led to PIs and grad students not undertaking cutting edge, risky work. Funding agencies don't fund it and reviewers flee from it. Assuming you can find reviewers. And everyone wants to show their work is relevant and have it published in 'high-impact' journals so the emphasis is on 'impact', not quality. We may have created a lost generation of Ph.D.s: "a growing number of PhDs are in jobs that do not take advantage of the tax payers' investment in their lengthy education". . . "an ever-increasing supply of scientists vying for a finite set of research resources and employment opportunities" The good news is that the authors suggest a series of actions that may help improve things, although they will be painful to implement. David Duffy http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/04/09/1404402111.full.pdf Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit Botany University of Hawaii 3190 Maile Way Honolulu Hawaii 96822 USA 1-808-956-8218
