[wombat23]

Nice reminder of some general principles. I wonder how well it applies to young scientists given today's academic career prospects, though.

> If you want to make progress in any area, you need to be willing to give up your best ideas from time to time. [...] Medawar notes that he twice spent two whole years trying to corroborate groundless hypotheses.

Unfortunately, being willing to scrap your idea is only one part of the equation. Securing funding after 2 "failed" post-docs is an entirely different matter.

[danieltillett]

This is why you should not ever dedicate yourself to a single project no matter how much you believe in it. You should at a minimum have one back up project that will generate publishable results no matter what happens.

[chiefalchemist]

You should always have some "R&D" regardless of what you do, what you're working on, etc.

Focus is great. But it has a tendency to create blinders, feed confirmation bias, etc.

[DrAwdeOccarim]

Ouch. Your point is tough to stomach, but there is another side to it they don't teach you in school: tenure-track research isn't the only path. In fact, tenure-track research may actually be the worst path for the vast, vast majority of PhD graduates.

[thatcherc]

What are the other options here? Sounds like you've got some good perspective!

[ramraj07]

Exactly. It's foolish to follow this path. There's a ton of VC money out there, if you need millions or billions to see your idea through. If not just make your own money. Honestly feels less stressful and hypocritical than the academic Ponzi scheme.

[veddox]

Few academic disciplines lend themselves to monetarisation via startups. Indeed, many academic disciplines don't lend themselves to any kind of monetarisation, except academic funding.

[linguae]

However, building a business is a different problem from doing research. When one accepts VC funding, the funding comes with the expectation that it will lead to a high-growth business. This is fine when you have an idea that has the potential to “take off” from a business standpoint.

However, there are many research problems where there is no obvious or immediate business application. The aim of such research is different from the aim of investors. This requires a different funding source, one that is willing to embrace the risks that come with research and is willing to do work solely for the advancement of science, with productization being a nice side effect rather than an expectation.

Of course, obtaining such funding is not easy. Part of what makes modern academia such a rat race is because of how competitive it is to procure research funding from funding agencies such as the NSF (disclaimer: this is a US point of view; I’m not very familiar with the situation abroad). My advisor works hard applying for grants, and sometimes they get rejected. I’d love a Genius Grant ($125,000 a year for five years with no strings attached) to work on whatever research I want without any pressures from the funding agency or from managers, but there are only so few awarded per year.

There is also the matter of research freedom in the sense of being free from the pressures of short term thinking and "publish or perish" mentality. I am reminded of Alan Kay's observations (http://worrydream.com/2017-12-30-alan/) about short-term research. I'm also reminded of what the discoverer of the electron, J.J. Thompson, once said in a 1916 speech that resonates with me whenever I think about research:

"If you pay a man a salary for doing research, he and you will want to have something to point to at the end of the year to show that the money has not been wasted. In promising work of the highest class, however, results do not come in this regular fashion, in fact years may pass without any tangible result being obtained, and the position of the paid worker would be very embarrassing and he would naturally take to work on a lower, or at any rate a different plane where he could be sure of getting year by year tangible results which would justify his salary. The position is this: You want one kind of research, but, if you pay a man to do it, it will drive him to research of a different kind. The only thing to do is to pay him for doing something else and give him enough leisure to do research for the love of it."

For me, my dream is to start and grow a non-research lifestyle business that pays the bills, so that way I can spend the rest of my time on research, which is what I'm passionate about.

[ramraj07]

I am in the same path, make the money and fund my own research. All other models have been perverted by existing long enough that the culture around them is very antithetic to the true motivation of the endeavor.

The only systems not amenable to this model is perhaps high energy physics or things of that sort but I'm sure some resourceful mind will come up with ideas!

[hundreddaysoff]

Exactly. Most academics really can't win. It's how the system is designed.

This is why I sold out after my MD/PhD and became just a regular physician. Maybe in a few decades I'll have enough in savings to fulfill my dream of becoming a mad scientist...

[wombatpm]

Sprague Dawley rats are so expensive though. You might just want to get informed-ish consent from your patients.