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主题:推荐一篇文章给想要献身科学事业,或者正在献身的人们 -- fengshui

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家园 推荐一篇文章给想要献身科学事业,或者正在献身的人们

大智若愚

The importance of stupidity in scientific research

Martin A. Schwartz

Department of Microbiology, UVA Health System, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22908, USA

e-mail: [email protected]

Accepted 9 April 2008

I recently saw an old friend for the first time in many years. We had been Ph.D. students at the same time, both studying science, although in different areas. She later dropped out of graduate school, went to Harvard Law School and is now a senior lawyer for a major environmental organization. At some point, the conversation turned to why she had left graduate school. To my utter astonishment, she said it was because it made her feel stupid. After a couple of years of feeling stupid every day, she was ready to do something else.

I had thought of her as one of the brightest people I knew and her subsequent career supports that view. What she said bothered me. I kept thinking about it; sometime the next day, it hit me. Science makes me feel stupid too. It's just that I've gotten used to it. So used to it, in fact, that I actively seek out new opportunities to feel stupid. I wouldn't know what to do without that feeling. I even think it's supposed to be this way. Let me explain.

For almost all of us, one of the reasons that we liked science in high school and college is that we were good at it. That can't be the only reason – fascination with understanding the physical world and an emotional need to discover new things has to enter into it too. But high-school and college science means taking courses, and doing well in courses means getting the right answers on tests. If you know those answers, you do well and get to feel smart.

A Ph.D., in which you have to do a research project, is a whole different thing. For me, it was a daunting task. How could I possibly frame the questions that would lead to significant discoveries; design and interpret an experiment so that the conclusions were absolutely convincing; foresee difficulties and see ways around them, or, failing that, solve them when they occurred? My Ph.D. project was somewhat interdisciplinary and, for a while, whenever I ran into a problem, I pestered the faculty in my department who were experts in the various disciplines that I needed. I remember the day when Henry Taube (who won the Nobel Prize two years later) told me he didn't know how to solve the problem I was having in his area. I was a third-year graduate student and I figured that Taube knew about 1000 times more than I did (conservative estimate). If he didn't have the answer, nobody did.

That's when it hit me: nobody did. That's why it was a research problem. And being my research problem, it was up to me to solve. Once I faced that fact, I solved the problem in a couple of days. (It wasn't really very hard; I just had to try a few things.) The crucial lesson was that the scope of things I didn't know wasn't merely vast; it was, for all practical purposes, infinite. That realization, instead of being discouraging, was liberating. If our ignorance is infinite, the only possible course of action is to muddle through as best we can.

I'd like to suggest that our Ph.D. programs often do students a disservice in two ways. First, I don't think students are made to understand how hard it is to do research. And how very, very hard it is to do important research. It's a lot harder than taking even very demanding courses. What makes it difficult is that research is immersion in the unknown. We just don't know what we're doing. We can't be sure whether we're asking the right question or doing the right experiment until we get the answer or the result. Admittedly, science is made harder by competition for grants and space in top journals. But apart from all of that, doing significant research is intrinsically hard and changing departmental, institutional or national policies will not succeed in lessening its intrinsic difficulty.

Second, we don't do a good enough job of teaching our students how to be productively stupid – that is, if we don't feel stupid it means we're not really trying. I'm not talking about `relative stupidity', in which the other students in the class actually read the material, think about it and ace the exam, whereas you don't. I'm also not talking about bright people who might be working in areas that don't match their talents. Science involves confronting our `absolute stupidity'. That kind of stupidity is an existential fact, inherent in our efforts to push our way into the unknown. Preliminary and thesis exams have the right idea when the faculty committee pushes until the student starts getting the answers wrong or gives up and says, `I don't know'. The point of the exam isn't to see if the student gets all the answers right. If they do, it's the faculty who failed the exam. The point is to identify the student's weaknesses, partly to see where they need to invest some effort and partly to see whether the student's knowledge fails at a sufficiently high level that they are ready to take on a research project.

