Recently a lot of attention has gone to the manipulation of research data and publication. While I strongly oppose to false data, I do understand why some researchers feel the need to do so.
The minute you receive your PhD, and start working as a post-doc, you are more or less expected to apply for your own grants. Which is actually a lot of fun, you get to share your ideas with other people and you are able to push your research to a direction that you are absolutely fascinated by. For me, it would imply you can actually do what you love and have complete faith in. In contrast to a funded position (as is the case with most PhD studentships) it is YOUR hypothesis, not one that someone had to explain to you. Working on your ideas always motivates me way more than any other brilliant idea someone may have.
Unfortunately, applying for (and obtaining) a grant is not as easy as it sounds. It takes a lot of time, but also a big portion of luck. Whether or not you have nice results from your experiments is not just depending on your skills as a researcher. Yes, you have to have those skills, without them you would be lost. But even with them, you can be completely lost. And you need those results to even get close to obtaining a grant. Recent calculations have shown that the time spend on obtaining a grant actually costs the research institute more than the grant is worth. If grants would be divided amongst institutes, and researchers would no longer have to spend time on writing proposals, research would advance a lot faster than when selecting the best (via grants) to do research. And it would actually be cheaper!
Unfortunately, even aware of those statistics, the scientific world does not work this way. People prefer a way to select and reward the best of the best, even though their time is wasted. Not only wasted time is a problem, it also leads to an extreme competition between researchers. And competition leads to avoiding co-operations. Researchers are suspicious of other researchers, prefer not to share their results and techniques. Just to be sure that they are the ones who get the credit if thing go better than just right. Because that credit will increases your chances on obtaining a grant.
In the end, we are holding the scientific community and developments back by grants. You cannot be an expert in everything, you need each other. We need each other. We need to work together and expand co-operations. But it doesn't help if you are competing against your colleagues at the same time.
I know that competition can also make people do their very best, that's why it's encouraged. But at this moment, it is going too far. It's not encouraging people to do their best, it's making people cheat. And the best cheater wins...
I always loved doing research. But I don't like the atmosphere. I don't like the researchers attitude. I'm hoping for a better world. A world in which we can work together, instead of working against each other and screwing each other over. Not for science, but for personal gain. I'm hoping for a world in which scientists do research to make the world a better place, to help all people, not just to help themselves. I'm hoping for a world in which we can put our differences aside or actually profit from them. I'm hoping for a world with honest, devoted scientists.
