Women Researchers at Salk Institute Discrimination Case

Such a sad story.  A waste of talent and who knows what they might have accomplished if they had been given the resources.  I’m quite sure this is common across the sciences.  My first love was science and research.  I worked in a research lab for a year after graduating in Biochemistry at Cal, applied to graduate school and got in.  I also applied to Med School and also got in.  I think my younger self realized the realities of the research world even though it was so appealing.  It’s extremely difficult to make your mark, as a male or female, and requires not only brilliance but other skills too.  As any creative endeavor, you need to have confidence in your work and if that is repeatedly undermined and not supported it makes it impossible. Funding is getting more difficult with the right wing tilt in our country.  It is not surprising that medical research is frequently funded by Big Business which has its own huge problems.  (See blog on Big Pharma and Follow the Money)…

Science is, in theory, a meritocracy, in which results should speak for themselves and buoy their authors to the top. The problem is that nobody knows the best way to measure the merits of a scientist’s work. Data-driven metrics have become increasingly popular: The “h-index,” for instance, was created in 2005 as a measure of an author’s overall number of publications and how often that work is cited. But citation practices vary widely even within disciplines, and citing yourself can artificially drive your number up. The h-index often becomes a measure of quantity, not quality.