Productive stupidity means being ignorant by choice. Focusing on important questions puts us in the awkward position of being ignorant. One of the beautiful things about science is that it allows us to bumble along, getting it wrong time after time, and feel perfectly fine as long as we learn something each time. No doubt, this can be difficult for students who are accustomed to getting the answers right. No doubt, reasonable levels of confidence and emotional resilience help, but I think scientific education might do more to ease what is a very big transition: from learning what other people once discovered to making your own discoveries. The more comfortable we become with being stupid, the deeper we will wade into the unknown and the more likely we are to make big discoveries.

评论我会过一段时间贴上来。希望斑竹手下留情。

家园 谢谢推荐,很好的文章,对象我这样中国的科学研究和教育体制下出来的

人很多启发。

家园 好像不能看?

This item requires a subscription to Journal of Cell Science Online.

需要登录?楼下的 深大 是登录了才看见的吗?

家园 俺们等得好辛苦啊

评论呢?

家园 不好意思,跳票了

跳票的原因,是因为我发现了下面的这篇文章。我读来读去,感觉我想要说的,里面都已经提到了。所以,我就厚颜给大家再转贴一次。

第一部分

第二部分

如果看不到,我会转贴全文。

家园 送花等评论

看不到下面那两个评论文章。想听听您的看法。

家园 太懒了!赶紧文章评论把给贴出来。

之所以选择这篇文章,并且推荐给大家看,是因为这篇文章清晰阐述了一个事实。一个有关于科学研究究竟为何物的事实。

我想,在座的如果是出生在80前,那么几乎是所有有的人都受过把科学家作为一个理想职业的教育熏陶。但是很遗憾的是,绝大多数的人,包括我,在一头跳进这条摇摇欲坠,不知道驶向何方的破船之前,我们对于科学的理解,还是局限于在那些美丽动听的科学家的故事上面。

前年回国,专程去看望我的一位老师。她听说我们夫妻两个都在做研究,羡慕的不得了。她说,她一生中最后悔的一件事情,就是报了师范院校,然后永远失去了做科学家的梦想。

这位老师不是一个特例,而是整整的一代人的投影。正是他们,使得我们对于科学充满了向往,充满了憧憬,充满了要投身科学,献身科学的一腔热血。然后义无反顾的跳上了这条船。

然而,科学研究,究竟是在做些什么?这篇文章,从小处给出了一个非常明确的答案。

For almost all of us, one of the reasons that we liked science in high school and college is that we were good at it. 这句话我想大多数人看了,都会有会心的微笑。我们之所以能够选择科学研究,首先,是因为我们在这些学科上面,曾经学得非常好。That can't be the only reason – fascination with understanding the physical world and an emotional need to discover new things has to enter into it too.当然,学得好并不是唯一的一个理由。人类好奇的天性和对于做出重大发现的憧憬,也是我们投身科学的主要动力。

真正的科学研究,是与我们曾经有过的科学经历截然相反的。当我们学习科学知识的时候,我们所取得成就,是按照我们对于这些已有的知识的记忆和掌握来判定的。而当我们真正的从事科学研究的时候,我们的成就,是按照我们揭示未知的知识领域的大小多少来作为评分标准的。

这种标准上的差异,给那些初次接触真相的人,以非常强烈的冲击。我们曾经拥有的,引以为豪的那些记忆手段,理解手段,突然间对于我们不再有任何的帮助。我们所要面对的,是广大的未知事物。我们所要做的,是如同盲人般的在这个领域中摸索、搜寻,试图发现那些未知的。

所以,很多人受不了这种巨大的落差,而直接的退出了。事实上,即使在今天,也只有很少的一部分科研工作者们,真正的体会到了这种巨大的差异,并且试图教授给自己的学生们。很多所谓做科研的人,他们在经历了无数的挫折、痛苦、沮丧之后,把所有的这些都归罪于自己的命运或者自己等能力不足,或者迁怒于导师、家人。而那些幸运的自己摸索到了正确的方法,生存下来的人们,则忙于自己的实验室,基金申请、同事交流和会议安排中,难得有闲暇,来给那些已经和准备在科学领域中苦苦挣扎的人,点一盏指路明灯。

