So, for the non-scientist, here is a comical rant by an obviously disgruntled but bitterly honest scientist. A friend of mine (at the tail end of his graduate studies and wits...) forwarded it to me. His attached message to the link: "I can relate to all of these. Now, I know that I am ready to be called Dr . . ."
I hope that it can be a funny read but insightful for those, who wish to better relate to a friend/brother/sister pursuing a research career.
11. You publish your paper. For next few years, several other papers are published that build off of your results, but they do not cite your paper, because is would make their results seem less novel. Actually, I could add a ton. Here's one: 12. NIH releases a exciting new grant fast track opportunity for young researchers! You spend two weeks applying. They receive 20k applications and fund three of them. You realize that you would have been better off working at McDonalds for two weeks and spending the money on scratch tickets.
- - Begging for money. When scientists are not working, eating, sleeping or at some seminar/conference, they are ... writing grants, fellowships ... aka begging. Their applications can be summarized as follows "I'm so great, my work is so important, look at how sexy my results are" but in reality they meant to say "if you don't give me this grant, my lab is going to sink into a deep black hole and my career is over!"
This is the one that I think most non scientist don't know about. Having friends that are researchers, I've come to understand the frustration that is the "grant" system. I think most people don't realize how ridiculously competitive this is and how little money there is to go around. Allocating more federal dollars to scientific research should be a priority for the electorate, it has national security implications.