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Starting New Science

xn--wxa.dog · 750 words · saved by 1 readers

Once upon a time I was a cancer researcher at the Broad Institute. I was drawn to the complexity if its challenges - hoping that it would spur new mathematical tools to match it. What I found instead was a circus of misaligned incentives, institutional cruft, and outright corruption. Despite being one of the top research institutes with a nearly unlimited budget, I noticed a crippling aversion to departure from existing funding streams. More horrifying, these external pressures seemed to have wormed their way down into their scientific aesthetics, which not only tied their hands but collectively blinded them to distinct holes in their analysis. This engendered an overwhelming cultural pressure to fudge results at least via omission of obvious-but-conflicting analysis. In early 2015, having spent the past 9 years training for it - I quit biology academia forever. I still have fond memories of collecting Ctenophore off the beautiful dock of Friday Harbor, jumping into the freezing water.

Once upon a time I was a cancer researcher at the Broad Institute . I was drawn to the complexity if its challenges - hoping that it would spur new mathematical tools to match it. What I found instead was a circus of misaligned incentives, institutional cruft, and outright corruption. Despite being one of the top research institutes with a nearly unlimited budget, I noticed a crippling aversion to departure from existing funding streams. More horrifying, these external pressures seemed to have wormed their way down into their scientific aesthetics, which not only tied their hands but collectiv

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