a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by thenewgreen
thenewgreen  ·  4646 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Scienceblog: Top 10 Reasons to Be a Scientist
Hey, enjoyed the post! As a non scientist I appreciated reading all of them. -Very insightful. I think that the most important one is #2
    - 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.