直到,我看到了这篇文章。

文章里面,已经说得透彻无比了,还有具体生动的例子。我就不再翻译过来了。

请仔细的再读一遍。如果你是已经能够踏入科研领域的学生或者博士后或者是拿到了自己的第一个研究基金的助教,请再体会一下这篇文章会如何的帮助你。如果你还没有下定决心,或是想要什么帮助来帮你下这个决心。请三思而后行。

通宝推:然后203,
家园 第一部分 box1

这算是个古老的笑话了,最初流传于1998-1999年,10年之后再看一遍,仍然觉得是不胜唏嘘啊。

A rabbit is happily grazing one day when it is ambushed by a wolf.

"Please don't eat me Mr Wolf," pleads the rabbit, "I haven't completed my Ph.D.!"

The wolf spits out the rabbit and laughs until he almost chokes.

"Yeah right! A rabbit? Doing a Ph.D.? What about? Carrots? Duracell batteries? I just gotta hear this one!"

The rabbit clears its throat and intones: "On the innate superiority of rabbits over wolves."

"That's a crock for a start," scoffs the wolf.

"But I can prove it," says the rabbit. "Come to my hole and I'll show you my results, and if you still don't believe me, then you can eat me. Deal?"

"Sure. Can I have fries with that?" says the wolf, following the rabbit down the hole.

But only the rabbit comes out.

Months later the rabbit is grazing contentedly again when it meets another rabbit.

"How's tricks?" asks the friend.

"Wonderful," says our hero, "I've just submitted my Ph.D. dissertation."

"Congratulations! What's it called?"

"It's called 'On the innate superiority of rabbits over wolves'."

"Unbelievable — I mean, literally. Are you sure?"

"Yes, I thought it was crazy at first too. But I've tested the model rigorously and that's the result I get."

"Wow..."

"Look, if you don't believe me, why not come to my hole and I can show you the results?"

"Of course, I'd love to!"

So the two rabbits scurry down the burrow. In the first chamber is a workstation, covered with and surrounded by piles of books, papers, printouts and half-eaten carrots. In the second chamber are boxes and boxes of wolf bones, all catalogued and annotated. And in the final chamber, in a rocking chair, is a large and very satisfied looking bear.

Moral: do your Ph.D. on any subject you like, provided you have a good supervisor.

家园 第一部分 1

Perspective

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 9, 413-416 (May 2008) | doi:10.1038/nrm2389

Essay: How to succeed in science: a concise guide for young biomedical scientists. Part I: taking the plunge

Jonathan W. Yewdell

Abstract

Biomedical research has never been more intellectually exciting or practically important to society. Ironically, pursuing a career as a biomedical scientist has never been more difficult. Here I provide unvarnished advice for young biomedical scientists on the difficulties that lie ahead and on how to find the right laboratories for training in the skills that you will need to succeed. Although my advice is geared towards succeeding in the United States, many aspects apply to other countries.

If you are contemplating pursuing a career in the life sciences, or have already embarked on one, you need to give some thought to your career prospects. So, take a study break, grab a cup of coffee and read on.

Unfortunately, I need to begin with some depressing facts. First, only a small minority of Ph.D. students will ever have opportunities to become principal investigators (PI) in academic settings and direct their own independent research programmes (Fig. 1). Second, even if you are among this elite group, the odds are that you will be well down the path towards retirement by the time you receive your first research project grant (R01) (the average age is 43) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the principal source of funding for biomedical research in the United States. Third, for your entire career as a PI, you will put inordinate efforts into writing grants. If you should ever lose funding, you will be at the mercy of your institution for your continued employment. Fourth, if you do achieve the 'Holy Grail' of full professorship then you will not be poor, but you will be far worse off financially than nearly all of your peers who have similar levels of talent, energy and dedication, but who chose other careers.

Figure 1 | The tenure track derails.

