Science Critic Forum at Academia

 

Academia Forum

I totally agree with Pro. Jarid, science is now on the edge of 'fatal conceit', more dependent on 'public' funds to start new lines of investigations, so less diversity and a lower rate of scientific knowledge, even if we are in the Big Data, AI, Robotics era. In some countries, scientists are seen as a mere job, or working position by young freshwomen and men, with a relatively good salary and fun activities in the labs. I miss the true passion for research, and it might be, for some, not all persons, a laboral option only.  

Once I got a Thesis Professor, that correct me about my bad habit of justifying my research for the government agencies' scale and parameters, but he said, 'Mikel, we scientists do not justify our work, we just investigate with liberty the subjects we are interested in'.

I think he was and is right. Imagine if the scientists of previous decades and centuries were waiting for approval for their mecenas or founders, we would be on a different scale of development of our state of the arts, the accumulation of knowledge would be lower and worse than we got nowadays.

In another postgrade school I attended, all peer students were only looking their subjetcs of thesis based on 'where is the money -public by the way- to enter in that lab'; I did differente, I arrived form Venezuela with my idea of thesis, ecotoxicology on vertebrate model, and it posed a problem on the posgrade directors cause no lab had funds those years for that, so I invented a cheap protocol I funded myself, I lokked for a valient professor of thesis elsewhere, 300 km away, and the fishes for experiment in another place, building new networks, askimg fvaors, but it was my idea I defended later.

In 'another' country, tropical, I almost got a friend fired from his tech science job. He was no educated man in science, I mean formally, no university attended, he was 'only' a fisherman who learned to help scientists for decades, and still, he may be 80 now,  even though he helped young students to learn the protocols in that lab of aquaculture. I 'invented' a small congress to expose to the public and very young students in a rural region, the knowledge they may use to start agro businesses, etc., so I invited my 'Aquaman,' and he was almost arriving at the city of the private-funded (my Foundation, my pocket) congress, and we received a cellphone call...from above, in some desk of some capital city, the ministry of education and the aquaculture dept of a public university in a socialist gov, they deny, prohibited, forbided, the oral presentation of my friend and almost got fired, it was not firerd cause he was the most important expert in the nation on that particular protocol on how to grow eggs, larvae and juveniles fryes at lab to put in floating cages on beaches for an herbivore fish species, I can no tell you even now... my friend still working there...

I finish with another anecdote, of dozens (my grandfather, my mother, and my father were and are professors, researchers, and manage(d) labs): in many countries, that famous public money from taxpayers, omG, finish with great output, thesis, papers, diplomas, congresses, ego, titles, newspaper headlines, etc., but the patent or right to use that knowledge goes only to the private partner sector, and if the society would want to access to that knowledge they paid for, they have to pay again in a clinic, or university... Hey, I am super pro Libertarian and pro-entrepreneurship, but that previous example is the typical 'mercantilism', 'companies' linked with state agencies, put some money, not a major part, and still get all the benefits (decide what 'line of research' is happening then, and gets all info and knowledge)...

Science will be better with more freedom, more diversity, and the sizes of founders, and if we, the community, valorate all knowledge and not only the big-budget one! Think about Mendel, his bold and yet simple experiments, and where he 'published' his findings...

Thanks

God bless us all

aio

milesker

Mikel

Like1

Jarid Shaub

2 hrs ago

Thank you, Mikel — I really appreciate you taking the time to write this.

Your experiences articulate, in lived and concrete terms, the very pattern the paper is trying to make visible: how inquiry becomes constrained when legitimacy is routed through funding structures, permission, and institutional scale rather than curiosity, care for the subject, and intellectual risk.

What you describe — working outside sanctioned lanes, carrying ideas across borders, and watching knowledge migrate from public space into private hands — isn’t an exception. It’s a structural feature of how modern research ecosystems have evolved. And it’s precisely that quiet narrowing, often justified as “efficiency” or “rigor,” that produces the kind of drift I’m concerned with.

I’m grateful you shared these stories. They remind us that much of what advances knowledge has always happened at the margins — in small labs, informal networks, and people willing to follow questions before permission is granted.

Thank you again for engaging so thoughtfully.

Best,

Jarid Shaub