4. Researchers face perpetual struggle to secure and sustain funding. While the
scientific workforce is increasing, the funding in most countries has been on a decline
over the past decade. The situation is particularly perilous for early career researchers
who find it hard to compete for funds with senior researchers.
Answers
1. Financial crunch in academia
Researchers face perpetual struggle to secure and sustain funding. While the scientific workforce is increasing, the funding in most countries has been on a decline over the past decade. The situation is particularly perilous for early career researchers who find it hard to compete for funds with senior researchers. This extreme competition is also impacting the way science is conducted. The respondents of the Vox survey pointed out that since most grants are allotted only for a couple of years, researchers tend to opt for short-term projects, which can sometimes be insufficient to study complex research questions. This means researchers make choices based on what would keep the funding bodies and their institutions happy. However, the consequences of these choices are an increasing number of published papers with sub-standard quality and low research impact.
2. Poor study design in published papers
Poorly designed studies have become a major concern for academia. One of the primary reasons behind this problem is that statistical flaws in published research often go undetected. Since breakthrough results are valued the most, researchers feel compelled to hype their results in order to get published. Moreover, they tend to focus on particular patterns in data and manipulate their study designs to make the results more attractive for the journals. Instances of “p-hacking” in which researchers report only those hypotheses that end in statistically significant results are also on a rise. In particular, biomedical studies have come under the spotlight for misusing p-values. Thus, a huge chunk of published results are scientifically insignificant, which also means a routine waste of money and resources.
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3. Lack of replication studies
The inability to reproduce and replicate results is a major problem plaguing research. Recently, Nature published the results of a survey that attempted to understand researchers’ views on reproducibility and reported that a majority of participants believed the “crisis of reproducibility” is real. Inherent problems in studies also hinder replication, such as inadequate data and complicated study design. However, major stakeholders of science are in general skeptical about pursuing replication studies. Most journals prefer publishing original and groundbreaking results because replication studies lack novelty. Researchers and funding bodies are reluctant to invest their resources in replication studies on similar grounds. This is a major loss to academia since results of most experiments are never validated and tested.