'A mental-health crisis is gripping science — toxic research culture is to blame'
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01708-4
Honestly? this is all too late.
Interestingly lacking (since it's published by Nature, I guess) - a parasitic for-profit publication system that outsources all of its labor to unpaid researchers. Peer-review, editing for free for ridiculously high profit margin-industries while I couldn't afford rent. But it's OK! "Academic service" is in my contract!
Just yesterday I was joking with another academic that we don't want our kids to go into science. Why would we? What sells a career in science right now?
The last argument I hear is that you can work on what you want; I didn't find this to be the case. Grants are only given if in the national interest (Australia): grants and papers only get accepted if they're following the field 'trend', or stays in the niche.
That severely limits on what you can work!
Work has to be publishable - I've struggled with ML applied to biology. CS reviewers want novel models, bio reviewers want novel biology. If you sit in the middle, both are disappointed.
@PhilippBayer Novelty should not be ground for rejection. That plays a big component in the reproducibility crisis we're seeing by pushing publication of flimsy (but, hey, novel and shiny!) science
@nicolaromano Yep!! and novelty will be a race for the bottom - now the glam journals want 'extremely' novel research. soon it'll be only only paradigm-shattering research.
half the glam-journal papers i read aren't as novel as they pretend to be; they just have to look 'extremely' novel. soon they'll all have invented a field.