I really loathe this idea that not being a “traditional” tenure-track academic is “quitting science”. I didn’t “quit science” - I opted not to become a research professor. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Twenty years of publishing data across many countries and disciplines show women are more likely than men to leave research.
Gosh, who would have thought that many scientists would go and do science elsewhere other than academia, with its lucrative salaries, wide job availability and lavish funding? 🙄
EXACTLY!
Naive question: do people in industry not publish at all? I know people in government can still publish papers, although many publish reports, not papers. I used to work with a woman in industry who was working in a academic lab and she still published, but I know that was an unusual situation.
Agree 100%. I quit academia, but no one tells me I'm not a scientist! I even started a website called Be Sciencey to counteract the gatekeeping that comes with science and academia. You aren't a scientist unless you conform to the rules of the privileged few. No thanks, I'll make my own rules🤘🤣
A degree is a ticket and everyone should be clearer about that. STEM is about solving problems, seeing how teams succeed and fail, and, I always hope, rediscovering the importance of imagination. If academics would write the education equation they realize the stakeholders who keep them going. 🧪
LOL seriously, there are so many avenues to doing scientific research outside of universities! There is government, hospital, private foundations, and industry. All of these are viable avenues to science careers outside of academia. I opted for a government track.
Wow. Authoring papers is a terrible metric for that headline… quitting academia maybe. But I would bet much more science happens without creating research papers than does. Even if we keep to very traditional definitions.
Yes! I left a tenured research position in 1999 and have had, at least in my opinion, an intellectually fulfilling and societally relevant career as a scientist in both public service and consulting. And, published regularly. Science ≠ tenure track academia && science ≠ publications alone.
I suppose it’s no surprise that an op-ed in an academic journal about a study published in “Higher Education” and the study itself would both have a marked bias to act as if academic publishing is the only metric for good science, but still. Unexamined biases much?