Biog

hobglobin, on 31 October 2012 - 09:23 AM, said:

How we can judge the goodness and streamline of research projects in advance?
Even some projects may seem unrealistic or utopic, they might give à posteriori good results and open new avenues for research!
Re-search means doing search again and again, which implies that we may spend a lot of time and money but find nothing!
This is why scientific search is called research (do search again since you didn't find anything this time!), right?  
So, have we to stop searching ;
1) because there is no money <=> because we haven't published <=> because some ideas or projects weren't fruitful?
Why then we do search and research?
The problem with many funding agencies, institutions or job recruiters is that they apparently don't know what does mean the word RESEARCH!  
For them, if you search you must find, brilliant results!
This is just ridiculous, otherwise we wouldn't call it research.
So, linking always money and funding, or finding position... to publications record, rating or reputation...is simply absurd and doesn't make sense in a domain called re- re-, re-, re-, search

leelee, on 31 October 2012 - 07:20 AM, said:

it was me the first !

leelee, on 31 October 2012 - 02:09 AM, said:

This is exactly what I wished to say, but I said it badly, I apologize.
The measures of merit and rating are flaw and unfair.  

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Not equal funding but proportional funding, depending on the project size, its importance..etc and after examination, of course.
My claim is not to give money without consideration, but to remove flaw rating and ranking, and "purify" science from the materialistic concepts that pollute it.
That's all.
Imagine that you work on a given research project but you didn't obtain results, what is next in the light of materialistic rating basis?
With rating and ranking system, this means that you won't, or hardly, obtain funding for other research projects because you didn't get results and publication from your other projects (so you are bad according to this flaw system). You won't get funding unless you are known and well supported by a strong network. This is unfair.
Also, the risk of funding race and publishing is that unscrupulous researchers may falsify data to publish and have funding or position. There is a lot of  examples, alas, including people who published in Science and Nature! Google it, you'll find a lot.


@ prabhubct
I may quote you later, particularly for Facebook that I have in head as a bad example for the waste of money (and time), but I forgot to mention it.


Regards,

prabhubct, on 30 October 2012 - 06:14 AM, said:

I have also heard the same story, but science is another story.   
Maybe if the train's driver was my buddy, it would leave me get inside, maybe in his driving cabinet!
And also, if people outside the were friends of those inside it, there will let them come inside!
I have worked narrowly with people, in a neighbor lab to the mine, who published in Nature. Knowing how they work, how they think, I'm not impressed by their Nature papers! I also didn't see any impact of their work compared to the mine which wasn't published in Nature!
I just see their name cited here and there with false brand "Nature" and they easily move here and there to give talk about their super-mega-giga paper in Nature!
But for what? ... Really, I'm hardly believe it.  
Is it normal that because I have my name printed in journal X rather than journal Y, I should become more privileged than others? Albeit others worked as good as me, if not better, spent time in doing research as me and in same place, etc.  

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No.Just avoiding to fit to impact factors and remove it from the current and next coming new journals.

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So, you think that Nature is important to announce novelties?
OK, admit. Does this mission deserves prestigious and pretentiousness place?
With TV, phone, and internet now, people know easily about the novelties.
We pubish in any journal that meet the scope.
On other hand, if we have to fit to journal scope, Nature should publish only paper about the Nature, not particularly about stem cell or genetic.

leelee, on 29 October 2012 - 08:32 PM, said:

Right, I agree.
But the problem actually is not in the need for funding, but how funding is distributed.
Currently and mostly, it is unfairly distributed, in my view.

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A lot of scientists? Yes, though it depends on domain.
A finite amount of money for science? Yes, although an infinite amount of money is already available for much less important things than science.
Here an example taken from my TV channels
You may find the same on your TV channel too:  
On my TV, there are five official channels on which there are multiple money games DAILY, at morning, noon and evening, ranging from around $100 to $500,000 or even more for each games!
Let us humbly assume that only $50,000 is wined, distributed, in all the games/day, all times (morning, midday and evening) at the 5 channels.
Let's now do some simple math to see how much money is "wasted" yearly just for TV games (mostly for people who don't necessarily need money):
50,000 x 365 = $18,250,000
Without taking in account other channels and money wastes on TV (e.g ads, useless programs..etc).
How many scientists and research projects could be funded with such money? And if we take all wasted form of money by innumerable ways in society?

leelee, on 29 October 2012 - 08:32 PM, said:

Yes, but why ranking?
Healthcare is only distributed to people when needed, why the same could not be done for researchers?

leelee, on 29 October 2012 - 08:32 PM, said:

Yes:
We just need stop rating.
Just avoid rating, simply and frankly.
There is a lot of money that could be given to researchers and university without rating.
It is just a question of good management and administration.
We don't need rating because it is simply unfair and nonhuman, non scientific criteria.
Things will work just fine, if not better, without rating.

The world population is now around 7 billions inhabitants, but how many billionaires with more than 50 billions dollars in the world?
At least hundreds, right? Each of them has about ten times more money than the whole population in world!
What do they do with all that money? Why they don't fund research? Worst, they often evade taxes!
This is just to say that there is a lot of money but it is badly managed and unfairly distributed...