Science, a very demanding place

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about the demanding and partly even demotivating and frustrating scientific working environment.

Working in science can be a super exciting job. One gets in contact with the latest technologies and can try out new ideas that no one else has tried before. Also, it is about the possibility to ask questions which might not immediately lead to new directly applicable contributions. Instead, the findings might only raise more questions or inspire other scientists to try out a different approach. Alternatively, the results can be quite astonishing and ultimately present a solution to an old problem.

However, working in science can also be very demanding, demotivating and frustrating. On the one hand, conducting experiments and publishing the results greatly contributes to the overall demand and frustration. For instance, technical difficulties during an experiment can result in the loss of a huge amount of data. As a result of this, the overall results are less acurate than they would have been otherwise.

Another worst case scenario can occur when participants are required to show up for a repeated exposure to a stimulus and/or for a repeated measurement. In such a scenario, participants might think that missing one session is not that problematic and hence do not show up for a particular session. Unfortunately, this then results in the participant’s measurements being discarded during the analysis as the data was obtained under enqual conditions. As a result of this, participants not showing up can destroy an entire experiment and lastly greatly contribute to the frustration.

Finally, once an experiment was a success, the findings still have to survive the peer-review process. Naturally, being reject is part of the game, but often the reviewers do not provide a decent review. Instead, they merely write a few sentences and select the „reject“ option in the manuscript system. This, however, does not help the author nor does it improve the scientific quality.

On the other hand, the entire scientific system results in a very demanding, demotivating and frustrating environment. Many things and activities in science are limited to scientists who already got their PhDs. While this should ensure a good scientific quality and reduces the chances that a problem concerning the scientific approach of a project occurs, it also greatly restricts researchers without this degree.

This especially can be noticed when it comes to project management and human resources management. A PhD degree does not necessarily indicate a high competence in these management areas. Instead, it normally requires a special education that mainly targets management competencies which rarely is a part of regular research. Despite this special education requirement, project management often is assigned to post-docs due to the scientific hierarchy.

In the end, one often gets told that they cannot correctly assess a situation because they lack a PhD. As a result, this behavior causes a high degree of frustration as it simply shows that the own competencies are not validated or even treated as if they were irrelevant.

In conclusion, while working in science can be very interesting due to the various challenges, the system itself can easily destroy one’s interest and even raise the question if it is even worth subjecting oneself to this system just for the sake of answering scientific questions.