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The number of male scientists far outweigh the number of females. Why? Are men smarter? Is the male brain wired more for science than the female brain? Is it the way parents raise their boys versus their girls?
Watch three successful female scientists share their opinions on this issue.
Harold Varmus is the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovery of the cellular origin of retroviral oncogenes. Check out a tribute to Dr. Varmus below.
Over the past few weeks, we have explored the question of what constitutes scientific success and several important “comandments” for achieving this holy grail. In this post, we will discuss a presentation given by a young scientist at Delft University of Technology, who has expressed frustration with the common use of publication rate for defining scientific achievement. The presentation is especially noteworthy as it comes from a young scientist, Guenevere Prawiroatmodjo, who has yet to been tainted by years of politicking to climb the academic ladder. Nonetheless she is clearly bothered by the importance that is attached to an end-result that doesn’t pay tribute to, or encourage sharing of the entire scientific process. Not just results.
As Dr. Richard Feynmen so eloquently stated:
There isn’t any place to publish what you actually did in order to get to do the work
Richard Feynman
So what is Dr. Prawiroatmodjo’s solution to this problem? To create more openness and to share more parts of the scientific process. Furthermore, she postulates that it is critical to stimulate scientific motivation by encouraging entrepreneurship and commercialization.
In this vein, Dr. Prawiroatmodjo has come up with the “p” index which ranks scientific success as the number of times a scientist’s techniques or scientific tools have been used by the scientific community. In other words, if the “h” index ranks scientists by the number of citations their publication has received in the scientific literature, the “p” index ranks scientists by the impact their scientific methodology has had on the scientific community.
Comments Off | Career, Deep Thoughts
In previous posts we covered 8 metrics to define scientific success and a full length video of Darren Griffin’s ten commandments for becoming a successful scientist. In the post below, we’ve written out these comandments for those readers who may not have 54 minutes to spare watching the full talk.
What are your thoughts about Griffin’s commandments?
In our last post on career success, we touched upon 8 metrics that people use to judge the success of their scientific career. The post was based on a talk given by a senior scientist at the University of Kent in England and we felt that it would be useful to give you access to the entire talk in the video below. After watching the video, please share with us your thoughts on what it takes to become a successful scientist.