The number of doctorate degrees awarded per year in the United States in the life sciences has increased more than threefold since 1966, whereas the number of tenured scientists has decreased slightly from a peak in 1981 (according to National Science Foundation data3). Consequently, in the past 25 years the fraction of Ph.D. holders with academic independent investigator positions has decreased steadily. The fraction of Ph.D. holders with tenure or tenure-track position is now approx30%. Graph reproduced from Ref. 3 © (2007) FASEB.

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外链图片需谨慎,可能会被源头改

Your professors might tell you that this is the way it has always been, but this simply isn't true. Twenty-five years ago the situation was much rosier. Scientists gained independence a decade earlier and funding, although never easy, was more reliable and accessible. Universities were more humane institutions where accountants had less influence over institutional priorities and decisions. Our current lamentable situation is fixable, and will have to improve significantly if the United States is to maintain its position as a leader in science and technology. A positive outcome is not guaranteed, however, and fixing the current mess will require the concerted efforts of scientists, university presidents and politicians to save the biomedical goose that has laid golden eggs for US biotechnology and health care for the past 50 years.

Science rocks

But there is good news too. Society desperately needs your talents. The future health, wealth and even survival of Homo sapiens depend on a deeper understanding of the laws and mechanisms of nature and on using this information to develop new technologies and therapies. For rationally thinking people with an altruistic bent, life can be no more rewarding than when practising the scientific method for the benefit of all of the denizens of this fragile planet. As a budding scientist, you are trained to expertly use the scientific method. That is, you learn how to wield the body of techniques that are used to identify and investigate natural phenomena by formulating and rigorously testing hypotheses. The origins of the scientific method date back at least 1,000 years, and it is arguably the most important invention of civilized man. Armed with the scientific method, we can explore and understand nature to the limits of our intelligence. As a high priest of 'Scientific Methodism', you will be equipped for success not only in science and its allied occupations, but in virtually any career that requires rational decision making (and in some, such as politics, that ought to).

家园 第一部分3 Step two: postdoctoral fel

At some point as a graduate student you will need to take responsibility for all aspects of your career and develop the skills of an independent scientist. You need to develop confidence in your ability to make discoveries and learn new techniques, so that you will not be limited later in your career when your findings lead you to new and unexpected areas (see Part II (Ref 1)). You need to do the background reading to place your results in their proper context and determine the next step in the project. You need to learn how to present a seminar in which you convey not only the data and conclusions, but also your depth of knowledge and enthusiasm for your field of research. Such public-speaking skills are critical for peer recognition of the impact of your research, for recruiting students and fellows to your laboratory, and for effective teaching. Most importantly, you need to learn how to write concisely and lucidly2, for without this skill, you will not be able to raise grant money or place your papers in high-impact journals.

In many ways the most important decision on the PI career path is where you do your postdoctoral fellowship. It should be in a field in which you envisage starting your independent career, the success of which will be almost entirely dependent on your ability to attract funding. As a newly independent scientist, study sections will be loath to fund you to embark on a project that is not a direct continuation of your postdoctoral studies. This also means that you will need access to the reagents you developed as a postdoctoral fellow. You will also need the blessings of your mentor and, optimally, your mentor should actively support your nascent career. So, in choosing your postdoctoral mentor, it is critical to determine whether a mentor enthusiastically supports, both materially and psychologically, the careers of their fledglings. This is easier to determine if the mentor is an established scientist with a pedigree. Established scientists will also be able to offer laboratories with a greater variety of expertise, reagents and greater financial resources, all of which will help you establish an independent line of research for you to parlay into an independent career.

It is essential to visit the laboratories that interest you to gauge the productivity, independence and happiness of the students and postdoctoral fellows. It is a good idea to contact scientists who have left the laboratory to obtain their honest opinion of their experience (in laboratories headed by evil mentors, this might be the only way to ascertain their pathology, as the current laboratory members may be too intimidated to express negative opinions). If the laboratory won't pay your travel expenses, then this does not augur well, as it indicates either limited financial resources or stinginess. All things being equal, it is advantageous to work at larger, wealthier institutions where there will be better access to expensive, state-of-the-art instruments and core facilities, greater overall intellectual ferment, more laboratories for collaboration and a better chance to impress other established scientists, who can write the crucial recommendation letters for getting your tenure-track application into the interview round. Sometimes, however, all things are not equal, and if the best mentor is at a smaller institution, this will do just fine.

