While university environments can restrict academic freedom, private industry will often attach strings. It is typically very rare that the sole financier of scientific innovation is also the leading scientist, and so sponsored research typically proceeds at the direction of its investors. While there are no practical limits on what can be researched, and there is certainly enough money in the hands of enough people with enough worldviews that just about anything can be financed…

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When you imagine what goes on in university research centres, you probably don’t think of scientists doing boring predictable things.  Indeed, the romanticized version of academic would suggest that scientists are constantly trying new ideas, pushing the boundaries of what is possible and that out from this process (on a global scale at least) emerges knowledge that explains how the world around us works or translates into useful, practical things for the betterment of society.…

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There are fundamental difference between discovery and translational research. The former aims to found new knowledge while the latter transforms that knowledge into something practical. The former succeeds if even one person (usually a highly trained scientist over the course of many years) is able to demonstrate that they can validate a theory in a well-controlled experimental study one or more times. The latter requires any technically skilled person (usually a junior research technician) to…

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One of the common refrains on our website has been “if scientists don’t care enough to make their situation better, then nobody else is going to do it for them.” Universities won’t sign scores of tenured professors, publishers won’t give up millions of dollars, governments and the public won’t magically recognize the long-term value of scientific research, etc., etc. So, it is down to the scientists themselves (more or less) to make these changes and…

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I had two experiences this week that got me thinking about the potential benefits of scientists working with designers. First was when I received the proofs of an evaluation report that I’d written – since the report was to be given out to the community partners with whom the program works, it was sent to a designer to take my lowly MSWord document to spruce it up a bit. Now, this might not seem all…

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higher unemployment levels for science-based doctoral-level graduates The “private rate of return” ((Defined in the report as “The private internal rate of return represents a measure of the returns obtained, over time, relative to the costs of the initial investment in education and is equal to the discount rate that equalizes the costs of education during the period of study to the gains from education thereafter.” (Source))) on getting a post-secondary education was 9.6% for…

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Most of us become scientists because of a fundamental desire to improve human health and well-being. We want to make the world better, but the premise that the only way to do this is through a university is mistaken. There is an opportunity cost to doing scientific research within the confines of the university that needs to be acknowledged. The alternative, of course, is seeking independent financing. Private enterprise are the shades of gray in…

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It’s been a long “quarter” – turns out we haven’t summarised our blogging activity since February.  Apologies to our readers that rely on these summaries to do their catch-up; we’ll do better in future.  Since this has been such a long period of blogs, the themes are not quite so easy to extract. Jonathan blogged about his experience launching a startup company and on some interpersonal issues like 360 faculty review and researcher vulnerability. And I’ve…

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Damien Wilpitz joins me this week for a co-written article on the practice of 360-degree and reverse reviews, and their noticeable absence from academic labs. Damien is a laboratory research manager at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and a research-management consultant. Jonathan: We just completed our 360/reverse review at Platelet BioGenesis. This is a yearly exercise in which our board of directors sits down with our team to review the organization’s executive. The board…

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I recently attended a large collaborative-research group meeting where, as part of the project, two members of the public were invited to attend the scientific research day.  The program is broadly under the “cancer research” umbrella and the two members of the public were patient advocates whose lives had both been touched by cancer. One of the personal stories that was shared stressed that some areas of cancer research are very poorly supported compared to…

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