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The Black Hole

Quarterly summary: A bit of a delay, still dreaming big though!

BY DAVID KENT | OCT 18 2012

This quarter has been a very busy one for both Jonathan and me. Unfortunately from my end, this meant that the scienceadvocacy.org resource site is not yet live. Things are starting to take shape and it should be launched this autumn. We hope this will be an easier-to-navigate resource page that can direct early career researchers and policymakers to the items they need without having to dig around too much or re-invent the wheel. We’ll certainly keep readers posted on its progress.

For now, here’s the quarterly recap for those readers that have been busy too!

Articles written

Jonathan:

Playing the devil’s advocate on low salaries

A framework for changing the current research economy

Academic burnout should be a major cause for concern

Supply and demand in the knowledge market

The truly bleak job prospects for young scientists in the life sciences

A response from the health minister on the lack of opportunity for early-career scientists

 

Dave:

The state of science in Canada: Not bad, but the devil’s in the details

A new way to help you choose your science-related career

UBC tops in Canada? Rimouski 7th in sciences? New metrics for measuring research

Come on NSERC, really – you’ve completely missed the point…

Grumpy old men (and women) – feedback on proposed CIHR reforms

Novel ideas for the biomedical research workforce, anyone in Canada listening?

Our other activities

Dave published a feature article in BlueSci, Cambridge’s science magazine on the training of scientists, entitled Whose Training is it Anyway?

Discussion highlights

In response to my comments on the NIH and NAS reports, S_C pitched a question to readers that sadly went untouched. I think we’ll have to follow up on it. It’s an interesting suggestion to create research-focused assistant professors for 5-10 years and evaluate their performance – good ones stay, bad ones go (I see Cambridge doing similar things, Boston too).

One of the most heavily commented and read articles on our site, the discussion that ensued from the article on NSERC restricting postdocs to one fellowship application per lifetime, was very heated. This is one of the poorest decisions that NSERC has ever made and I really think they’ve failed to see the hugely negative impact that it will have on the system – see the CAPS letter in response to this.

Popular posts this quarter

Come on NSERC, really – you’ve completely missed the point… (5,214)

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UBC tops in Canada? Rimouski 7th in sciences? New metrics for measuring research (1,397)

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ABOUT DAVID KENT
David Kent
Dr. David Kent is a principal investigator at the York Biomedical Research Institute at the University of York, York, UK. He trained at Western University and the University of British Columbia before spending 10 years at the University of Cambridge, UK where he ran his research group until 2019. His laboratory's research focuses on the fundamental biology of blood stem cells and how changes in their regulation lead to cancers. David has a long history of public engagement and outreach including the creation of The Black Hole in 2009.
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