What is it going to take?

Perspiration. Success in science will require a major commitment of your body and soul. As a graduate student, you should be spending a minimum of 40 hours per week actually designing, performing or interpreting experiments. As there are many other necessary things to do during the day (for example, reading the literature, attending seminars and journal club, talking to colleagues both formally and informally, and common laboratory jobs), this means you will be spending 60 or more hours per week in science-associated activities. The key to success and happiness is that most of this should not seem like work. If the laboratory is not the place you'd most like to be, then a career as a PI is probably not for you. At the postdoctoral level you will have to work at least as hard, but your most intense effort will actually begin as a tenure-track faculty member, when you are expected to fund your research (and at least some of your salary too), teach undergraduates as well as graduate and professional students, serve on committees and run your laboratory, which itself entails learning an entirely new set of skills (such as accounting, diplomacy and psychology). Ironically, you will have more to learn as a fledgling professor than as a postdoctoral fellow. Until you are well into your career, there will be time in your life for just one additional significant activity (family, active social life with friends, a sport or a hobby), but probably not for much more than that.

Talent. Enthusiasm and effort are necessary but not sufficient for a successful scientific career. Talent is a key part of the equation, and at some point in your career (not necessarily as a graduate student), you will need to objectively assess your skills and potential relative to your peers. The inexorable weight of the scientific career pyramid squeezes out all but the most talented from getting the tenure-track job that will offer you the chance of establishing your own laboratory. Furthermore, the insanely competitive funding situation is making the previously safe transition between tenure-track and tenured professor a far dicier proposition. Scientific talent is not a single parameter, but a complex mix of innate and learned skills and abilities. Deficiencies in one area can be offset by strengths in another. Some scientists achieve success by their experimental skills or insights, others by their management or political skills. There is no one path to success and each successful scientist has unique combinations of strengths (and weaknesses).

If, for whatever reason, you decide that you are better suited for life outside the laboratory, there are numerous career alternatives. Neither you nor your mentor should consider this outcome a failure. It is unfair, and even irresponsible for mentors to expect trainees to emulate their own career paths. Each mentor has only to train a single replacement to maintain the PI population at equilibrium. Even with robust growth in NIH-funded biomedical research (which is unlikely in the foreseeable future), the current investigator-to-trainee ratio dictates that most trainees will pursue careers that differ fundamentally from those of their mentors.

Networking plays a key part in providing information about potential alternative careers and in landing such jobs. Alumni of the laboratories and departments you have worked in are the most proximal source of networking partners. E-mail has opened a great portal into the academic community for initiating contacts that can be deepened by follow-up telephone conversations. It can be difficult to penetrate the corporate world by this path, but conferences provide ideal circumstances for meeting scientists out of the academic mainstream who can provide insight, advice and even job opportunities. It might be possible during your postdoctoral fellowship to develop your skills and attractiveness to potential employers by moonlighting or volunteering in the career path you are contemplating.

Final thoughts

So, your cup of coffee should be finished by now. Please don't be discouraged, but give some thought to your career path. If you are talented and passionate, you will have a good chance of becoming a PI; particularly in the United States, which still provides great opportunities for truly independent entry-level positions. If the trials and tribulations of being a PI aren't for you, there are many other ways to use your scientific training to make a decent living and a valuable contribution to society. Now get back to work.

