|
Looking at science from my perspective, from the inside, I'd say governments and (consequently) unis like grand openings, glossy brochures and tasty foyers but know and care very little about what happens in the lab. It's like a mudguard - nice and shiny on the outside but covered in mud and s||t on the inside.
My pet hate is the underfunding of human resources. It's not too hard to get serious $$$ for state-of-the-art instrumentation but try to get funding for maintenance and consumables and you'll be shouting into the wind. As for technicians to made them work and get the best out of them - forget it. A rough estimate is that the area I'm in needs 5+ technicians if we want everything to work all the time. We have 1.5. A mate has just had his job in a prestige research group 'rejigged' and he is now supposed to maintain, operate and train users of 10!! instruments, several of which require a dedicated tech to get them to operate. And it's not as though dedicating half the hours get half the output. Generally nothing will happen unless you put in more than some threshold amount of time. With the instrument I know best running the technique I know best, to get anything done you need at least 4hrs per day every day. Otherwise you just run the systems checks but never get any samples run. I've spoken with techs who've been around for decades and we all agree that the waste caused by the absence of technical support is horrendous.
Then there is the financial support for post grad students - the people in labs who actually do the research (Profs don't have time to touch equipment). Apart from the fact that their scholarships don't support them there is the under funding of their research. At the moment post-grads get $1500 per year for expenses!! What a joke!!! Fieldwork, lab consumables, specialised parts, standard reference materials, more consumables etc etc will come to many times $1500 per year. [eg $1000 for a GC colums, $350 for a cylinder of UHP He, $1.20 per litre for liquid nitrogen, $500 per fill of liquid Ar, $500 per litre of UHP nitric acid etc etc] To be honest, the fact that anything ever happens is a tribute to the dedication of all concerned. But we could do so much better given half a chance.
|