Question

Scientists generally receive recognition from their peers for novel findings. Many consider this a reward structure that motivates scientists to make important discoveries. Some fell, however, that this creates an unhealthy competitive atmosphere and promotes hasty rather than careful work. Describe how else you might promote creative discovery and original work in science. How do you think scientists should be given credit for their work?

Answer 1

Peer recognition in corporate world is a positive process, which serves to make employees feel good about themselves once in a while when their hard work gets recognized. But this has a negative side to it too. To achieve that honor or recognition, colleagues often compete in an unhealthy manner . In a corporate set up, this trend does little harm to the outside world but in a scientific community, such haste always cause a compromise in the quality of research. In fact any such reward program, be it an award or a promotion, lead to such disastrous outcome when investigators focus more on the reward system and not on the content of their work.

Science is a lengthy and tiresome field. Scientists usually face massive failures rather than success. Breakthroughs don't happen everyday and patience is very desirable in this field. To discover or invent something meaningful and useful, scientists should be provided with enough funding for initial years without the pressure of the delivery. This would encourage them to focus in science without having to worry about other things including competition for funding. Because ultimately recognition and awards draw more funding to the lab. To give credit to the scientists who eventually come up with novel findings, they could be given opportunities to present their work to the application based companies and if considered worthy, patents can be issued. Novel works can be celebrated in public domain to let common people connect to science and inspire more people to study science and take up research as a career. Recognition from inspired children is way more satisfactory than peer recognition due to the lack of diplomacy and abundance of genuine gratitude.