家园 第一部分2

More good news: for individuals with a hunger for knowledge and an insatiable curiosity about how things work, science offers a constant challenge and, best of all, the intense thrill of discovery. What can match being the first person who has ever lived to know something new about nature? And not just the big, infrequent, paradigm-making (or breaking) discoveries, but the small, incremental discoveries that occur on a daily or weekly basis too. If this doesn't give you goosebumps and if you are not in a rush to get to the laboratory in the morning to find the results of yesterday's experiment, then you should seriously consider a non-laboratory career. Making discoveries is the core reward for the myriad of difficulties you will face in your scientific career (see Part II, in which I discuss making discoveries1). Although it is possible to succeed in science even if you lack this passion for discovery, you will almost certainly be miserable and make your colleagues, friends and family wretched too.

Science has other perks. Contemporary science is one of the most communal activities ever pursued by humanity, and is among the most international careers possible. You will probably be interacting on a daily basis with scientists from all over the world, both in your laboratory and over the internet. Once established in your career, you can fly to dozens of cities across the globe and be greeted by a colleague that you either know personally or through reading each other's publications. You might even train a generation of researchers in your laboratory who will disperse around the globe to pass the torch of the scientific method to the next generation of their nation.

This generational transfer of Scientific Methodism is, in fact, the most important and tangible achievement of a scientist. Discoveries are the joy and stock of our trade, but when your career is over (and probably well before this moment), few people will remember your brilliant papers. If you are successful (and lucky), you will have contributed a few lines to text books that future students will resent having to memorize. Through no fault of your own, and for reasons that you could not have anticipated, your discoveries might prove to be the artefacts that led your field in the completely wrong direction. You will be happiest in science if you are content with pursuing the truth to the best of your abilities and in passing the skills and insights you have developed to the next generation. Scientists who pursue fame are destined to be forgotten and forever dissatisfied with their achievements. In practical terms, peer recognition is needed only to maintain funding and to attract talented individuals to your laboratory who will make your daily laboratory life more productive and enjoyable. Beyond this, chasing fame is a waste of time that could be better spent on science itself, or on enjoying life outside the laboratory.

Getting started: graduate school

Choosing a graduate programme. Choosing a graduate school in which to pursue your Ph.D. should be largely based on the field that you would like to enter. Obviously, you should choose a programme that has a well-respected faculty. Size provides a large number of advantages, including a larger number of potential mentors to choose from, more students and postdoctoral fellows who can become lifelong friends and colleagues, better chances for collaboration, greater access to reagents, techniques and specialist equipment, and a more exciting intellectual environment. To minimize the insanely long 'training' period of your career, you should find a programme that takes pride in expeditiously awarding Ph.D. degrees. It should take 4 or 5 years for a decent student to finish a Ph.D., with an absolute upper limit of 6 years. Any longer than this and the student is either not suited for science or is being exploited by the mentor. Also, choose a department where the current Ph.D. students are treated as junior colleagues, with an eye towards their career development, and are not just exploited as inexpensive labour (small departments can be better in this respect).

Choosing a laboratory. Once you have chosen a school (or vice versa) to work in, your most important decision will be to choose a laboratory. The decision can be based either on the topic of research or on the mentor. I would strongly recommend the latter (Box 1). Good scientists work on interesting and important topics, so a good mentor has this covered. Your goal as a graduate student is to become an expert in wielding the scientific method, and this can be achieved pursuing any project. The topic matters most in the types of experiments it entails. A good project will enable you to design, perform and analyse experiments on a routine basis, ideally several per week, if not daily. This provides the best training and, importantly, is also the most fun. This will also develop your abilities to conceive the crucial controls that are needed to interpret the data in a meaningful way. 'Control creativity' is a central part of your scientific IQ; it comes only from the experience of designing and interpreting experiments. You should avoid projects that are largely based on using a single technique to develop a reagent or collect data (for example, generating a transgenic mouse).

Box 1 | On the innate superiority of rabbits over wolves

Choosing a mentor. Although there is tremendous subjectivity in choosing a compatible mentor, there are a number of objective criteria (Fig. 2). Are the people in the laboratory happy and enthusiastic about their research? Have former students gone on to productive careers? Does the mentor treat students as junior colleagues and not as employees? Generally speaking, you should run from laboratories where a PI is referred to as Doctor X and not by his or her first name.

