Hopefully it‘s going to help, and it’s exciting to see Miku in such a promotion, but the science world has developed some far deeper issues that can be seen worldwide and don‘t make it very appealing to start a career in.
(Ramble incoming)
Science is becoming ridiculously competitive, all the way between researchers, institutions and journals, and this creates an unhealthy climate where everyone has to deliver results, and nothing else. Journals refuse to publish articles about failures, and this leads to (estimated) several billions of research funds being lost every year because researchers keep repeating the mistakes of other teams. It also means that noone can admit that they were wrong on anything. Theories that are disproven by experiment don‘t get discarded, but only „adjusted“ in minor ways so noone has to admid that the theory was wrong. String theory is a prime example, it has been disproven by experiment three times, but each time, it has been „extended“ by hypothesising more dimensions and more subatomic particles because the careers of too many scientists depend on it. There are newer theories that explain the same phenomena and are far simpler, but they get hardly any attention.
In the end, new ideas are generally just not getting much attention, which you really wouldn‘t expect from science. It‘s extremely frustrating for anyone new to the field, plus you have to make do with ridiculous hierarchies,team members constantly trying to outdo each other, rather poor wages and almost only one-year contracts.
(Sorry that this is pretty off topic and incoherent)
I‘m very glad for the Miku promo, and the work that this group is doing is badly needed. But at the same time, the text just scratches the surface of the problems.
blog.piapro.net