Figure 2 | The nine types of principal investigator.

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外链图片需谨慎,可能会被源头改

Frequently, you will have to choose between a small laboratory with a new investigator versus a large laboratory with a well-established scientist. Newly minted assistant professors will not have much of a track record as mentors; you might even be the first student they train. Still, you should seriously consider joining such a laboratory if the chemistry seems right. Although this has its obvious risks, you are a much more valuable commodity to a small laboratory, the survival of which could well depend on your personal success. Consequently, you will get more intense mentoring and will probably be working side-by-side with the PI. The best situation is to be the first Ph.D. student of a rising star, for you will be maximally productive, will generate well-developed ties to your field and will have an influential champion for years to come (although because academic 'star' formation is an inexact science, this often takes some luck).

Skills, not papers. Contrary to what you might have heard, it is not critical to have a spectacular publication record from your Ph.D. When the time comes to apply for a tenure-track job, the selection committee will focus on the productivity and promise you displayed during your postdoctoral fellowship. Furthermore, a solid Ph.D. with one good first-author paper that is based largely on your own work is all that is usually required to obtain the postdoctoral position of your dreams, particularly for citizens of the United States, who are in short supply at this level. Your focus as a graduate student should be to develop all of the skills you will need to be an independent scientist.

家园 五朵花+收藏

虽然我这辈子是不会现身科学事业了, 主要是才发觉这也是不错的选择.

以前不知道为啥愿意去工业界, 现在看看学校的那些做到顶级的老师, 也蛮羡慕他们的.

家园 谢谢

我就说么,怎么会马上有人给花。

经济学、管理学等人文科学跟真正的理科研究,还是有不小的差距的。他们这批人做到了顶级,无论是收入水平,还是生活质量,跟大公司里面的高级主管,都没有多大的区别了。而且他们更加的自由。

而理科研究则是完全不同的两个概念。最顶尖的人士,如果不自己开公司做生意或者挣顾问钱的话,即使以诺贝尔奖获得者之尊,收入状况也比不上一个大公司里面的中层。(这绝对不是开玩笑的,巴克得奖之后,诺贝尔奖委员会问她要怎么处理这批钱,她很高兴地说,自己房子的贷款可以还清了,而她的房子只不过值50万而已。)

如果你再考虑到每个星期超过40小时的工作时间以外,还有大约20小时的时间要参见会议,听讲座,阅读文献,跟周围的人交谈,写基金申请,评审基金、文章……

要是按照管理系大牛们的标准,所谓的科学家们,其实都是一群自娱自乐的疯子,收入比起他们来,几乎忽略不计;每个星期工作超过70小时是常事;有着巨大的竞争压力,无论是发表文章还是申请基金……

唯一的好处,是以前的科学家们,大多长寿,而且很少听说谁老年痴呆的,用进废退,不是仅仅说说而已。

谢谢
家园 是呀

我知道我们商学院年薪80万以上的N多个, 有个大牛说: 他对什么感兴趣就研究什么, 反正看起来是著作等身. 真是羡慕可以自由开题, 喜欢什么就做什么研究.

刚刚一帮同学出去吃饭, 然后又找地方喝咖啡聊天, 有同学lg是学校的老师, 她说进入tenure以后日子也不好过, 总不能不到40进入tenure, 然后65还是副教授吧

是呀
家园 是啊,所以呢

我是一直回避跟学管理的人讨论钱的问题的。你们的零头都比我的总额要多。

我认识的科学家里面,平均起来,就数医学院的教授们拿得多了。但是人家是挣的当医生的钱,与教授无关。然后是化学系的,因为化学系的一般都在大药厂里面挂个名字。最穷的,就是搞生物的。搞生物的里面,最穷的就是我这个专业的。根据科学家杂志2006,2007两年的统计。所有的本专业faculty,在各个年龄段,比起生物学平均少拿1万。是药学和化学系的1/3,是医学院教授的1/5。是你们学院里面大牛的1/8以下。

唉,没天理啊,这个世道啊……

我要跳槽!

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